She awoke again. The noises outside the window could be the synthetic trees or the people in black who came and made you disappear if you did something wrong. It was not like she had joined the resistance or anything, but she often toyed with the idea.

What did it feel like to be in constant fear of being erased at any moment?

Nobody else thought like her it seemed. They all swallowed the medicine and thought the way the government wanted them to think. People are easier to control when they have no individuality. That was why she was in a large room full of children being raised by the government.

‘It’s for the good of the children.’ They said, ‘It’s best to take them away from the negative influence of their parents.’

Nobody knew who their parents were. Nobody knew the name that their parents gave them. But she did.

Three names were found tattooed to her neck when she was an infant. Two names were written next to eachother and had lines extending off of them to another name below. The names were so minuscule that only somebody who stuck their nose up close to her neck could see them.

When she could read and write, which was years before the other children and illegal to know at her age, she had a friend draw the letters on the floor with orange juice so she could see why the government didn’t want her in particular to learn how to read. From that point on, she would become dangerous in the eyes of the government. They didn’t know yet that she knew her real name and the names of her parents. She had a sense of individuality now. She was the black sheep of the herd, not even a sheep anymore but a wolf.

She would be made to join the government though. Everyone did, that was the only way to work, earn money, and eat. If you refused, you were immediately labeled ‘resistance’ and erased. There was no community, just the government.

The choices she made from now on would determine what the government made her do for work.

As she lay in the big room, she felt like the only single person in the room. Everyone else was just a number with a face. She was the only Jaroslav.