For thirty generations, we Utopians have been bred and born to our roles in society. I was selected and planned and genetically altered after conception to be a proper working member of 4F-R. That is, a mid-level clerk, sorting and filing, tracking complaints and orders, processing information. I got a fairly good job with the Licensing Bureau for drivers and pilots. Not the glamorous spacers, but not bad. It pays better than most. I live at home with my parents, in our own house with a yard. I have money to travel once a year, and I've seen a few places on Utopia.

My father is a low-grade engineer, a 3B-5, because he likes to drink and party too much, although he can be fun to be around sometimes. He might have been a higher grade. Mom was a 2Y-12. She could have been a teacher, but she wanted to be a homemaker. Otherwise, I might have a higher rating, like my sister. Luz is a 3D-3, a teacher in high school. She's very good at her job and she may even get a higher rating.

Not unheard of, but not common. Ninety-nine and more percent of us stay where we were crafted to be. Working contentedly, if not happily, at jobs we were supposedly made for. We all have decent places to live, although you usually need to be a one, two, or three, to get a private home in a populated region like where we live.

We all have enough to eat, enough entertainment, good lives. Steady. Very few people rebel, or try to change things. Of course, some people move above their ratings. The Rating Organization says genes are not one hundred percent reliable—they evolve, despite the best efforts of the Raters. In thirty generations, exceptions have been cut in half.

Everyone is supposed to be happy. Perhaps we are. I don't know since we don't know unhappiness. Perhaps this is happiness.

We live the lives we were born to, day after day. I watch the elites, in fancy dress, and traveling often. Many of them have more than one home. Society is calm, ordered, efficient. No hunger, no want, no discontent. Hence, our name, Utopia.

This year, things changed.

The Supreme Government said some of us had to be transferred to a new world. The multiplanetary council wanted to settle several new worlds and Utopia must send their share of settlers.

Which brings me here. I was selected to go. I have no choice. I can't be dissatisfied because that's not in our nature. The new world I go to will not have a Ratings Organization. I was offered a choice of husbands, and I met one who liked me and was willing to link in marriage. He's not a Utopian, but in the new world, that is not supposed to matter or make me dissatisfied. I don't know how he feels about it. I like him, though, and we will marry next week, a month before we leave for our new home.

All this has caused me to think of many things. I was not bred to settle a new world, but I must. I'm supposed to like the idea, or at least say I do. I don't understand my feelings about this. I've accepted it, and hope I can manage. I don't want to disappoint my future husband.

I will be in a world with no standardized order. My fiancée says we can make something of ourselves, whatever that means. That got me thinking.

Utopians are happy, content, peaceful, orderly. Changes are mandated by the top government. They say we are free to be our best selves here on Utopia, but we have no choice in our best self, or any version of our own natural self, is.

On that new world, I will have to make or break a new life. I will leave the paradise of Utopia for an unpredictable life.

Am I leaving the freedom of Utopia for the prison of the new world? Or is the new world freedom, the chance to be fully myself, and is Utopia a kind of prison?

I will find out.

The End