Excerpt: The Test (working title)

About 300 years ago, the greatest scientists in the world discovered how to make people live longer. A simple shot, to be given to people when they choose, that strengthened internal organs, prevented all forms of disease (even the common cold), and kept you healthy for virtually your entire life. People eventually died, when the shot’s effects ran out after about 150 years. Some people died in other ways too, like terrible accidents. The shot could make you healthy, sure, but not invincible.
While this revolutionary medical discovery seemed like the answer to many problems in the beginning, it proved to have terrible other consequences, one that I would have to face in one week. With everyone living for an average of 70 extra years, barely anyone dying, and new babies being born everyday that received the shot at birth, the world became terribly overpopulated. Houses were being built to house all of the people, but soon there was no room for any more houses. Job opportunities were extremely scarce, and more and more people were becoming impoverished each day. Families were left to die in the streets, and several did die. As we learned in our history textbooks at school, they had to constantly clean bodies off the sidewalks. Whenever you walked down the street, at least five people would be begging you for money every twenty feet. After this went on for about ten more years after the shot was invented, governments of the world finally decided to take action.
But what could you do with an overpopulated world? The first thing most people would think of is getting rid of the shot and 150 year life span all together. And the world leaders considered this. But, as most cruel powers do, they decided that other’s lives are much less valuable than their own. Why would they bother shortening their own life span by 70 years when they could shorten thousands of people’s around the world to only 17? And that is exactly what they did.
This cruel new technique, a test, to determine who deserved to live their full life, and who was unworthy. The mere idea sickened me, but it was required for everybody just a month short of their eighteenth birthday. Every week there was a new test, in every country around the world, depending on who would be celebrating their birthday a month from that week. About half made the cut, and half didn’t. And those who didn’t were brought to the world’s capital, the metropolis of Cairo, and executed.
I was turning eighteen in a month and week. My test time was next week.