THE BEGINNING

“Eden was founded in 2090 by Dean Fourier, and here we stand celebrating the success of his perfect, civilized society half a century later. Class, please rise and place your right hand over your heart and recite the perfect prayer.”

This was always the way things started. A few centuries ago, we would stand here reciting the anthem praising the men who fought for and died for our country -- the national anthem-- but after overwhelming corruption, famine, revolts and wars, and the deterioration of a moral society, the rope binding the nation together emaciated just like the people living within it and eventually snapped, sending the anvil plummeting downward, and soon the rest of the globe following pursuit. After that, there was a decade of hell on Earth, just like they portrayed in the movies: theft is legal because law is dead, kindness died out with the ones being slaughtered, the streets grew empty as the fear grew infinitely, everything around was broken just like the human race’s souls, and the white house turned black as it was devoured by flames and deteriorated to ashes.
  Eventually, some people decided to lock their fear away long enough to try to fix what went wrong. Dean Fourier, an entrepreneur from Oxford, England, gathered a few of his peers from his graduating class from Oxford University, which he was miraculously able to track down ten years after the crumble of the campus, and worked on an electronic system that could harbor the data of all 8 billion people in the world and analyze everything about them based on their hobbies, interests, education, and life to date, and it sets a life path for the person; that way, everyone is useful in society and everyone gets employed based on what the system thinks as best for the person. Later, it was perfected so that the system can also keep transnational surveillance of everyone by a chip that was stitched into everyone’s chest. It depicts the person’s heartbeat, feelings, stress level, mindset, and overall well being, so that if the person were to ever fall astray from the way of the common good such as it has occurred for centuries before, the person can be administered help before it’s too late to set them back on track.
  It wasn’t easy for the system to get initiated, though. Once a consensus was reached with 51% of the world, an official accord was written and anyone who went against it were executed; so it was more like “Merry Christmas, get this chip sewn into your skin close to your heart, or it’s lights out and hopefully you’ll reincarnate as a suitable human being, or whatever it is you believe in”. The latter’s a bit of a joke, though, neither Christmas nor religion exist in Eden since it was decided that religion is a heresy within itself and causes irrational and radical actions, which will only taint the purified new system that cost thousands of lives and hogsheads of bloodshed.

This is what we’ve caused, and this is what we’ve become. Survival is what we fight for, but not every battle is won.

“I pledge allegiance
   to the system
  which created and gave me my freedom.
      And to the community
  for which it exists,
  no worries,
  under Eden,
  for hope and future for all.”

This is Eden.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

“…under Eden,
for hope and future for all.”

We recited our pledge in unison, then allowed it to resonate throughout the squarely-organized room and wallow within the depths of our minds.
“Thank you, and may you have an Edocosmic day!” the intercom signals our permission to sit down. The consent also commences a wave of palaver as my bored classmates decide to take advantage of the absence of our teacher.

“Gah, Mr. Thain is late again. I wonder what stack of assignments he spilled coffee on this time.” My ears single out a voice from the crowd. “It better not be our aptitude tests. I swear if I have to become some sort of social worker instead of a comp-engineer because someone didn’t tighten the lid on his morning liquid-high, I’ll create a software that’ll shoot him up high and keep him there!” The outspoken rant belongs to no one other than my best friend Samantha Albert, who is furiously twirling her light blonde wavy locks as she probably truly is conjuring up a way to make that possible.

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being a social worker.” Our friend Charlie Eun defends.
     Sam narrows her eyes. “Yeah, if you prefer to sit around all day doing desk work or dealing with people’s problems. Yet, I guess you can get a head start with that here.” She smirks; pushing peoples’ buttons is what she does best.
     Charlie grabs hold of both of his maroon jacket’s sleeves and balls his hands, placing them upon his cheeks, and leans over with his elbows atop his desk, pouting. “Well, helping people is better than creating malicious software to bring upon their demise.” He mumbles.
  “Huh, what was that? I couldn’t hear you.” Easily roused, she stands up, slamming her hands upon his desk and towers over him, creating a scene. “If you’re willing to insult somebody at least make yourself audible, twerp.”
Ignoring her, Charlie simply rolls his eyes, only causing Sam’s blood to scorch even higher.
  “Hey, you two—“ I began to interrupt their spectacle when suddenly the door opens, revealing our tardy source of authority, thankfully dissipating the tension and disorganization and quickly sending everyone back to their respectful seats.
We were expecting Mr. Thain to enter gleefully, laughing nervously as he tries to conjure up a reason for his lateness, yet instead his austere expression aged his youthful features by a tenfold. The tension regrew as all eyes lay upon him in a deafening silence.
  “Come in.” he steps aside from the door and gestures for someone’s entrance. The figure entering was our classmate Daniel Jobe; sulking, his eyes remained affixed to the ground. His face faintly tinted red, it seems as though he had been crying.
Pairs of eyes following him, and pairs of eyes staring at Mr. Thain, discomfort cloaked our room but provided no warmth.
Daniel’s footprints echo as he began walking toward the back of the room to his desk.
  “Daniel, I want you to sit near the front. Mr. Eun please switch seats with Daniel for the time-being.” Mr. Thain abruptly orders, voice shaded with coldness.
Nodding his head, Charlie complies and carefully pushes his seat back, avoiding to cause an increase in tension, and swiftly takes the desk in the third out of the sixth row, next to the window, behind me. Daniel, momentarily pausing, drags his feet to the first column’s third desk, right in front of Mr. Thain’s desk.
I began to bite my lip. Something really terrible must have happened because high stress levels are against the law, and this is surely striking a spike on everyone’s levels.

Clearing his throat, Mr. Thain plasters a smile upon his face and reverts to his typical, jolly self.
Completely disregarding the event at hand, he strides over to and places his briefcase atop his cherry-wooden desk that’s twice the length of ours.
“So, Eden is nearly finished calibrating your future path results. They should be delivered next week. As for now, I surely do hope you all have finished that research paper and 3 page essay upon human injustice and the beginnings of Fourier’s consummate apparatus?”
The class responds with groans and the room fills with shuffling and page-rattling as everyone scrambles to display the work they have or have not completed.
  “Well, it seems most everyone has fulfilled the task.” Mr. Thain smiles as he scans the room, yet his eyes narrow, almost menacingly, when they met Daniel. “Would anyone care to share a bit of what they’ve discovered?” Mr. Thain’s question is met with empty stares and silence. Sighing, he signaled for all papers to be passed to the front row.
“This should have been an easy assignment for everybody.” He walked from desk to desk, picking up the papers, accumulating into a thick stack. “Social injustice and civil unrest led to a mastermind instigating change. Dean Fourier, at age 27, about 5 years after graduating from Oxford began analyzing people’s actions and thought patterns thanks to his master’s in behavioral psychology, which he surprisingly received fairly quickly mind you. He was also working on a computer science P.H.D. while the insurrection’s tumultuousness grew to its works peak and Oxford fell to the ground months after Washington did.”
Mr. Thain continues explaining as he walks back to his desk and shuffles the papers into evenness. “From there, he tracked down old colleagues and worked relentlessly formulating software and coding to create the righteous Eden and enlightening the public and gaining support, and finally, 6 years later, at the age of 33 Fourier successfully saved humanity and gave you all the opportunity to live peacefully so that you wouldn’t have to go through the haplessness he faced.” Finishing shuffling the papers, he turned and smiled toward the class.
“That’s why everyone should appreciate what Eden has generously offered to us.” His eyes scan the room and fix coldly upon Daniel once more, who bites his lip and contracts his hands, tensing.

The constant chill between Daniel and Mr. Thain even makes me freeze. I wearily look over my right shoulder, toward Sam, who notices me and responds with a faint shoulder shrug.

“Mr. Thain.” A hand from the back row arose.
Mr. Thain once more breaks from his trance and cheerfully permits the question. “Yes, Stacy?”
Stacy stands up, fixing her black-rimmed frames and allowing her umber ponytail to swing as a pendulum would. “I don’t quite understand why it took Fourier 6 years? I read that he finished his system in 4 and a half, so why wasn’t it initiated then?”

“Well, you see, it’s very difficult to reach a consensus, so there were many people whom had opposed Fourier and even attempted to murder him,” a collection of disbelieving gasps erupted. Mr. Thain put his hands up, palms facing the class defensively “Yes, yes, well, people were scared. They didn’t know who they could trust any longer.”
“So did Fourier have to kill anybody?” One of my male classmates interjects.
“Ugh, don’t be absurd; he’s no barbarian.” The girl next to Stacy, Sidney, scoffs.
Mr. Thain continues, overlooking to provide a resolution to the dispute. “When you’re trapped in a world of lies, it was difficult for people to discern fact from fiction, promise from lie, hope from despair, but eventually when people came to their senses, you can see that Fourier was no conniver as we were granted our promises and live in the freedom today.”
“Wait, so were the dissenters like the Rebels?”

Eyes widen and everyone turns to face Micah, whom asked the question. The Rebels are a radical group who oppose all which Eden stands for. They say that Eden is phony paradise that simply manipulates everyone into believing they’re free. Their slogan is “Alive but not living” and they denote Eden as an obscure nightmare. It’s forbidden to speak of them and even the mere mention of their name can get you interrogated, fined, or jailed.

“No.” Mr. Thain promptly replies, harshly. “Those people, at the time, had a reason to fear and query the system. These so-called Rebels” He sneers as the word distastefully rolled off his tongue. “have neither sense nor reason to rebel. They’re just bored, they want something new, something exciting. They don’t recognize or appreciate what they’ve been given and feel like creating spectacles to feel special or throw a fit because they think they know their life or themselves better than Eden does. They’re pathetic and ignorant and I don’t want their filthy name tainting my classroom ever again.”
I could feel myself being choked by the atmosphere. Nervously tapping my desk, I just wanted to separate myself from the constant tension that’s been present ever since Mr. Thain entered the classroom with Daniel.
I know the Rebels are wrong, but they’re just misguided. They can be sent to Correction and be fixed. Mr. Thain speaks of them as if they’re some wild mongrels, but they’re people born into Eden just like we were, weren’t they?

“Alright, enough of that.” Sighing, Mr. Thain grabbed a small white remote from his desk and turned on the overhead projector, which formulated a loading image up onto the front wall of the classroom.
“Today we’ll be covering 1776, A.D., upon the ideals and failure of America’s first just society. I want everyone taking notes and you will be assigned a follow-up reading in chapter six of your textbook and prepare for a quiz next class along with a short response.”

I guess that’s a question I won’t get answered.