A Citizen's Guide To Freedom

• Ashley Anand, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2014

The year is 2025, but I shouldn’t remember that number. The year is 11. The year is 11 because it has been that long since year 0, the year the world was freed. My name is Amanda Frieda, and I am part of the free world.
I repeat these words over and over, tying to embed it into my brain. I have my test tomorrow; you know the one that everyone has to take when they turn sixteen. I’ve been preparing for this ever since I could read. It had been a gift, a shiny red book for my six year old self. I couldn’t read it of course, and there were no pictures to help unlock the secrets trapped in those finely printed words, but I knew that it was of the utmost importance. Everyone had one, my parents included, and they treated it as though it were the most precious thing in the world. I remember taking it into my room, clearing away a whole shelf worth of toys so that the mysterious red book could sit comfortably. It just had that kind of effect.
Opening my eyes, I peeked at that book now. It looked well used, a good sign; the assessors tomorrow would be looking for that. They want to see how often I’ve read it, the manual I mean. There’ll be a written test and an interview. They’ll ask me about year zero and how the United Nations became the government of the world. They’ll ask me to recite random verses from the manual. I’m most worried about that, there are two thousand verses you see, and they could ask to hear any one of them and I’d have to recite it word for word from memory. I know them all, but I get nervous, you know?
My parents have high expectations of me. They have been adherents of the free world for a long time now, way before year zero, back when the world was divided. I don’t know the specifics, as I was born around the time the New Age Movement began, but apparently the world had individual countries, each of which were governed by their own political system. Whole nations were starving while across the ocean obesity was declared a pandemic; wars broke out, innocents were dying all over the world and no one ever did anything before it was too late. But then the United Nations formed the New Age movement and united all religions, abolishing all governments - useless as they were. There was resistance, both political and religious, but we overcame them. In the free world, the rich are required to support the poor so that they may become prosperous and support themselves. 10% of our yearly earnings go directly to the costs of development, environmental protection measures, and humanitarian aid.
The Manual, titled A Citizen’s Guide to Freedom, reminds us that we are all equally responsible for the state of the world. Only when every human has understood that, can we truly attain freedom. I really hope I pass. For the sake of the world, we must succeed.