I wake up with a start on the morning of the Choosing Ceremony.
My dream had been about Bernie, my best friend since childhood, but what are these feelings I am experiencing? Gosh they are so strange and uncomfortable. I'm glad that the All-Knowing Government supplies me with emotional suppressant medication.
I take my meds and put on the same drab gray clotehs that the rest of my Gated Community wears.
As I walk through the doors of my Gated Community for the first time, I catch sight of the Other Group. People from my Gated Community have never gotten along with people of the Other Group. At least not since the civil schism that happened years ago.
I feel relieved that our All-Knowing Government set up a better social system than our ancestors had. I mean, it's not communism if nobody calls it that, right?
I heard the ancient ones lived in some place called "America", but nobody knows anything about that world now.
As I walk to the Choosing Ceremony, where the All-Knowing Government decides our future, I look back at my little sister. It is her first time at the Choosing Ceremony, and as she twists her hair in her fingers and looks up at me sheepishly, she reminds me of a metaphor for childhood innocence.
At the Choosing Ceremony, a number of unimportant, nameless people are called before me, but, finally, the Choosers call my name. On my way up to the Choosers, I trip over my own drab, gray clothes.
Gosh, I am so clumsy and awkward.
I am thankful for the All-Knowing Government and their Infallable Choosing System- adolescence is such a confusing time for me. I'm glad that the Infallable System will be able to choose an identity for me so I won't have to go through the trouble of finding it myself.
After the Mysterious Test to determine my future, the Choosers tell me that I don't fit into any of the Society's established groups.
How is this possible? I had no idea that I was somehow different from everyone else! This world is far more complicated and confusing than I first thought it was. Maybe I shouldn't have been blindly following the All-Knowing Government after all.
Just as the All-Knowing Government agents try to get rid of me, my childhood friend Billy appears and saves me. It's a good thing he had a job with Plot Device, or he wouldn't have been able to save me.
He kisses me, and I am confused- I had always seen Billy as more of a brother.
We leave and discover an underground community of other people like me. Apparently, there was a whole world that existed outside the Gated Community. Who knew?
It turns out that when Bernie rebelled and left the gated Community, he came here and is now the leader of the Others.
"Call me ber-NARD", he says suavely.
He is wonderful. He has perfect hair, his eyes glitter like the stars… (5 pages later) …, and he's basically beautiful and perfect in every way. But I'm so shy and plain looking that there's no way that he would ever want someone like me, right?
We train together to take down the All-Knowing Government, and he eventually reveals to me about his secret, guarded past.
After a long series of character developments, I find myself a brand new person. I have grown up so much since the Choosing Ceremony. I used to think that I could be happy with the All-Knowing Government, but now I see the truth.
Though I'm just a teenager and I'm in love with Ber-NARD, I find that it is remarkable easy to overthrow the All-Knowing Government.