Wide Awake | H.S Au

Prologue

The year is 2088

Rules, curfews and discipline was what now belonged to the everyday life since a long time ago.

The 2020 pandemic never really ended, it just spiraled and had during the years become so much worse, and now nearly 70 years later it was worse than ever. It was not just a pandemic anymore, it had affected the human DNA so badly that it had become fatal due to bad research, vaccines that did more damage than good and a mix of other approaches that were made by those who didn't get vaccinated.

The population had decreased rapidly in the last decades due to the DNA mutations that was inherited from one generation to another, this if the genetics of the parents weren't pure.

The mutation didn't affect some directly if the genes were recessive but if inherited for many generations or being mutated to a certain point it had become fatal.

Countries all over the world, at least those with a remaining working government and law system had taken this seriously and most of these had handled this with thorough testing of DNA of every individual to see what matches would work and not work if they ever chose to bring a child into the world. There was usually a handful to two handfuls of matches for everyone in a city with a million residents, these matches were very important to get and to follow so that the future generations could get more and more pure matches so that someday in many years from now it would be possible to abolish these systems.

People were examined from the age of 5 until they were 10 to get their DNA tested, match it with people in the same age group and then when people were 18, they got the list of the matches that was for them.

Many chose to not go for one of their assigned matches, often because they had found love in someone that was not on their list. The law approved of this if there were no children in the picture and there rarely was due to the hard punishment of the parents and the death of the child.

Because of this the IVS treatment companies had flourished and taken their opportunity to make enormous sums of money from people in love.

The IVS treatments were expensive, very expensive. It was a long and hard process and to get one of the assigned matches to donate sperm was often hard, also that expensive for both parts. Due to the price of the treatments couples usually had only one child. It was usually easy to see if a couple was a couple from genetic matches or from love when you saw how many kids they had.

The teenagers had enormous amounts of pressure on them, from society, family, friends and from the system. It had changed the whole dynamic in the schools, in everyday life and society overall. There were strict ways of acting, what types of work that was allowed and what was illegal, the whole entertainment business was something that you didn't see much of, and in case one did it was strictly monitored by the people in charge of said city.

Me, Indiana and my 4 best friends had all promised each other that we weren't going to open our lists when we turned 18 to avoid all this pressure and loose our last years as young adults to the system and our thought that would come with the answers on the lists. We had managed to avoid the lists and lurking parents, partners, and strangers for a few years but the time had come to an end, and we couldn't avoid it anymore.

Now, the summer was right around the corner, and we all had agreed to open our lists in the end of summer, but not before having the most epic, drama free and wild summer ever. The summer of our lives where we would do everything, we'd always wanted to do, to search for the high highs and avoid the low lows. To make an adventure out of everything we were going to find behind every corner.

We wanted to live and be young, just a group of restless souls being free for the very last time before we would face the rest of our lives, welcoming the uncertainty into our lives fully with open arms and say, "come on, we've done it all".

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Hey besties! And welcome to Wide Awake, the next part of the story will contain information about the main characters, some into about warnings and content and a little AN! So hang in there, I will probably write a few chapters before i start to publish them.

See you soon, take care xx