Johnny was a poppit. He was growing up with a lot of other poppits. They lived on an estate called a school where they were being trained for a very important job; they were responsible for the future. 

Now, the people that put the poppits on the estate came from a race called the Oosa. They had an unusual gene called the ‘rightobeararms’ gene, or RTBA. The RTBA was a throwback from a time when Oosa was very brutal and everyone was scared all the time and had to defend themselves.  Even though the rest of the world had changed a lot, just about everyone that lived in Oosa still had the RTBA. Some people were very proud to have the RTBA, and set up an organisation called the NRA which made money from putting pressure on everyone else the keep the RTBA as part of their 'racial characteristic'. 

 

Unfortunately, sometimes, unpredictably, and without reason, the RTBA went rogue, and holes would appear in everyone around the person with the rogue RTBA. So even though the world was different, people were just as scared as they had been in the brutal times. 

 

Which is why they put Johnny and the other poppits on an estate, where nobody who had the RTBA was supposed to enter, and nobody could threaten the important job the poppits had to do. There were similar estates all over the land of Oosa.

 

Unfortunately, these estates and the poppits on them attracted rogue RTBAs like a magnet, and every few weeks poppits ended up full of holes, which made it really difficult for them to carry on doing their important job. 

 

So you would think that the people in charge of the land would say ‘enough is enough!’. And take RTBA out of the 'racial characteristic'. But that is not what they did.

 

Strangely, even though the RTBA was the reason that poppits got holes in them - and nobody can predict when a RTBA will go rogue - the leaders of Oosa said that every one of the poppit estates should permanently have some people with the RTBA. 

 

How safe do you think Johnny is going to feel now?