Orange County

The End?

In 2012 earth suffered a radiation crisis, some people made it out to space, some people died, some adapted. We have no clue how many other groups walk the earth the same as us, and how many groups walk differently, radiation was said to do astonishing things to innocent people. I guess radiation can't really be subjective, but billions of innocent people, children, are dead because of careless workers. We call ourselves Orange County, when children are bore to us we mark them with a small orange tattoo on the back of their necks, it's ritual, it's how their brought into the world for us, it's normal, but for other people it's not. We like to think our workings are extremely advanced, but as far as we know, there's only 27 other counties with mammals that walk on two legs and talk in our area.

It's terrifying, to think how big earth could really be, and that I only know the two-hundred mile radius around me. Three miles away from our civilization is our burial grounds and where we perform death rituals. Our death ritual is to take off the orange tattoo given at birth, it's thought to release them from our county so they may be free to the world. I think it's kind of an inhumane ceremony, but I don't make the rules.

Speaking of rules, theres a lot for us, it's how we stay alive. The rules are as simple as, "don't eat more than your rations provide" to "don't talk to your grandparents on the third hour of a death ceremony day". Some of the rules are complicated, and nobody understands why they're there, we just follow them or we get banished. Nobody knows what happens to the people who are banished, they get the skin on the back of their neck cut off to remove the tattoo and then are removed from the radius of our county never to be seen again.

The rules are simple to follow, hard to understand. The schooling is easy, just pay attention.