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a food shortage, how most of those problems they teach us about in School had been solved decades ago. The Rule Of One had worked: it had done its job, but then they had carried on with it anyway; it was too useful. It kept power where the rich and powerful wanted it to be. It kept the rest of the population where the rich and powerful needed them to be.

  It was rotten and it was wrong.

  While most of the population were stolen, brainwashed and made to labour for the Benefit of Society, the richest and most powerful enjoyed their life of comfort, breeding more rich children - as many as they wanted to - so the hegemony could continue. Meanwhile the plebs got their one year with their children and then … no one really knows.

  I couldn’t understand why they’d had me.

  “Hope,” my Dad told me. My parents had spent so long fighting the system that they finally decided to take a year of life for themselves: a year of life with the only child they could ever have; a year of life trying to set things in place so the next generation could continue what they had started.

  “You might never see this, Samantha, but if you do I want you to know that you gave us the best year of our lives. I want you to know that we loved you more than anything in this world. I want you to know that we wished we could have given you a better world to grow up in.

  “I want you to know that it’s your turn to change things now.”

  That was the only time I ever saw my parents.

  It’s a week until your first birthday.

  A week until they come for me.

  I don’t want to give you up. I don’t want to be without you. I don’t want to leave you.

  I want you to know that we thought about running, but when you run they hunt you down. And they say that if the whole family runs then even the baby … gets taken.

  Your waste of a father left two days ago. I wish he could have been here to say goodbye to you instead. He said your first birthday was like a death sentence hanging over his head. I said we don’t know what happens. He said it doesn’t matter: whatever it is it’s bad.

  He wanted me to go with him, but how could I? You’ll be alone for the rest of your life, but until the second they come to take me I’ll be right here with you. The only way I’ll leave you alone is when they make me.

  I don’t know what’s going to happen when that moment comes. Will I be able to stand by and let them take you? Can I be a Good Citizen? Perhaps they should see the pain, know what it’s like to have you taken from me. Or perhaps I need to go quietly, so they don’t mark your record as a potential troublemaker.

  Because now it’s down to you. And, like my father before me, I wish I’d given you a better world to grow up in, but but it’s not fixed yet. We’ve done a lot: when you get out of School there will be people looking for you; it won’t be left to you to try and find what I’ve left behind for you. There’ll be others too: Friends you didn’t even know you had, who will have been left messages by their parents.

  There are the Nurses, who have spent years risking everything just to make sure that some children get to find out about their parents. When I was growing up there were only a few, scattered around different Schools. Now we are everywhere: watching, listening, talking, educating. Soon people will know, and once enough people know then there’ll be no way to stop things changing

  Because, you see, when they came up with the Rule Of One they made one giant mistake: they forgot the one thing that never changes; they forgot that parents love their children.

  They’ll take me away soon and I really want your last memory of me to be me hugging and kissing you, and telling you how much I love you. But I think they’ll have to take me kicking and screaming. Maybe you’ll remember that: maybe you’ll remember the pain and anger; maybe you’ll remember that they took me away.

  Maybe you’ll remember that once someone did something wrong and you’ll decide to try and change it, so it doesn’t happen to anyone else, ever again.

  Remember me: I’m your Mummy.