Elite || Marhinki

•Chapter Thirty: Epilouge•

Antartica District #4
May 16th, 3006

"Thank you, Luke, for that... wonderful presentation," Mrs. Oak smiled as the fifteen-year-old sat down to the applause of his peer's applause, hi-fiving his best friend, Kyle, who never went anywhere without his basketball. Of course, one kid had to pick the worst king Escana's ever had. Typical. "Do we have any volunteers?"

In the back of the classroom, a girl's friend grabbed her wrist and held her hand in the air. The girl pulled her arm out of the other girl's grasp, but kept it in the air anyway, hoping to get some bonus marks for volunteering.

"Thank you, Diana," Mrs. Oak said from her spot from the back of the classroom, pulling up a new grading rubric, thankful that she wasn't going to have to pick someone randomly. She hated doing that. "Come on up."

Diana walked up to the front of the classroom and logged onto her school account on the classroom computer. Thirty years ago, they would've used a hologram box, but that was before the government found out that Hologram Tech was mistreating their factory employees, even after workplace safety regulations had been put in place. The company had never regained their reputation, and went out of business soon after.

The brown-haired, brown-eyed, tall fifteen-year-old girl quickly had her powerpoint set up, and stood to the side as the classroom projector shined her cover page onto the pull-down screen. It was a simple design; the title "My Hero" written in a simple font, and a picture of a man in a suit. Diana was nothing if not efficient.

The students in the class stopped talking as Diana cleared her throat. Everyone knew that when Diana was talking, you didn't. She just had that effect on people. Mrs. Oak was sure that she would go into politics someday. If she didn't, it would be a waste of her talents.

"Hi, I'm Diana Moss, as I'm sure most of you know, and this is my project," Diana said loudly. Mrs. Oak noticed that she was making good eye-contact with the class, so she was already doing better than Luke had. "I decided to do my project on Governor Matthew Sohinki."

She pressed the spacebar of the keyboard, switching to the next slide, titled 'Early Life'. Sunlight shone off the whiteboard behind it. "Matthew Sohinki was born in 2845 in Yellow District #4 to Mary and Danny Sohinki. He had an older brother named Jon. His parents had a son before him, named Daniel, but he died in infancy. Due to the two-children rule, if Daniel had lived, Matthew never would have been born.

"He did very well in school growing up, but never had many friends. When he was fourteen, he was employed at Hologram Tech., where the conditions were terrible, which was not only not unusual at the time but the norm. His father suffered from intense migraines, and he regularly went to bed hungry."

She switched the slide to 'The Test.' "Matthew grew up while the Tests were still in session. In January of 2863, he took his Test. He scored a 100% on both the physical and mental portions of the Tests, which was unheard of at the time for Yellows, due to the poor nutrition and schooling they received, putting them at a significant disadvantage compared to Jewels. Nevertheless, Matthew managed to pull it off."

New slide labelled 'Being an Elite.' "Matthew was then torn away from his family and sent to be trained as an Elite. He did very well at the Elite Training Center, and majored in Governing. There, he met Mariko Takahashi, a former Brown, who would become his colleague and, eventually, his wife. On June 3rd, Matthew was anointed by the Queen to the Elite Court, and gained his title of 'Governor.' This was when Matthew's story went from being impressive to extraordinary."

The next slide was titled "The Begining of a Revolution'. "At first, he and Mari tried to get the other members of the Elite Court to help out Colours. They introduced several bills that suggested increasing rations and improving living conditions. All of them were shot down. As Matthew wrote in his autobiography after he was retired, he had been expecting that.