text: "Please flash your EZ-Link", the school gate had buzzed when Kurt approached it. He held his card up to the oval-shaped scanner which responded by flashing out a horizontal ray of green light, scanning the card upwards and downwards. "Name: Kurt Atwood. Gender: Male. Ethnicity: Chinese. Hair Colour: Black. Eye Colour: Black. Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual. Tongue: Rollable. Religion: Christianity. Minority Level: 29%. Student confirmed. Access Approved." The gate slowly opened and the line of students queued up behind Kurt clapped with cheshire cat grins. "Good for you!", they had exclaimed. The process had repeated as the next student walked up to the gate. Buzz. Buzz. On the elevator ride that lifted Kurt and his classmate Lily to the hall for their weekly assembly talk, their earbuds vibrated constantly in their ears: "I am Male and I am Proud. I am Chinese and I am Proud. I have Black hair and I am Proud." Eventually, everyone had adapted such that they could hear the outside world simultaneously. Lily's Minority Level was at zero percent. The more the amount of minority group features you have, the higher your Minority Level is, and the more minority privileges you get. People like Lily and Kurt with a Minority Level less than 50 percent, frequently named Majorities, did not have the basic minority privileges to go through the express lanes in attractions, get ten percent discounts on all shop items, and be allowed to sit on the reserved seats in buses and trains. But they had privileges too, such as free joy pills with free repair of earbuds, both administrated by the Ministry of Joy. On the day Kurt was born, his mother had cried tears, not of joy, but disappointment, to find out that her newborn son's Minority Level was only at 29 percent. The doctors comforted her, telling her that the tides can change and one day, maybe there would be more Malays than Chinese in Singapore. She had popped a whole bottle of pills and went into a deep slumber that day, but after that... everything was normal. "Too Much Pain? Take Two Pills!", the buses had proclaimed repeatedly down the streets. The speaker appeared as a giant head on the television screen in the hall, an uproar of applause came from all the students and teachers. "Good morning everybody! My name is George Vox from the Ministry of Equality and I have been assigned by your dearest principal to answer any questions you may have." "What is your Minority Level?" one of the students had shouted. Soft chuckling came from the audience. "Well, it is 86 percent but-" "Good for you!", the audience shouted simultaneously. "-but the Minority Level does not matter at all of course, because we are all equal no matter what. Everyone is human after all!" everyone clapped and nodded. "When will the ministry solve my neighbourhood's economy problems?". A wave of goosebumps sweeped the hall, everyone turned to look at the Eurasian student who had openly criticised the system. "...I'm sure everyone has learnt from your history books that around a hundred years ago, Singapore was in complete disarray. People would murder each other due to their differences and get away with it because our Warrior Units did not exist back then. So let's not worry so much about teeny tiny problems and celebrate how we have finally achieved equality and happiness! Long are the days of discrimination!" Everyone stood up and cheered, many had jumped in joy and screamed. Vox's job had been done. After he switched off the camera recorder, he made a call to the principal, "Hello, excuse me, I require you to give that student counselling... yes, the Eurasian one". It was 11 o'clock and the pills had been flushed out of Kurt's system. Everyone in class routinely took two more pills. Meanwhile, Kurt was still clawing into his pill bottle, he started to get increasingly irritated. His fingers could not feel any presence of the sweet powdery goodness. He used one finger and wiggled it around the pill bottle, only to find it completely empty. He grew concerned, did I forget to refill it last night? "Hey, Kurt, are you okay?", his tablemate Vinny had asked, seeing how Kurt was pale and shaking violently, with snot running out his nose. "N-no no, my pills...", clumsily knocking over his calculator and stationeries. Again, Vinny asked, this time with a look of disgust at the river of snot flowing out, "Uhm... Hey, you alright? You don't look too good... Are you oka-" "No, Christ, what do you think?!" ... ... "BEEP BEEP BEEP!", the classroom speakers blared while spinning red lights popped out from the ceilings and covered everyone's shocked face. Vinny had pressed his EZ-link's trigger, which had sounded the alarm and alerted the authorities. The Warriors in black gear dragged the screaming Kurt away. He was thrown into a van with the white letters 'MINISTRY OF EQUALITY' imprinted on its smooth black surface before getting slowly driven further and further away from his school. Books displayed at the front of bookshops flashed through his eyes as he looked out the small slits of the van: "The Talent" by Joseph Whitman. An empowering story of Jodie Yu, the citizen who braved through a society where people who could roll their tongue are discriminated daily. "This classic frightening dystopia warns us of the dangers of political extremism" ~Katherine Wang Kurt was brought out of the van stumbling and led into a tall glass building. His heartbeat in the elevator was heavy and he felt the urge to barf. Twenty-two... Twenty-three... Twenty-four... Door Opening. His heartbeat rapidly increased as he walked through the corridor. At the end of it, there was an austere-looking man sitting behind a desk. He looked up from his computer as the door behind Kurt had shut tight. "Good Afternoon Mr. Atwood. Now, did you know you shouted at a student with seventy-one percent Minority Level, which is a discrimination?", the man had asked sternly as Kurt stood awkwardly in the middle of the white room. Kurt looked up weakly, and stuttered, "Y-yes..." "Did you know you said the name of a deity in vain, which is religious prejudice?" "Uhm... Yes..." "Now please, please sit down" "I'm... I'm sorry..." Kurt had started to tear up, he tried as much as possible not to let the man see, making a sudden quick turn to wipe the tears off his cheeks. "Sing our national anthem" "W-What?" "Sing our national anthem", the man had said in an exaggeratedly long manner. Kurt and the man met eyes for a whole ten seconds, before Kurt started to whisper out the lyrics of the country's anthem. "Louder!" the man shouted. The melody started to hit its crescendo. The lyrics of its verses switching between countless different languages. Kurt was suddenly in another world. He was riding a happy singing cloud carried by the many fine lines of a composition, soaring with the flapping crotchet and minim notes high up in the sky. He could see his friends smiling together down there in a world looking much like heaven, before the song started to slow down. The sky had darkened and suddenly, lightning bolts struck down alongside bloodthirsty tornadoes. The infrastructure had morphed from tall glass towers into one of concrete buildings. There were no friends down there, only enemies. Fires and flipped cars and gunshots and death. He could hear the man's voice echo loudly in the distance, "Destruction and chaos caused by discrimination. They didn't have Warriors back then to discipline them into equality and neither did they have the minority level system to fulfill everyone's desires! Is this what you want? Hell was a place on Earth! Luckily we saved the Nation in time, unlike the others, they crumbled!" "No!", tears had already started to jet out of Kurt's eyes, all he wanted was to gouge them out to block out all of it. The bloodshed slowly faded, he found himself back in the enclosed room. "You are only fifteen, yes? Kindly read these lines in front of the screen". Slightly confused but tremendously relieved, he took the slip of newly printed paper and read out the lines towards the black screen. "I will not disclose anything that happened here. I am content with what I was born with. I have many friends..." The list went on and on. The man looked up from the computer, his complexion suddenly bright. "Thank you, you can leave now! But remember, this will be your last warning." With a sigh of relief, Kurt went home with a refilled bottle of pills. All was in the past. All is well.