RECOVER

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Five-hundred years from now, add: Recover.

Unable to sustain life in the great outdoors, the world's population finds solace in reconstituted schools and shopping centers. These "compounds" form cohesive communities whereby all inhabitants work for a global government in one of ten departments, from Agriculture to Zoology. When personnel reach the age of seventeen, they are assigned both a career and a lifelong partner in a match-making process managed by a panel of volunteers.

Emmalin eagerly anticipates her upcoming assignment. She expects to follow in her parents' footsteps as a member of Energy & Engineering, or E&E for short, and does not conceive a future involving departmental transference. She does conceive and regularly daydreams of her perfect match, yearning to be paired with her longtime classmate and friend Austin.

When the time comes for placement and pairing, the Panel has different plans for Emmalin. She is reassigned to Recovery, a department full of materials engineers who are responsible for collecting necessary items from outside the compound. Unfamiliar with Recovery aside from idle gossip, Emmalin considers this a move from intelligent innovation to mindless manual labor and does not mask her displeasure. She is also infuriated when paired with the notorious compound bad boy, Griffin.

Determined to overturn the ruling of her assignment, Emmalin concocts a plan to return to E&E and find her match in Austin. As she claws her way back, she might just find something worthwhile in Recovery.