What Game Will You Play

Chapter 7

(Edited)

The lights change again to show the three heads of government at the time. This time, they are addressing the country about going to war with the Fritts to keep what we worked so hard for.

The lights then move to show the fighting in different areas of our country, one being in Treegrass. Men hid behind the rubble of old buildings, only popping their heads out occasionally to fire their weapons.

One man shoots a Fritt, and the Fritt bursts into tiny white lights until he is no longer there. Some men have tiny lights pouring out of them as they walk by. It looks pretty, but I know this is just the government's way of protecting us from seeing the actual blood and horror of the war.

The following image shows men and women cheering in the streets, "Today is a day of celebration. The New World has finally defeated its greatest enemy, the Fritts. We have fought every last one of them so that they shall never return to harm us anymore. Today, we are free of fear, we are free of starvation, and we are free to become the best we can hope to be," says the familiar voice of Governor Joseph Johnson, one of the country's favorite Governors at the time of the war.

Cheers and claps are heard in the tent once again before it quiets back down. The room goes dark for a few moments, and we are left waiting in anticipation. Then lights form to show the head of one of our current day governors, Governor Davies, in the center of the room.

"Dear people of Treegrass, I hope you had fun today here at the carnival. Setting up such an event was not easy, but we hope it was all worth it. My fellow Governors and I wanted to give you all a special night before delivering some unpleasant news."

My heart sinks a little at the sound of that. What does he mean by unpleasant news? Has something happened in one of the other towns? Is there a new threat?

He takes a moment before speaking again, "As many of you know, the New World has been through a lot. We have seen famine, revolutions, wars and overall a lot of destruction. We have been able to overcome all of this and make the New World safe for everyone, or so we thought," Governor Davies takes a deep breath and looks down for a moment before looking at us again.

"It is with deep sadness that I must inform you of our country's struggles in recent years. For over a century, we have been able to avoid falling back into a shortage of food and resources, but we were informed two years ago that that would not be the case for long. Over those two years, your government has worked hard to find possible ways to avoid such a disaster, and we think we have found one."

"It has come to our attention that it is not that we are short on our average yearly number of produce, but it is the number of people in the towns that are growing. This population growth has made us use valuable land for homes instead of crops. The building of homes has caused a shortage of valuable resources. The threat of outsiders has prevented us from expanding town borders, so your fellow Governors and I have had to think long and hard about our options."

"Every day, we have asked ourselves, how do we fix this? One option is to risk our lives and expand our town borders to gain more land to grow food and housing. Unfortunately, even if this option were not dangerous, it would take years, and by then, hundreds or thousands of people could die a slow starving death."

Governor Davis says this last part slowly as if to ensure that everyone understands that they do not wish for this to happen and that starving would be a terrible way to die.

"With much debate, we came up with another option. We go from town to town and give everyone a night to remember before reducing the population peacefully. Each person who walked into the carnival was handed a card with their name on it, and now you hold a box containing your card and the score of how well you did here tonight."