Life Sketches

The future grows ever darker…

Two hundred and fifty years from now, pockets of society are recovering at varying degrees after a cataclysmic revolution. Simon Wakefield lives in the perfect world, a risk-free society ruled by the Advocacy. Simon's work is instrumental to the well being of the Urban Complex's 750,000 residents. He oversees a unit of life sketchers, professionals who write the rigid agendas by which every individual in the UC lives.

Simon is content until he notices flaws in the lives of those around him. His father-in-law's agenda has been limited due to a terminal illness. The newborn son of coworker and friend Jordan has been terminated due to a minor birth defect. His teenaged daughter is pregnant by a fellow student who doesn't exist. Simon himself is mugged on the way home from an evening class. His frustrations increase when he is involved in a deadly accident on the homebound shuttle, especially after the inhumane treatment he receives in the health facility.

A coworker, Lillian, commiserates with him. She smuggles Simon and Jordan to a settlement that is the bane of the UC, a place where agendas are unnecessary and autonomy is practiced. The settlement and its leader, Lillian's cousin, are the scapegoats for all the shortcomings in the Urban Complex. Simon realizes his "perfect world" is nothing but stagnation and paralysis.

Even more discontented when he returns home, Simon knows his job is important only to the Advocacy; his work gives the Advocacy total control of the life of every resident. He feels helpless to change the society in which he is trapped. The price to live in the perfect world is too high.