Like a God
Prompt from the dystopianapocalypse Ambassadors
The baker has just baked the sweet loaves, the cinnamon ones covered with colored sprinkles; I had to make a kilometer line to win one. Everyone's waiting for me with a steaming loot and a cup of tea to go with bread and jam.
The TV is already on and the chairs positioned in a semicircle around the room, are about to announce the results of the extraction. Every year is the same story, the government organizes a draw among all citizens aged 18 to 45 years; those who will be extracted will have to go to the city to lend their skills, based on what no one has yet discovered. One year they are the small workers, another the big graduates, another the children of the civil servants. I knew a girl in town, daughter of a baker, no one has heard from her since her name was extracted. There are those who say she's working for a factory and those who assume she's serving for some millionaire. When they picked her, Nathan scrambled to be in her place, my brother is the only one in the family to graduate. I haven't even finished my studies, I spend my days painting in my little workshop. The broadcast has already started a while with games and shows to precede the long-awaited moment, as if it were a happy moment for everyone. I never really cared, I know my name's been in there for the last three years, but the odds are slim... almost nil, actually. There are those who sold a kidney once to be able to insert their name in the ampoule and eventually passed the term without ever being extracted, now it is said that they live alone in a hut - old and sick - on the borders of the continent. There are only a few minutes left and even the conductor trembles, exposed to the sunlight with golden tattoos that shine: even those born from Dria and are obviously in vogue, if it were not that they cost at least as much as the salary of half the population. I'm cross-legged in my chair, smoking cup in my hand, and a plaid covering my shoulders. The music that starts with the theme song is a tune that has always bothered me, yet I find myself humming it sometimes without even noticing. The conductor is starting to extract the first names from an enamelled case, inside it is never understood how many cards there really are: he announces name, surname, age and place of birth. Which is boring because unless you mention this town, we'll never know what those people look like. His hands move on those names as a creator god of the universe, between his fingers the fate of those lives. With her nails painted blue, she grabs yet another card. She speaks with her voice: Iris Linvcerster, 20 years old, born in the city of Nao. I have to blink several times and the cup makes a loud thud on the ground. I don't need to see an image to know it's me.
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