"I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly."

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

- Veronica -

In the end, those who were left were equal. History lessons taught us that the war started because of sex and class and race. There is only so long you can hold the oppressed down before they realize that losing their lives in war was still better than the life they were leading now. Some escaped north and south of the border. History also taught the irony of walls built to keep others out being destroyed to do so. Those who stayed, fought. Fought the government, fought the rich, fought the corporations. In the end, it all just fell. My father once talked of a time of mass communication called the "internet," where people could air their grievances and pick petty fights based on the mundane. That was the first thing the uprising took out—mass communication—knowing that the rich were too lazy to even pick up a phone to call someone and too stupid to believe anyone would want their destruction.

My father was a teenager at the time and was quick and smart. He became the communication in the city of Neptune, embroiled in a class war for decades before actual combat broke out. Keith Mars was once a star track runner and had that face that everyone could trust. That's what made him so effective at sneaking communications between different resistance groups—everyone believed him. They still do. His efforts in the great war were rewarded by the New Democracy that rose. Everything was now fair. We were now not judged by our skin or our sex but by our abilities and our minds. My father was quick and smart and when the leaders of the New Democracy ran his statistics through the government super-computer—nicknamed Orwell—they found he would be the perfect fit to be the head of the New Democracy Safety System for our region. Dad said they used to simply be called the "police" in his day, but that word still had connotations to the old ways, so they had to change it.

When he was thirty, he was also granted a wife. Because everyone was equal, sexual preferences were taken into account—I found out in our Personal Health class that at one point, people saw some couplings as a crime—and my dad was matched with my mother, Lianne. But it could have been different. My friend Lilly and her brother, Duncan, are the products of a relationship of two fathers and one mother—Jake, Clarence, and Celeste Kane—the computer matching their parents from their preferences. Before the war, there was choice as to with whom a person could be in a relationship. My mother calls it "dating," and it sounds horrible. There was often no perfect match, and one would have to "try out" different people until there was a fit. My mother once talked about how many people had died in the process. She spoke of men who felt entitled—to sexual favours or even full commitment—based on a simple dinner or drink, who would kill a woman who rejected them; and of people whose gender was fluid who were murdered in the street by simpletons filled with hate. She said that thankfully a lot of the people who perpetrated these crimes were killed during the war when they were conscripted by the government, and those that were left were sent to the work camps, cleaning up the radiation zones that happened during the fall.

I keep wondering what the computer has in store for me, plain old Veronica Mars, when I turn 18 next week. When I look around, I seem to be among the average. I'm a little shorter than most—only just 5' 1" —but smarter than a lot. And I do like my long, blond hair, even if it is a pain to keep brushed when it's down to almost my butt. In June, I graduated from Neptune Sector High School and have spent the better part of the summer preparing to travel across the country to Lincoln University in the eastern zone. At 16, Orwell said I had an aptitude for law enforcement and gave me the choice of following in my dad's footsteps into public safety or becoming a lawyer and eventually a judge. I decided on becoming a lawyer and was joined in my studies by Duncan and his jackass friend, Logan. Both were told they had a strong aptitude for becoming lawyers or politicians, although both careers took the same tract in high-school. While brawny and thoughtful Duncan chose to become a lawyer, tall and gregarious Logan said he suffered too many years with painful braces for him not to become a politician, and took great pride in flashing that stupid grin at me every time he stood up in debate class and launched into his list of dumbass quotes from politicians and people who lived during the old times.

Logan's parents were Hollywood insiders, both working behind the scenes on the fall of the misogynist business of movie-making. When the dust settled, young Aaron and Lynn Echolls (once Disney corporate teen stars) were heralded as the Mister and Mata Hari of the revolution in the western region and continued to live their life out as film-makers, hired by the New Democracy to create quality amusement for the rest of the masses as a way to try and hide from the pain of life after the war. Somewhere along the way, Logan was born, and they moved away from the contamination zone to Neptune. Even though he's a pompous ass, the fact that his parents are one of the few who actually chose each other, without the computer, is still fascinating to me and I enjoy going over to his house, just to watch how they act around each other. Usually, it's not much different from my own parents, but still, it intrigues me.

Lilly confided to me the last time we met for coffee that Duncan hopes to be matched with me, and since he specifically requested a wife and I specified a husband, there is that possibility. He's kind and serious about his studies, and if I was matched with him, I wouldn't reject the coupling. Mercifully, Logan told us all at lunch he placed himself as polyamorous and said he would let the chips fall where they may. Even though Logan and Duncan already turned 18, they still did not get matched to partners, which meant the people they had been assigned were not of age. Lilly is a year older than us and was pleased last year to be matched with Sabrina. Their partnership ceremony was beautiful, and since Lilly was studying to become a new-world anthropologist, she was able to find a white dress that women would wear to their wedding that she wore to the Union Signing. Her family was slightly aghast at her, but Lilly just noted that to learn from history, one must preserve it and confidently paraded through the room, letting everyone admire the delicate layers of tule skirting and sparkling beads as they twirled up.

I just hope I know the person the computer chooses. Lilly and Sabrina were on the same college campus—M.L. King College, near the southern radiation zone—but didn't know each other. And in a stunning case a few weeks ago, my former science-lab partner Meg Manning was partnered with a slightly older man who was an engineering student in the northern region, near the Canadian border. But more often than not, the computer was good about picking someone closer to home. Since girls and those who identified as women were never placed for Union before the age of 18, sometimes they had to wait until the person or people selected turned of age as well before their ceremony. But if they were the same age or older, the celebration often took place in a matter of days, just to get it over with so they could get on with getting to know each other.

Getting to know each other. I giggle every time I hear that euphemism. We had all been provided with a comprehensive guide to all types of sex when we were 16 as well as options for birth control, should we need it before our unions were chosen. What "getting to know each other" really meant was finally being able to use our sexual knowledge with the person we would spend the rest of their lives with. I always thought that it was funny that sometimes, virtual strangers would start their relationship with sex, but then as Lilly says, what better way to get to know someone than seeing them naked?

I've decided to wait until my career is firmly in place before I even consider starting a family with my spouse—that much I know for sure. My mother said that when I was born, she and my father received $10,000 as a gift for procreating, for at the time, Novo Terra (also known as the former United States of America), had lost nearly 60% of its overall population to the war, or emigration to either Canada or Mexico during the conflict. This was why Orwell was created. To quote Lilly…"people needed to start fucking, or there would be no one for the New Democracy to lead."

Sometimes Lilly will send me articles that she's found from her research trips to Canada about how life was before the war and I can't imagine growing up back then. It seemed that every day, there was an article about the terrible things that were happening in the world. Everyone seemed so focused on the wrong things that they all lost sight of what was right. My dad said that after the war, the technological minds gathered together and used their resources not to bring back the old technology, but to refocus their sights on what mattered more—building super-computers to solve problems such as curing fatal diseases, innovations to save the environment, and rebuilding after the nuclear fall-out in both the eastern and southern zones of Novo Terra.

But even though things are "better" now, I am always wondering, always curious about the old ways. I don't know what it is, but there has always been this feeling in the pit of my stomach that even though things are different, people will always want more. And maybe I'm one of those people.