Empathy

Prologue

George Washington's original intentions for America was to avoid a federal government with too much control. He wished to have little power as president, with many checks and balances, so that he didn't go mad with power, and have America end up with too powerful a leader.

That didn't really work out.

Even a few decades after, his vision of what America should be like was completely ignored, with new territories being added to the US rapidly in the 19th century. Eventually, detailed records were kept of every person in the country, with social security numbers for everyone from birth.

That wasn't enough for them.

They just had to go even further.

None of this was ever treated as a a bad thing by the history instructors at the complex. To them, George Washington was a delusional man who was far too optimistic for his own good. Of course a country couldn't be run only by the people. People weren't smart enough to make decisions by themselves. The country needed to be run by the educated, and everyone else was below them.

The new officials, led by Percival Yew and his lackies, went on to do terribly awful things. They first segregated towns based on sexuality. This was in some effort to make the people happier about their surroundings, not having to deal with people they disagree with. Perhaps it seemed like a good idea to people, but no one I talked to seemed to like it much.

Sons and daughters were separated from their families based on how they loved, and friends and families torn apart from this decision.

It didn't affect me much at the moment. I would live in the heterosexual community, with my parents until I turned eighteen. That wasn't my main problem with the system they had developed.

My main problem was another one of their great ideas. You see, Yew also decided to do something about the severe unemployment problem in America.

A few things contributed to this unemployment. Firstly, a law had been passed in 2080 that gave the equal pay of $600,000 a year to every person in America, regardless of what job they did. This meant a janitor made the same money as a doctor, which initially confused me upon learning about it in history class. Why would such a law exist?

This, in short terms, led to an economic crash when people no longer wanted to do the jobs that required college if they could make the exact same amount of money from any old job.

Due to the drop in medical jobs in particular, disease spread as hardly any doctors existed anymore. This general disease led to a decrease in healthy people entering the workforce.

Now, looking at it from President Yew's perspective, his next decision made some logical sense.

Basically, what he did was vaccinate all children born after 2097 with a certain antibody. This antibody was able to cure the common diseases that made most people sluggish. This is fine on it's own, but he also decided to solve the job ratio problem with the same vaccine.

He combined the antibody with a serum that amplified the brain activity towards a certain skill. Specifically, the best trait a person had was amplified with the serum.

Then, once the child's parents were able to identify their trait, they were assigned with a list a jobs they could select from depending on what trait was amplified.

I just wish I had a better trait