The year is 2525. I wake up at the same time everybody in each Division in the Society is mandated to, four o’clock in the morning. We have to wake up at this time to have the optimal day. No minute is ever unused or wasted. Everything is scheduled down to the second. I robotically get up from my bed, like I do every morning after my four hours of sleep, and feel the cool sharpness of the metal floors of my sleeping unit against my toes that truly wakes me up from my slumber. I change from my sleep clothes into my gray day clothes and head into my younger brother’s sleeping unit because he always has a hard time waking up on time, which, if an Officer were here, would not go down so smoothly. Aden has been my brother for five years now; he came into our family like all children do, from the District Infantry at the age of three. All babies are kept at the District Infantry from birth until the age of three, or until they learn to behave, which in some cases can be longer, but those children are often marked off as defective and are usually terminated in another year’s time. After the children of that year learn to behave normally, they are distributed to the couples who had their Child Application approved from the Infantry Committee. This event is called the Parenthood Ceremony. I always love it when my mother tells me the memory of her first Parenthood Ceremony with my father when they were both matched with me as their new child and they as my new parents. My mother always starts the story by saying,

“Your father and I got to the ceremony hall early. We had the small blood sample taken to show that we, the Fairstone’s, were in attendance. When the clock struck 6:00 a.m. Mayor Branwell, leader of the West Division, came out onto the stage and went to the podium and said the Society Mantra:
“The Society is absolute. The Society is invincible. The Society is everlasting.”
After everyone rose to their feet and repeated this after President Branwell, the ceremony began and all the Care Givers came out holding a new little toddler waiting to be claimed. One by one each couple went onto the stage to accept their new child and hear their new child’s name. Your father and I were both nervous when it came close to our turn, but as we walked up the stage steps and saw your calm and kind blue eyes looking up at us, it made all our nervousness melt away. Your Care Giver walked you up to us, because you were still a little unstable on your own, and said that your name was Kira, Kira Fairstone now.”

I think about this story and can’t help but smile. Probably because it was so long ago, eleven years have passed since my first Ceremony, and soon I’ll be going to my Marriage Ceremony. Everyone in the Society, of all four Districts, are arranged to marry at the age of eighteen. I see that Aden is not in his sleeping unit, and then I hear him in the dining unit. He’s eating the standard morning meal of factory produced bread, fruit, and water that everyone is assigned to eat. My mother and father sit beside him eating as well. I’m about to sit next to them, when I hear a high pitch noise outside our residency plot. I walk to the front door, and open it slightly at first, and then wider and wider as I see what’s happening. Guards are dragging a man out onto the streets and electrocuting him whenever he tries to fight back. That’s when I realize he was the same man making the high pitch sound of agony I heard just a moment ago. My brain is trying to process what is happening before my eyes. I have never seen Guards attack citizens before, or heard such sounds of agony and despair. All I’m thinking of is, What is happening? Why is this happening? Then I notice a Guard walking strait towards me. I’m not supposed to be seeing this. There’s nothing I can do but comply with his demands, so when he thrust a tablet into my hands and tells me to swallow, I do without hesitation, because that is the law of the Society…