Young Writers Society

Limitless

The Society is where I live. It is where I have always been and all I have ever known. Here, we live in wooden boxes called “compartments” and our parents don’t love us. In fact, here, there is no such thing as love; we only read about it in books, the only delight of my life.

In the society, everything we do is metered by The Panel, a group of old men who tell you who to marry, who to be friends with, what role you have in The Society, and pretty much everything else. To tell the truth, I hate The Panel, but if I ever said that, I would be put in Junior Correction, and that would ruin my life. Here, we just agree. That is what we do, and if you don’t, you get put in a Correction facility, and that is just the fact of life. It’s normal, for us.

I have twelve cycles of age. My name is Cassiopeia Lily Hannah Jehovi, but my relations call me Cassiopeia, since nicknames are not permitted. I live with my parents Samuel and Mary Jehovi, whom I must call by first name and first name only. I am in the ninth Education Unit, and will graduate in two cycles. After that, I am given a role and a partner, and begin my new life. I would feel something, but we are not allowed to show emotions, so we get used to just not feeling them.

Now is the difficult part to describe: the fact that I am standing in a doorway, with a world behind me and a world ahead of me, and feeling something for the first time since I was taught not to feel, longer ago than I can remember… Let me start from yesterday afternoon instead:

I had just returned from my Education Unit, and was preparing to do my Compartment Education when I realized I didn’t know where my mathematical tool was. I immediately suspected my younger sibling, Maximilius, for he is sometimes sneaky and breaks the Compartment Rules. I do not believe he will be sent to Junior Correction, however. He is too young, only four cycles of age.

Anyways, I checked all around our compartment and finally went outside. I walked slowly all the way around the wooden box and finally, at the very back, found the tool. As I picked it up, however, there was an small iron object under it, carved intricately. Thinking it might be of use, I raised this as well and came back inside. I kept it in my separate section of the home overnight.

Now, this afternoon, I was strolling by the Panel Building and my eyes caught a small, brown rectangle cut on the wall of the Building, with a small gold sphere on the middle of the left side of the patch. Usually, a large boulder covered this section of the wall, but for some reason it had been moved. I went over and tapped the rectangle. It did not move. So, I decided to pull on the golden orb instead. This time, the passageway opened up, for now I could see it led to a tunnel. Foolishly, I continued along the path, stepping in strange brown stuff that was interestingly moist. I had never seen or felt anything like it before. After maybe an hour, I reached a small, iron doorway with just one hole on the right side, a small one. I thought about it, then pulled out the long, thin, iron object in my pocket. It looked like the right shape to fit the tiny hole, so if put it in. Nothing happened. I stared at it, then attempted to take it out, but couldn’t. I pulled and pulled, but ended up twisting it in the process. Suddenly, something made a clicking sound, and the entryway opened up. Here I am now, feeling my first emotion of shock, surprise, and maybe elation since a very, very long time ago.

There is something you must understand here. The Society has Buildings, and Compartments, and Education Units. There is simulation grass on a metal ground. It is one vast space with walls on the sides, and a curved top overhead, all metal. The Society is huge.

But it does not have anything even close to the enormous space that sparkles before me, in this miraculous passageway. There is no metal. On the floor is what looks like the simulation grass, except it smells sweet and…rich. It smells like nothing I have ever smelled before. Overhead is something huge, blue, and…well, not solid. I can’t see the walls anywhere. If this was a room, it would be too big to see the limits of it…Limitless.

Something catches my eye on the small iron object. It glints in the light, as I squint at the tiny lettering on the side: Key #4, it said. So it is something called a key. It is a key to Limitlessness, this vast world ahead of me, yet to be discovered.

I gaze in wonder at the blue above me, the green ahead of me, and I feel more than I have ever felt…Exuberant. Excited. Amazed…

I raise my foot, and pause. Can I do this?

Yes. Yes I can. I lift up my foot and place it on the warm, wet, real grass. I sink slightly into the earth, and steady myself, and then lift up my other foot, and place it on. I close my eyes, and smile…

Limitless…

Thanks for helping!

A dystopian! I'm always interested in dystopian pieces. Your writing style has a lot of promise though there are issues here and there with, but first I'll give you my opinion on it as a whole. You have the dystopian mood going from sentence one, and I like that empty/helpless feeling it emits. But the first few paragraphs of the piece comes off a little shaky because there's too much being revealed all at once about the society. That's okay and can be fixed! I think if you added a little more about Cassiopeia's feelings toward the society. She must at least dislike it if she hates The Panel.
I like the ending! The ending made me curious for more, but maybe you intended such a feeling as it wrapped up? The only issue I think is that it's a bit overly descriptive before she reaches Limitless, but that's just my two cents.
As for gramatical issues, one thing that I noticed was a lot of commas where you don't necessarily need them. "I raise my foot, and pause." For instance here, you don't need commas when you've got an and in there
Some of the sentences could be rearranged so you end up with less commas, for example here "It glints in the light as I squint at the tiny lettering on the side that reads 'Key #4'"

I did enjoy this piece though, it pulled me in from the start. If I've left you confused, please feel free to send a message my way!

First off, I just wanted to say that this reminds me of 1984. Haha

And I don't see any grammatical/punctuation errors. The only thing I really saw was:
"In the society, everything we do is metered by The Panel, a group of old men who tell you who to marry, who to be friends with, what role you have in The Society, and pretty much everything else."
I believe that should be capitalized because it isn't just society you're talking about. It's... a place, I presume?

Also, however, I found that there was a lot of telling in this one-shot. I felt that there was too much telling and not enough showing to balance it out. That's definitely something to watch out for. I personally felt like the first half or so was too informative. I think there should have been some sort of actions going with it, or perhaps maybe some of that information could have been saved for later on.

And... that's all I got right now. Hope this was useful.

xo gummies.