"Hello! I am the weak female lead in this dystopian Y.A. action movie, and I really just need to lie down. Ever since we ran away from Society six days ago, my ankle's been acting weird. Not, like, broken-weird, but every time I step down it kind of makes this clicking noise? Wait, it just did it again. Did you hear that?"
"Now we are all in prison, waiting for the Pr0gRaM, which is a serum Society injects into our brains, to rid us of any freethinking, critical, individualistic impulses until we are all mindless, loyal drones. I jokingly asked one of the guards if he could just re- Pr0gRaM my brain to get rid of my A.D.H.D., and he laughed. Maybe I should try standup comedy? . . ."
A young woman flees an oppressive Society with a ragtag group of renegades and immediately notices physical discomfort and anxiety. She experiences a clicking ankle and a scratchy throat after hiding in a moldy basement, fueling hypochondriac fears. Distrust grows toward a group member named Chris, who never asks about her and later betrays the group for immunity and canned food. The group is captured by Society's Guard and held for the Pr0gRaM, a serum designed to erase individual thought. A resistance inside Society frees them, and the group regroups to continue the fight while interpersonal tensions, including a developing love triangle, complicate matters.
Read at The New Yorker
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