Pretorilious

Chapter 1

        I loved my life. I loved my light blonde hair that looked white, and how everyone looked exactly like me. Everyone here feels the same way, but things have changed for me since the fire. It's like I lost the love I used to have. I am different. I no longer have the same passion. Now, I want to be original. I want to be one of a kind. I don't want to be known as the girl who had the same face as everyone else. I want to be wanted. I am what they call... a defect. I glance up at my mother. I used to look like her. For some reason, our skin never ages after 16. Sadly, I haven't reached that age yet, being 15 and all.

           School was even more depressing, knowing that I have no name. Well, technically I do. My name is #11500. That is something that we do here in the Republic of Pretorilious. We are assigned numbers when we are born. We believe names make us different, and if we are different, there will be trouble. We don't like trouble. My life was exactly like everyone else's... until I had an incident with fire. It happened a year ago.

          I was walking home from school, enjoying my life. I was too distracted being happy with my life to realize that I'd gone the wrong way. Of course I thought everything would be fine, but I had begun to realize that the farmhouse doors above me were falling and on fire. I was told that without our modern day technology I would've died. I was crushed. Later, it was discovered that the cause of that fire was someone had left their grill on.

          Things have been different since that incident and I am not just talking about my thoughts. I'm also talking about how people staring at me. They find me interesting since an accident, because something like this has never happened before. In fact, no one has ever been hurt since 2050. Since no one argues in the city and we have perfect memory, no one can get hurt. I was literally the only patient in the hospital who wasn't in labor. Thankfully a lot of people had that month's shift. My parents were in that shift too, so the hospital didn't have to call them. Today, their shift is in the museum, to make sure everyone has a fair amount of importance we switch jobs every month. I, however, am not old enough to switch jobs.

          Today was like any ordinary day since then, people staring, awkward silences and having no friends. Okay, I had friends. But now they were basically gone. No one liked talking to me anymore. The teachers only talked to me if I failed their assignments, which didn't happen much since I'm a star student. I hear people whispering. "Isn't that the girl who survived that accident?" or "She probably did this for attention. Look at her, she's not even hurt." It really stings. No one believes my side of the story. My only friends ignore me as I pass them. I've spent all 15 years here and one incident changes everything. Who knew? One single moment can change the course of your life. I would do anything to not have had that balcony fall on me, but this was life. I walk into the classroom. As usual everyone stopped and stared. I was a freak inside and out. Sure, there had been people trying to make contact with me at first, but in the end, they wanted nothing to do with me. I was a poison that no one wanted to consume.

          Right now, my teacher is trying not to stare at me.

          Is it working? Not really. She looks at me for a few seconds then forces herself to look away. I wonder, am I really more important than learning about our History? Well, I already knew everything about our history. We were once the United States but our people started a civil war.  The United States was different than us. They were greedy. However, we are not greedy, or at least, I wasn't. We then established that we would work together as one. That we would share everything including, fame and looks. Once we established our new countries somehow all of our bloodlines stayed the same. It was our reward from god for doing the right thing. But 2040, we had a revolution. Only, the people in the revolution only disagreed with us because they came from other countries. We then decided to stop having immigrants come into our country borders. Anyone who looked different from us was sent back to their home country. We then reach to today. We have no wars, and we look young 'til death.

          "That is how we conquered the United States." My teacher, Mrs. 1000, said.

I have not only read up on our history, I have read old stories written back when The United States was still here. Every author believed that we would turn out bad. Obviously we turned out different than the books said we would. Unlike some books, we do not take a test, instead we are arranged. That way no one is lonely. We all have our destined partners. Mine is my old best friend, 11489.

          11489 is dead.