How could things have gone so horribly wrong? I looked at the mangled bodies that littered the street and saw the torture and agony engraved on their corpses. Death must have seemed like a reward to them. The welt marks from the whipping post and burns from the tongues of fire used to torture innocent people barely compared to the cruel and demonic devices used in The Chambers.

The Chambers were designed hundreds of years ago but only recently were put to, in their minds, good use. The Wealthy, a group of people that rule The Poor, designed them in case we ever revolted. The Chambers are designed to individually trigger your greatest fears and worst nightmares. It is inhumane, gruesome, and deadly. No one ever made it out alive, but stories have been told of rebels being pricked with needles doused in slow-killing poisons, limbs stretched beyond the limits and pulled off the body, while others were sent into gas chambers where the vapor boiled their lungs and cooked their skin. Five years ago we did what they expected us to, we revolted, and both populations have suffered a great loss since then. Even though The Wealthy had everything they needed, they still expected us to serve them. If they dropped their diamond-studded purse, we had to pick it up. If we refused or got a speck of dirt on it, we were whipped. If there was an infant in the room and their nose dripped or their tongue hung out, they were decapitated. If we didn’t listen to their every command, we were tortured. Our worlds will never be the same, so hopefully our losses have paid off and will reward the remainder of the living with egalitarianism.

Over a century ago in 2500, the immigration trickled down and our ancestors decided to form a country and divide the people. The Wealthy were people with fame and fortune that raked in more money the less they did. The Poor were the unfortunate souls, like most of us, who worked sixteen hour days in treacherous conditions and were lucky if we had cheese and bread to scrape mold off for dinner. Most of us weren’t even that fortunate, for some of us didn’t eat for days. Representatives would be paid an exorbitant amount of money to monitor our Section, and we lived in the 17th Section. Some ignored us, while others made our lives miserable by tormenting us, sometimes to the death. Oblivious toddlers were hung, beheaded, or burned because they wandered too close to The Wealthy Representative or were caught sucking their thumb in public. This happened far too often, so without any prior planning or organization, almost all of the 23 Sections rebelled. There were four that were resistant at first, but they caved in easily after several rounds of prolific photographic propaganda were distributed throughout these Sections with slogans encouraging a war.

As the war began, shots were fired from The Wealthy. Meanwhile, fire torches were thrown and arrows dipped in herbal toxins were shot by homemade bows from The Poor. The blood that was shed throughout our revolution mounted as the years passed. Many of the high government officials were taken out early, but our main target was The Captain. The Captain was in charge of The Wealthy and The Poor; dictating our entire country. In the last few months, a plan was boiling to assassinate her. The underground tunnels she used for faster means of transportation served as a significant advantage for The Poor, and fortunate enough for us, lead to her elimination. The Wealthy panicked; they didn’t know what to do since their leader had been killed. They surrendered and the war was drawn to an end. Not sure what to call myself now, since The Poor and The Wealthy were no longer divisions of our society, I watched as bodies were scraped together in the heart of our country. I was involved in the final fires of the war, and I looked for my husband on the streets, determined to find him dead or alive. I flipped a rotting corpse over with my boot and stared into the open, decaying, lifeless eyes of my dead spouse. Flies circled his head and maggots crawled on his flesh. Tears welled in my eyes, threatening to spill out at any second.

A hand clasped my shoulder, and I whirled around, defensive. “You should leave, Ms. Capricorn. You’re wanted in The Office to choose a new captain,” a soldier told me.

I took one last look at Soldier Capricorn, closed his eyelids, and said a prayer so his soul could rest peacefully. I trudged to The Office and took a seat around the vast, circular table. I thought about how my minute decision could drastically alter the future of everyone in the country, and my stomach flipped upside-down. The fate of thousands, maybe even millions of lives were at stake and my decision would determine how their lives played out.

“Ms. Capricorn, it’s time to cast your vote,” someone said.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as fates of the futuristic people changed forever.