In a school, in America, students are being taught Schrödinger’s Cut, written by Margaret Atwood when she was 90. (I have never read Atwood…)
In the book, students at a school are reading a book called Schrödinger’s Cut, where students are asked to choose, and live, either in an authoritarian society, or an anarchistic one, based on the outcome of a die throw. Or they can choose not to play the game, by vote.
Their world splits in two, two timelines, and we see how each progresses. In each, the system begins in the school, but intrigued adults start coming to the school, and before long the entire town in experimenting with new models of society. It is a small, remote, forever snowed-in town.
Four kids discover that they can ski through a portal from one reality to the other, and move from anarchy to authoritarian, and wreak havoc. They start by attending school (having kidnaped and locked up their other selves) and stealing a woman’s bag while she if having a smoke with her friends. They are caught and argue that their fate should be put to a vote instead of the court system. While the vote is being organised they murder the witness and steal his pack, which contains a heavily annotated copy of Schrödinger’s Cut indicating he was going to be an anarchist as well, and a gun.
They flee back to their anarchist world to find it is now controlled by a gang, and the four figure they are also a (now armed) gang, and war begins.
The above was a TV show I was watching (within my dream), the 2nd adaptation of the book, a few decades after the first which was made in the 90s.
Triggers: I had seen anarchy mentioned somewhere yesterday, and with my daughter was rewatching 13 Reasons Why the day before (school, a gun). Skiing (me doing it years ago) was mentioned in conversation last week.