...childhood favorite! Thanks!
? There’s this book I’ve been looking for. I can’t remember the name or author. A guy grows up where there are no differences in people to avoid violence etc. and he falls in love with this girl even though he knew one day she’ll be impregnated by whoever the people in charge pick only for the sake of reproduction. He runs off from his walled society into the woods and finds the ruminants of a city from our time. He lives there while he tries to figure what to do. Btw his pp and throughout the world live in walled cites as to keep an “infection or virus” or whatever’s out there as not to harm those inside. While he’s out there his girl runs off also and finds him. They don the new clothes from our time and begin to think how to start a new community. He has a memory of this man burned alive from his child hood. The burning mans last word was “ego”. The guy realizes what that word is when he finds it in a dictionary (?). He then scratches it in the wooden wall they built around their place. I defiantly remember the girl joining him and most of all the part about the word “ego”. Anyone recognize this story?!