I plopped down on my bed, wondering what the topic of my assigned story could be. It was supposed to be over something that I could never imagine living without. I had already spent countless stressful days and nights thinking about my topic, searched among the deepest corners of the internet, asked everyone I knew for inspiration. As a result, I was a mess. My hair resembled a bush, not that I had ever seen one in person, my eyes were shot, and yet I felt as wide awake as I ever had. I knew that it would be time to take the Vitamins again, almost 24 hours had passed since I had last taken them. They were the supplements that allowed me to function on no sleep, literally, and take full advantage of my time.

Of course, I wasn’t the only person taking the Vitamins. My parents and siblings were, too. Everyone in our city of Maren has taken and is taking the Vitamins, it's illegal not to, although I don’t understand why someone would ever try to break that law. The Vitamins have allowed our once small, rural village to expand and become a giant, booming city. You won’t believe how much work we’ve been able to get done with the help of the Vitamins.

Of course, it’s been lifetimes since The Expansion, or the growth of Maren occurred. It was such a big part of our history that it is now a part of our school curriculum. In fact, I am learning about in right now. “Shoot,” I had forgotten that we had a quiz on The Expansion in school tomorrow, “Oh no, no, no no no.” Since my classes ended for the day, all that I had been worried about was starting my composition for my language arts class. I had totally forgotten about the rest of my classes, “Guess it’s just one more thing to do, then.” I knew that the rest of my work would pile up on me, when would I have time to finish all of this?!

Ever since the discovery of the properties of the Vitamins and its widespread use, my “school” has become ever more rigorous. My teacher has worked out a schedule to maximize my learning: projects Mondays and Thursdays, quizzes Wednesdays and Fridays, and I receive a new packet to work on for each class every Tuesday. I always have something to do, no free time, not even family time! Even during the weekends! The Vitamins don’t even give me a chance to so much as glance outside, although no one would want to do such a thing.

Since the Global Divide, otherwise known as World War lll, the pace of rising temperatures on Earth has quickened due to the emission of nuclear gasses from nuclear weapons. Plants were quick to wilt, and rivers and oceans suffered an immense drop in water levels from the heat. Even our efforts to heighten them with the thawing of our polar ice caps had no effect. The population of Earth dropped, all as a result of infertile growing conditions which debilitated our ability to grow crops. People could be seen starving and begging everywhere, just a pile of bones. Luckily, Maren was one of the few settlements that survived. Sure, it may look like a wasteland, but I promise you that people still inhabit it.

Now, the inhabitants of Maren rely on tube-transported meals produced by our numerous underground greenhouses downtown. No one dares to go outside in our average-but-rising temperatures coasting the medium 150 ?, and those who do are only out for a limited amount of time, for fear of heat stroke and inevitably, death.

The actions of historical world leaders, notable ones include Ronald Rump and Kim Jong-Boom, had a revolutionary impact to our world. Apart from starting World War lll, they cowardly fled from their former countries and left the rest of the world to face the war’s effects. We only have traces of information from other surviving settlements, but those are far and few. Of course, no one from Maren dares venture to look for them, it would undoubtedly be a suicide mission.

Anyway, back to thinking about my topic. I really have no direction in which to go in, but I sure do like the elements. You know, fire, water, earth, and air. Of course, I rarely come in touch with fire or earth because our government closely regulates our reserves of them and like I said, no one goes outside. But I am fascinated by the thought of ancient times, where dirt could be found everywhere. For God’s sake, people then didn’t want dirt on them! I would love to be able to roll in it, people used to be so ungrateful! I won’t even mention fire, how has it almost become extinct after it was so common in California? I can’t believe that people didn’t like the idea of fire burning their things, or even people. The Great Californian Fire of 2026 was just misunderstood! The 3,000 people and hundreds of types of different wildlife all must’ve died because they didn’t run quick enough! Maybe I could somehow work this into my story, I can already imagine it…

I decided to take a break from homework. I pulled my dinner, a recyclable plate with small portions of broccoli, black beans, and chicken breast on it, towards me. Even though the world was burning hot outside, even during the night, the insulation that our houses had allowed us to only sweat off a small percent of the water content in our bodies every minute. That same heat allowed my dinner, which had arrived by tube at my house a few hours before, to still be warm. The perks of global warming, I tell you.

As I chowed down on my chicken breast, which was quite tasty, I thought about the wealthiest people in Maren, its creators. Maren is said to have been created from a tightly-knit group of friends, but no one knows exactly who or how many people those were. They supposedly introduced the Vitamins to us, some say that they had tested it on others before, and that those experiments contributed to the extinction of the European people. Other myths say that they have emigrated Maren for the Earth’s poles, where cooler temperatures are believed to exist. People believe that temperatures even go under 100 ?! I can’t even imagine what that would feel like, that would be weather worthy of sweaters indeed. I have my own sweater tucked away in a corner of my closet, since I’ve never had to use it. I still don’t know what they were issued out for, but I guess that after World War lll, our government wanted to be ready for anything.

I had been scraping the bottom of my plate with my wooden spoon for a few minutes when I realized that I had finished my food. My stomach grumbled loudly, I was still hungry. For a few months, we had been issued smaller and smaller portions of food. People speculated that we were running out of supplies, that our leaders were trading them for items from other settlements, or that they were even storing them in bunkers in case of another war. Nonetheless, I was still here, sitting at my desk, in my room, in my four bedroom home where my mother, father, and two siblings, Fiona and Silvester lived, thinking of a topic for my language arts-assigned composition.

“Ugh!”, I was tired of my robot teacher. Each person from the ages of four to seventeen had one. As soon as they became adults, people would be appointed a specific duty to maintain for the well-being of Maren until they died or decided to wed someone and have children. Their teacher would tailor a special learning plan for the person to which it was assigned to which met all of their needs to ensure their maximum productivity. I guess that my robot teacher thought that I had a lot in me, since all of my friends from Maren I’d talked to online boasted about how bored they were, all while I had countless papers and packets to finish.

As I grumpily threw my empty plate of food in the recycle bin, I wondered what life without the Vitamins would be. How could people before do what the people of Maren do now without being exhausted? In fact, how could they even complete it at all? I sure feel bad for them, it’s no surprise to me that their civilizations ended quite abruptly. At least I’m alive, even though I do hate my “school”, I haven’t died from a bomb explosion, and that’s one thing to be grateful for.

Maybe I could write about a child born into a rich family who discovered his elemental powers and destroyed their multi-million empire. I could possibly have a strong female lead her followers to safety from a giant fire monster, who doesn’t like a bit of female power? I wish I was more creative, it would make writing stories so much easier. I’ve always been horrible at writing. Unfortunately, I don’t think my teacher can help me with this, as all it seems able to do is make my life harder. I don’t have my family to ask either, as they’re all busy, although maybe Silvester and Fiona are less occupied...

As I creep down the hall to their rooms, I peer through Silvester’s door and see that he’s typing something. “Get out!”, he yells as soon as he sees me, and he shuts his door. Already accepting defeat, I tiptoe to Fiona’s room expecting the same, when I notice her staring blankly at her wall, probably writer’s block. Fiona was in her last year of school, she was seventeen. Next year, she would receive her duty for Maren and much like my parents, spend the rest of her time typing papers, if she doesn’t choose to have children.

I step inside her room and bow, a common tradition among the Maren. She looks at me and smiles. “What do you need now?”, she teasingly asks. “I have no idea what to write my composition on, I’ve already told you,” I responded. “Raven, I’ve already poured half my brain into yours. If my ideas before haven’t helped, I don’t know what else I can do,” she says. “Fine,” I start walking back to my room. “Hey, Raven.” “Yeah?”, I ask grudgingly. “You look tired,” Fiona tells me curiously, “have you taken the Vitamins again?” “No,” I say. “Go take them, maybe they’ll help you think of something,” Fiona suggests. I quietly walk out of her room and back into mine, back to work, never ending, ever more complicated work.

I take my container of the Vitamins out from my wooden cupboard and take a few pills out. The Vitamins are simply white pills. Nothing more, nothing less. No one knows exactly what they are, how they allow us to do the things that they do, or who makes them. All we know is that every week, a new container of pills arrives by tube at every home in Maren, and that we all take it every twenty-four hours. Don’t assume that we haven’t thought about its true purposes before, but many people have given up finding an answer, simply because there seems to be none. I, however, have not.

Since I first learned of The Expansion and heard the various myths about Maren’s creators, I have been intrigued by the Vitamins. Finding how to make them must have been immensely difficult, or everyone would know about their creation. I have imagined what the government could be planning for the people of Maren, but no one knows anything about our government except for our mysterious founders...

--- BEEP ---

“Huh?”, I wonder aloud. I thought I heard something, a beep. It was probably from my teacher charging. Anyway, the Vitamins could very well be a part of a government plan to con-

--- BEEP ---

“What IS that?”, I say. I look around my room but see nothing. No disturbances, everything is where it’s supposed to be. I consider asking my parents, but they’re probably too busy with office work, so I decide to leave them alone. As I was saying, the origin of the Vitamins are mysterious, and I would probably do anything to learn more about them, it’s really a shame that-

--- BEEP ---

“Oh my god, can you please be quiet?” I look around my room and see a man standing in the corner opposite me. For a moment, we simply stare at each other. Our eyes lock on each other’s, I’m sure that he can see the fear in mine, but his own are impermeable, a steely gray. The next second, he lunges at me. In the corner of my eyes, I see a black bag in his hands. He clamps the bag over my head and knocks me on the ground. I can’t see, I can’t breath, what’s going on?! I yell for someone, anyone, and I can almost hear footsteps. I grow relieved, I can hear Fiona, I can-

------

I don’t know where I am, I can’t see anything. I yell even more, when I suddenly feel a hand on my face. It’s digging into my eyes, I need my eyes! Suddenly, the black bag is taken off my head and I am plunged into brightness. I am face-to-face with the man that abducted me.

“What is this? Tell me!” I scream. The man tells me that he is part of a rebel organization, that they have been planning a revolt from Maren for years, “You must become a part of us Raven, we know that you have been questioning Maren.” He goes on telling me that Maren is a lie, none of the world is in the same conditions that we are in, that it is all an experiment. He explained how the Vitamins befuddle the minds of its recipient, make it believe that the Vitamins are helpful, necessary for existence, when in reality they only allowed the founder of Maren to control its inhabitants. The reason that people did not require sleep was because of a mutation, one that the founder of Maren, Ronald Rump, was testing, and his experiments had apparently worked.

The man told me that after the Global Divide, Ronald Rump and Kim Jong-Boom had, indeed, fled. Kim Jong-Boom’s movements were never tracked down, but Ronald Rump was found to have created a colony of American followers in Greenland. He hoped to foster the world’s perfect race of people, Caucasians, and create an undefeatable empire. Luckily, the rebels had escaped his colony when it was first developing, but the rest of its inhabitants had remained trapped inside for generations. No other countries tried to free us  in fear of another war, and the few rebels that escaped were left to try to free the people inside Ronald Rump’s prison alone.

I couldn’t believe what this man was saying. This was even harder to process than what my teacher at home told me, but this wasn’t my teacher, and definitely not my home. As I looked around, I noticed that I was in a small, square white room. There was nothing else apart from this man and I inside of the room, except for a door behind him. I wondered if I should try to run out, maybe the people outside would try to help me! All I had to do was make this man move out of the doorway, and I would be free. But how could I, a mere teenager, move this log of a man even an inch? With this in mind, I quickly lost my urge to escape.

The man’s ever-flowing words bounced around my head. I could not piece them together, his words just blended into each other. “Who are you?” I ask. “You must have forgotten, I am Neil, the leader of the rebel force, DRR, or Defeat Ronald Rump, we aren’t that creative either, don’t worry.” “What happens with my family?” I ask again. “They are fine,” Neil said, “we have an agent notifying them of the reason for your absence, they will be joining you here soon,” Neil responds. “Where am I?”, I murmur as I look around some more. “You are in safe hands Raven, you won’t need to worry about that pesky teacher again,” he teases, “if you hadn’t noticed, we have been trying to communicate to you through it for years.”

What has this man been saying? My teacher? Pesky teacher? Shoot! My composition, I haven’t finished it. Oh no, no no no.

“Raven, don’t worry, the effects of the Vitamins have been taken from you, you won’t ever be under the control of Maren’s founder again!”

My composition! Something that I could never live without… the Vitamins! I need the Vitamins, this is too much, I just want to go back and suffer from the loads of homework that my robot-teacher throws at me!
“Please! Give me the Vitamins! I need to go back!”

“Raven, it’s fine, this is just a result of your withdrawal, you’ll feel better than you ever have in a few days!”
“No!”, I screamed. “I need to finish my composition! My topic, something that I can’t live without!”
“The Vitamins,” I whisper, “I need the Vitamins.”

If only I was still in Maren, I could have written my composition,
for I have discovered my topic:

The Vitamins.