Here are the opening paragraphs to the new novel I’m creating, set in the 23rd century. I hope to have it finished for beta reading sometime this summer.

I think I’m being followed.

Heat waves ripple up from the paved road nearby. I lean against a tree, wipe sweat from my forehead and guzzle water from the metal bottle I always carry. This affords me a good look at the person who’s been my distant shadow. Holding a red umbrella above his gray head, the man with wire-rimmed glasses walks past me and doesn’t look my way.

You’re being paranoid, Faron, I tell myself. He’s just out for a stroll, like you.

Grateful for the dappled shade of Diana Park and a path through the trees, I trudge forward. The gravel crunches under my shoes.

I took an early lunch, so only a few people inhabit the park. A couple holds hands on one shaded wood bench, a woman reads the newspaper on another. A few people mill around the drinking fountain.

The man with the glasses closes his umbrella and sits on the other end of the bench where the woman is reading. Dressed like a Master Citizen in a suit and tie, he crosses his legs and scans the park. When we lock eyes, he tips his hat.

I look away. If he were really following you, he’d do a better job of hiding it.

Implanted at birth, the tiny tracker inside my wrist beeps twice, a sound I’m used to. Break’s over. Got to get back to work.

I leave the park’s empty playground, fake greenery and mechanical bird calls. Before the blistering sun can bake my head, I pull up my hood and quicken my pace. While I relished getting out of the factory, I’m more than ready to go inside where it’s cooler.

Peering over my shoulder, I watch the grey-haired man rise and speak to another suited man with brown hair.

See, he’s simply meeting a friend.

Ahead is the sun-bleached, thirty-foot Wall, the silent sentinel that surrounds our city. And beyond the Wall? What’s left of Planet Earth, an area we’ve named “The Wilderness.” Rumored to be full of noxious air and mutated beasts. “Terrors beyond imagination” is how one of my teachers described it.