Today, graduating students will receive the job assignments. It’s Assignment Day of year 241 in the city of Ember, which is dark except for the light bulbs that illuminate it. He dies before he can tell anyone about the box, so it ends up in the back of a closet. Everything goes according to plan until the seventh mayor becomes ill and, believing the box contains a cure, tries to break into it. The box will stay with the mayor and will open at the appropriate time. The head Builder says that people will need to stay in the city for about 200 years, and he’s crafted a box to house Instructions detailing how to leave the city.
The head Builder and his assistant sit down.
