You Can't Buy Sunshine

In the Western Lands, formerly known as the United States of America, Braden lives in a poverty-stricken and secluded region in the middle of the country called the Midlands, where the borders around the region are highly guarded by a strong military presence in order to keep the marginalized Midlanders from moving freely about the rest of the nation, where advances in technology and innovation has transformed the Mainlands society outside of the Midlands. Orphaned at the age of 3, twenty-something Braden has come of age in government custody. He lives alone and attends educational reform classes during the day. Tired of the retched day-to-day life in the forgotten Midlands, unsure of his desire to claim a position of productivity in the Mainlands, and haunted by the memories of a past love interest, he spends his days writing poetry, plagued by his ambivalence and lack of willingness to whole-heartedly assimilate to the ways of society. A conversation with an eccentric postal worker named Dave leads to a firsthand experience in the Mainlands and the might of their technological powers changes him forever.