The Name Game

Prologue

Her eyes searched the barren wasteland, looking for signs of life. Her legs ached from the many long days of riding that lay behind her, and in anticipation of the many long days that were still to come. The hot sun baked the desert sand and the dry air. Taking a break from the demands of riding in such heat, she laid down her rusty bike next to the greenish river she had been following downstream. She splashed the filthy water over her face and cupped her hands to drink. It tasted vile, but she needed the little strength that it gave her if she had any hope of finishing the journey ahead of her. Exhaling loudly, trying to catch her breath, she thought of the strange series of events the past few weeks had brought.

.....

Identity

There had been one hundred of them to begin. Both boys and girls, all of whom were between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, were shepherded into a dimly lit room. None of them spoke. It seemed that the very air of the room was dead, leaving an odd sense of foreboding.

Suddenly, a clear, female voice rang out from the walls of the room, with no identifiable source beyond that.

"Welcome to the testing facilities, she began. At this moment, you are required to proceed to the door on the right to receive your label markings."

A door that had earlier been hidden slid open. White industrial light flooded into the room as the mass of one hundred began to form a line. One by one, they stepped into the bright room and were told to hold out their arm. When it came to be her turn a middle aged man holding a small metal appliance grabbed her hand and pressed down with the device. It seared hot for a second. She bit her lip to avoid wincing from the unexpected pain. The man removed the metal object leaving an ink tattoo on the inside of her wrist. She examined it carefully, the letters and numbers dark blue-black against her fair skin.

X-41-16

She was directed down a long hallway into a room with a small podium at the front and precisely one hundred chairs, each marked with the series of two numbers following an X. She found the chair marked with the numbers identical to hers and sat down in it just as a woman stepped up to the podium. She was the very image of authority. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun and her attire was impeccable and professional. However, she did not need to use her authority to ask for silence; not a word had been spoken since the voice had spoken about the training. She spoke to them with the same cold, clear tone of the unidentifiable voice before.

"Welcome to the Institute, a highly technological facility which you are very privileged to have entered. This day marks the beginning of a pretentious program designed to discern the ten of you best suited for the elite society beyond the walls of this institute. I am the Director. It is I who ensures that you receive attention fitting of your status. It is I who decides your future.

"You are the Selected, chosen from thousands of candidates. You already have a position of prestige, a position of honour, but you may continue to achieve greatness and gain even more power. As a Selected, you will undergo training and testing. The tests are not physical. The evaluations have nothing to do with your mental capacity. Rather, they have to do with your future. We will observe your future; the choices you makes later in your life will become the sole factor in your placement. If you are cunning and innovative, or kind and empathetic, or intelligent and clear-minded, our elite society has a place for you. Those of you who do not meet the necessary criteria to be among the elite ten will be re-positioned to a more suitable status.

"Fifty of you, those who make the worst decisions, will become The unSelected, working in the labor department. This task includes agriculture, construction and production line jobs.

"Forty of you will become The Distinguished, who will work in jobs of higher positions. If you become a member of the forty, you may find yourself in a career path following education, justice, or healing.

"The ten of you that remain the last to be re-positioned will be the most fortunate among you: The Gifted. This is a position of the highest honour. You will have no requirement to work. The world is at your fingertips. The choices you will make will all be for the greater good of the community. Selfishness and cruelty are beyond the Gifted. They are citizens of the Utopian society beyond these walls. The rest of you, while still important, live to work for them. Otherwise, we would risk compromising the balance that we, the Authoritative, those of us who run both this institute and the society beyond its wall, have worked so hard to instill.

"Now, please exit the auditorium in an orderly fashion. Those of you whose identification number, the last number of the series on your arm, is between one and fifty, please exit to the right. The rest of you, please exit to the left."

Her heart pounded in her ears. She nervously rubbed the black numbers and letters on her wrist.

"Something feels out of place," she thought as she stood up and was absorbed by the crowd of people moving slowly towards the exits. "Something other than the tests. If only I could put my finger on it."

Suddenly, she realized she had. She stared down at the numbers on her wrist, a chill running up her spine.

"Not numbers," she corrected.

"Names."

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