LEDGER

A Young Adult Dystopian Survival Thriller

De: OS XENOSHEN

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

In the Republic of Kandara, the state assesses every citizen at age fourteen. The government assigns an Allocation. This published figure states the exact value of a life in naira. The state weighs this value against the ground the citizen lives on. Officials schedule clearances for districts where the lithium holds more value than the people.

Amara Okoye is seventeen. She files LEDGER. She tracks every clearance, every casualty count, every tonnage licensed, and every beneficiary. The Ministry prints all of it quarterly. She works as the fastest apprentice in the district archive. She reads the entries for every province in the country. She never once looks up her own figure.

The entry she finds in the forward file is complete. The state audited and signed it. It names her district, lists a casualty estimate, sets a mineral tonnage, and schedules a date exactly eleven weeks from now.

The forward file is not a prediction. It is a firm costing. The state has already approved it. The eleven weeks are not a warning. They are a hard deadline. If Amara reports it, her clerkship ends. The state will flag her household. Assessors will evaluate her nine-year-old brother before his time.

The system accepts corrections, never deletions. The soldier who asks Amara what her own figure is will stand in whichever district she names as a replacement. Neither of them knows that yet.

The Republic does not need informants. The archive logs every page Amara opens against her clerk number. The system timestamps the access. She has opened the forward file once.

Kandara does not hide what it does to the people who live above the lithium. It publishes the truth on time. The figures always balance.

If your life has a number on it, and the number is correct, what exactly are you asking them to stop?