Two months. Two months of being ignored, and Michael was genuinely breaking. And it wasn't even that Jeremy was just ignoring him, either. He was pretending he didn't even exist! And that… That hurt most of all. Like twelve years of friendship meant nothing to him. But the more Michael thought about it, he couldn't even be mad at Jeremy. He was mad at Rich, mad at the Squip controlling his best friend - ex best friend - but he couldn't be mad at Jeremy himself. It was ridiculous, but… how could he?

It was a school day, but Michael didn't feel like going. He was in his basement - which served as his room - smoking weed and writing stuff down to pin to his wall. There were a shitton of papers pinned to a board that stretched almost across the whole room, his beanbags, game stations and TV all shoved to the side to make room. It was stuff he'd learned about Squips. The few little things he could pick up on the internet - rare stuff that didn't really matter. And stuff he'd put together himself along the way. Just information, things he could use to help Jeremy. If he was right about him being controlled… Then his best friend was in trouble.

I mean, come on. There was nothing great about having a supercomputer literally telling you how to live your life. Period.

But he hated to admit that it was actually kind of cool. Being able to create that type of technology. He wanted to know how it functioned. How it worked. What it could do. The extent of its abilities…

Focus. Focus, Mell. Michael shook his head and looked up at the board, pinning a piece of paper to it. Something about optic nerve blocking that he'd heard of from some other guy. Squip-related, and Michael had a pretty good idea as to what it was, but he wasn't certain yet. He turned away, grabbing a bottle of water and taking a sip as he glanced around. Video games collecting dust in the corner, his few books scattered around uselessly. Headphones abandoned on the table, phone beside them, laptop opened.

He stared for a moment, an idea forming in his head, then turned to look at his video games. He blinked. Oh, this was such a horrible idea, but it could so work.

Michael was gonna go buy a few Squips.

After selling literally every single video game he had, as well as his game stations, he returned home with three grey pills in a plastic bag and was ready to start experimenting. First thing's first, he did not want to fucking take one of the damn things himself. He was not going to get stuck with a stupid supercomputer in his head. No. He was going to try to work whatever technology it was into a real computer. See if he could get into its data. It was literally a computer. Any kind of technology could be hacked if you knew how to get it right.

Just in case, he called up a friend. Well, not a friend. Just a tech whiz who loved money. With Jared Kleinman on his way over, Michael sat on his couch and set the pills one by one, side by side in front of him and glared at them all, wondering why anyone would come up with something like this. Something so horrible. If people wanted pills that would mess with their heads, couldn't they just get normal drugs? At least the effects of certain drugs fade away at some point. From what he'd heard, Squips stayed with you for-fucking-ever.

Sighing, he picked one of the pills up and studied it. He could see the tech inside, mostly hidden under the coating of the pill. If he could somehow get to that, Jared could probably find a way to put it into his laptop. He wondered, vaguely, if anyone had ever tried this before. He didn't know, but he doubted it.

He was working on removing the outer shell of the pill to get to the tech inside when Jared entered the basement - Michael had texted him to just come on in, so he had. He threw his backpack over the couch and jumped over the back of it to sit beside him, pulling out his own computer and setting it beside Michael's, as well as a hard drive. "So what'd you say this thing was again?"

"Squip."

"Squip? That's dumb," Jared deadpanned, typing something into his computer and frowning. "And there's literally nothing on the internet about it…?" He looked up, shooting Michael a questioning look. Michael just pushed his own laptop closer, and Jared's mouth formed a small "o" shape as he scrolled through the page. "How'd you get to this?"

"What's not on the internet?" Michael questioned, shaking his head. "I just kinda kept looking. Found a guy on World of Warcraft who gave me the link to this." He gestured to the laptop, then went back to removing the tech from the pill. "So, you think you can help me?"

"Oh, totally," Jared replied dismissively, scrolling through the page. "It's a computer. Computers are my thing." He continued to read for a moment before leaning back and typing something into his own laptop, pulling up a few different pages about computer hard drives and databases. Michael went back to what he was doing, and they both fell silent for a while. "To be clear, we're using your computer for this shit. My baby ain't getting ruined by a supposedly evil supercomputer."

"They are evil, and fine." Michael rolled his eyes. "It's not like I need my laptop or anything anyway." Jared merely hummed in agreement and fell silent again, and Michael did as well. He finally managed to get the tech out of the pill. It looked like a tiny hard drive like thing. Michael inspected it for a moment before handing it over to Jared.

"Here's where it gets tough." Jared stuck his tongue out slightly and grabbed Michael's computer, as well as the hard drive he'd brought with him. "Nice. This… I've never seen this kind of quantum processor before. Very advanced. Give me, like, half an hour, man." He looked toward the other pills. "So why'd you get three?"

"Just in case." Michael grabbed the bag and put it in a drawer in his dresser, returning to lean over the back of the couch. He watched Jared work, zoning out as he did. About half an hour later, as promised, Jared flipped the laptop open again and set it down on the table, letting it power up and turning back to Michael.

"So, what do I get out of this?"

"I got three hundred left over," Michael replied easily, meeting his gaze, and Jared's expression lit up. Michael smiled dryly and turned away for a second, only to turn back when his laptop started beeping. He stared, silent, and Jared turned back to look as well. "Is that normal?"

"Not sure. I'm in uncharted territory. This tech hasn't even been officially released yet," Jared told him, hitting the button on the computer. Then he jumped when the beeping abruptly stopped, and the screen started glitching out violently. While it was doing so, large, blocky letters slowly appeared across the screen.

WELCOME TO YOUR SUPER QUANTUM UNIT INTEL PROCESSOR.

More glitching, and then the screen went black. Then more letters, this time written in red. Michael and Jared both leaned back.

WHAT. HAVE. YOU. DONE?

"T-" Michael's voice came out shakier than he intended, his face paling considerably as he took a few steps away from the couch. "T- Turn it off. Turn it off!" He was already terrified of the damn thing, this wasn't helping at all. Jared didn't hesitate to shut the computer down completely, looking extremely shook. After a moment of silence between them, he spoke again.

"That was awesome."

Feeling sick and terrified, Michael gave him the three hundred dollars and told him to see himself out before going to the bathroom to throw up.

He would have to find another way to get the information he needed.

Michael was forced to go back to school the next day. He didn't want to risk getting into trouble or anything, knowing that even if the students didn't know the difference, his teachers definitely knew he wasn't showing up. So he arrived the next day, exhausted. He'd ended up just stuffing his laptop into a bag and putting the bag in his bottom dresser to never be used again, and put the rest of the Squip pills in the top drawer.

Opening his locker, he tried to ignore the sound of Jeremy's laughter as he walked down the hall with Rich. Ignored the smug smirk Rich sent his way. Ignored them talking, ignored it all. He pulled his stuff out of the locker and went on to class. After a brief scolding from his teacher, things went back to normal. He was ignored, again, for the most part. When lunch rolled around, he was at his usual table by himself, nothing but an apple in front of him and his arms crossed over the table, chin on the back of his hands and his gaze fixed intently on the clock. He wanted to skip next period, but he decided against it. He couldn't just show up for half the day and be done with it.

He flinched in surprise when someone sat down across from him, a lunch tray being sat down rather harshly in front of him, and he let his gaze slowly flicker up to land on Jared's face. "... What, Kleinman?" He wasn't trying to be rude, but seeing his face made him instinctively think back to the evil possessed Squip computer. And it terrified him.

"Dude. Okay." Jared sat down and leaned forward, grabbing his fork. Someone else, who had been following him, stood by hesitantly, holding his tray. Michael looked up, gesturing for the boy to sit. And he did, a little reluctantly. Jared didn't even seem to notice. "So I did more research on that Squip thing. Met this guy online, right, who had one? He said that Squips are automatically programmed to assist their users, or whatever, in achieving whatever goals they have set. Basically like a desire thing. Whatever their user wants, the Squip helps them get it. But it can't do that unless it's actually in your head and knows what you desire. Which is why it kind of freaked out on us yesterday, I'm guessing."

"Wonderful." Michael made a face. "Well, hell no. I'm not swallowing one of those glorified tic-tacs if my life depended on it. Which, luckily, it doesn't. I'll just find another way." His gaze flickered toward the other guy, who was staring down at his hands. "You good?"

The guy jumped and looked up, managing a nervous half-smile. "I- I'm good, y- yeah. Hi," he stuttered, looking more nervous than Michael had seen anyone in his entire life. "I- I'm Hansen. N- I mean- Evan. Evan Hansen. I'm sorry."

Michael just nodded, knowing that pointing out the anxiety or acting like it was weird would just make it worse. "Nice to meet you, Evan. I'm Michael."

"It's nice to- to meet you, too." And with that, Evan looked back down at his hands and remained quiet the entire lunch hour. Jared ate mostly in silence, too, only stopping to ask Michael about the Squips or comment on how advanced the technology was and how he wanted to experiment with it himself. Michael didn't think he did a good job at talking him out of it, but he tried like hell to, at least.

He passed Jeremy while he was leaving the cafeteria. Didn't look at him, didn't let his heart break when there wasn't even a glance in his direction. Just kept pushing through.

It wasn't until later that day after school on his way home that something inside of him broke for the hundredth time. Leaving the school, he watched Rich's head turn in his direction and a cold smirk break across his face from where he stood beside Jeremy. "Hey, loser."

Jeremy stopped as well, turned his head, but his gaze roamed over Michael without even acknowledging him for a second. "Who're you talking to?" After a short pause, he muttered, "oh."

"Doesn't matter, dude." Rich nudged his shoulder. "Let's go play some video games. My place?" Jeremy gave a simple nod, and the two left. Michael watched them go with an empty feeling in his chest.

When he got home he sat on his bed and stared at the drawer. The drawer containing those fucking Squips. Those fucking supercomputers. Super Quantum Unit Intel Processors. He thought back to Jared's words. Assist their users with their goals, their desires. He stared for a long time before turning away, grabbing a bottle of whiskey on his nightstand. He wasn't usually a drinker, but this time he needed something stronger than weed to block out the emotions.

He let the world fade away into a dizzying numbness. Until he couldn't feel anything anymore. Until he couldn't think. Until he passed out.

And he woke up exactly 24 hours later on the floor with a half-empty bottle of mountain dew at his side and a plastic bag with only one grey pill left inside.