Ivan lived in an awful future where repetition was king, where all subtlety and nuance was outlawed and where all works of fiction were reduced to their basest themes. Because people didn't like thinking very much: so, the oppressive government banned anything with needless complexity. But Ivan didn't like this, because Ivan was special, and he could think, unlike all the other shitty people in his class, especially all the whores in his class who had no taste whatsoever.

Ivan looked at an ad on the street, it said, "consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume consume." He knew the ad people were trying to get Ivan to consume, but Ivan knew better, and he could think too.

He went to the theater to watch a movie, a revolutionary act in this dystopian future. But the propagandists had used capitalism to subsume this subversive act, as capitalism does with all things, and now the movie was of one man in a costume who said, "acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting acting ." Pandering to our basest desires of simplicity and being like everyone else had made everyone into sheep. This was Ivan's thesis statement in his last essay but that bitch Mrs. Kim gave him a C. Iconoclasts like Ivan were seldom understood, living lives of baseless toil.