“VOX” by Christina Dalcher

What is going to happen if, in the future, women will only be allowed to speak a hundred words per day? While the men will speak an unlimited number of words per day?

Christina Dalcher imagined this situation in her first book VOX: the words spoken by the women will be counted by a bracelet (nowadays it seems that we willingly wear a bracelet that counts the pulse, the number of the steps we take…)
“This is how things are now: We have allotments of one hundred words a day.”
At midnight the bracelet resets and each morning starts the counting from zero.

The consequences established by the government for the women who speak more than a hundred words varies from little shocks to the burning of the hand that wears the bracelet.

“First word over a hundred, and you’ll get a slight shock. Nothing disabling, just a little jolt. A warning. You’ll perceive it, but it won’t actually hurt.

For every ten words after that, the charge augments by a tenth of a microcoulomb. Get to half a microcoulomb, and you’ll feel pain.

Reach a full microcoulomb and the pain becomes unbearable.”

The angst for Jane, specialized in the study of aphasia and mother of three boys and a girl, is when her six years old girl comes back from school and proudly tells her mother:

“Won prize! Lowest!”

The reason for winning the prize is:

“I know what her school is up to. I know, because the counter on her thin wrist says the number 3.
My daughter has been silent all day.”

And the little girl is delighted because the prize was ice cream:
“Ice cream for the girl with the lowest number on her counter.”

Kindle, 2018