I wake up safe in my bed, for now. In our community, we don't dream. Our dreams are supposed to be vanquished by the pill we take every night, but it doesn't work on me. Every one in my community is limited to one interest, mine is reading. And no parent can have any more than two kids.

In our world there are many other communities, but ours is said to be the best, we call it C0.1. Every one is the same. C0.1 is the wealthiest community, but to be honest, I would rather live in poverty then be under our rulers' command.

In history, we learned about a time when there was a democracy and a time when there were books that were newly printed. A time when people could really express themselves.

But that was two hundred years ago. There world that they built for themselves ended after World War Four. There land fell apart.

The survivors gathered everything savable and started the Communities.

We haven't had a World War since. But that is because everyone is brainwashed. Nobody here has a mind of there own.

The Rulers prance around to the three Community schools and give speeches about how Beyonders are shamefully beyond their controlling technology and how they should be killed and blocked out and homeless. But they don't know I am a Beyonder and they won't figure it out either. They don't know how to catch me.

I plan to run.

I hop out of my bed and head downstairs. We have a two story, four bed, three bathroom house in the middle of a suburban city. My brother Kato sits at the kitchen table this morning, shoveling cereal into his mouth.

"Belle, you're late" he gurgles, with his mouth full

" And you are gross"

" Right back at ya"

As a ten year old boy, he is beginning to have some sass and my 14 year old brain has zero tolerance for it.

I walk over to the cabinet and grab out a purple ceramic bowl with a chip in the rim.

It has been my favorite bowl for as long as I can remember and I eat everything from soup to sandwiches in it.

I take the cereal from the counter and fill the bowl halfway. Then I add milk and a spoon.

I take it back over to the polished kitchen table sit down across from my messy eater of a brother.

"So are you excited to choose your interest today?" I mockingly ask my brother

Not taking the whole sarcastic hint he answers the way he has been trained to: " Totally, I hope I get mechanics or electronics"

"Dude seriously, don't be Excited about it. It is horrible the way you are randomly assigned something that you should be interested in, it is not right and not fair"

Kato blinks at me, like he didn't hear a word I said, he is just as brainwashed as the rest of them.

I leave my cereal and head back up to my room.

Because today is the fourth year's choosing day, the rest of us get the day off to prepare for the choosing banquet at noon.

The banquet is an over exaggerated party where kids are called up to "choose" their interest, even though they have zero say in what they get. The chooser's family gets to come to the banquet if they have already been to a banquet of their own. So I get to go to ANOTHER banquet.

Meanwhile in a dark room in another community there is the last rose bush in existence. Wasting away with neglect. A beast roar echoes far off in the castle, leaving everything within a mile frightened for their lives.