“Congratulations!”, the little slip of paper inside the envelope stated. She was taken aback at first, not accustomed to feeling anything. She continued to read the letter. “You are the one of the few lucky recipients to have been selected to receive an emotion. As you are aware, emotions are a rare commodity, and access to them is highly regulated. You are 1 of 25 recipients of HOPE”. She quickly stopped reading and looked inside the envelope. Inside was a small metallic disk with the word HOPE engraved into the surface. She held it and a strange feeling washed over her, something she had never felt before. Her eyes widened and the corners of her lips curled into a smile. What was this miraculous feeling? She placed HOPE inside the palm of her hand, and everything changed.
It had been 20 years now since the emotionally recession, and most people couldn’t afford emotions. Only the elite had access to the luxury emotions: love, comfort, worth, joy, and hope. The average person was fated to choose between a life of no emotions, feeling nothing at all, or scraping together what little they had to afford the cheapest emotions.
Anne was an average person, and as such could not afford the luxury emotions. One of her most vivid memories was on her 10th birthday, when he father gifted her ANXIETY. It was all he could afford, and he had saved for months. He had no problem working long hours, for he had no emotion, so nothing bothered him. When the time came to see which emotion he could get Anne, ANXIETY was the only only he could afford. She held onto that ANXIETY disk all the time, always worrying what would happen if she lost it. It’s all she knew now, and all she thought about.
But something’s different now, she’s feeling something new. As she gripped HOPE tightly in her hand, new feelings flooded her mind, her ANXIETY fell to the ground and never picked it up again.