[Shrink]

Hehe, thanks. I'm happy with this chapter here, it's number 5 that I'm having a lot of trouble writing, and I'll probably never be happy with it.
Anyway, enough about chapter 5 when we've only got to number 4!

C h a p t e r F o u r
Fooba

I could barely walk and barely talk when I witnessed my first death. Perhaps it was then that I realised something was wrong with the world, or maybe it was the memory of the time that spawned the thought in a considerably more coherent self.

My entire group had been removed from the Nursery early, or so I was later told. Apparently, there was a sudden mass shortage of workers, which were a “necessity for production”. I don’t know why many workers would suddenly be no longer there, and I’ve never really thought about it. It’s never really interested me.

There was a mudokon named Apell who would be our instructor. As he walked forwards on my first day of work, I noticed he walked differently to anybody else. He seemed more energetic, straighter and moved much more carefully. I could tell, even then, that he was important. He was dressed differently to everybody else as well; he was wearing a crisp black suit that complimented his dark green skin in a way workers’ rags never could. His head was also strange. Different to any mudokon I had ever seen, he was wearing a pair of rectangular glasses with a very thin metallic frame, and on the top, any hair was obscured by a rather tall “top hat” – also in silky black.

‘You look stupid!’ I seem to remember myself saying, though he took no heed of any of our comments.

‘If you could all follow me, I will briefly introduce you to your quarters before escorting you to your place of work. I think you’ll find everything in order. I ask you to leave any questions to the end of the tour, or to take a short look in the “Information Kiosks” as we pass near them. They are distinguishable by their paw-print interface along with white signs. Any information that is not supplied will undoubtedly by filled by our guards or the many scrolling signs across the walls of your workplace.’

I don’t think I really took any of what he said in. There seemed to be more long words than I could get my head around.

‘Hurry up!’ squeaked one of us impatiently.
Again, Apell took no heed. Instead, he turned and began to walk. I remember noticing a black cane topped with a gold sphere in one hand, which he twirled around his fingers lazily.
‘If you would just follow me…’

A couple of nearby guards, who had escorted us from the Nursery area, made an odd noise and pointed at the instructor. We took that as our cue to move.

Getting shown the quarters was a long and boring feat. We walked from “Zulag 19” to “Zulag 72”, there being so many of us. We all were allocated rooms on the top floor, in the pitch darkness (aside from a strange glowing implement that lit up Apells face and little more). My room was in Zulag 26, and he explained that our work areas were all in the Zulags in which we lived, though sometimes we would swap and work in different Zulags for a few days at time – ‘mostly to give you young boys a change of scene’, as Apell put it.

I was told to wait in my room until Apell could show me my point of work, and found myself confronted with Ian and Tom, who, at the time, I had never met. Apparently, all three of us had lived in entirely separate areas of the expansive Nursery.
We didn’t say much, being completely confused by the situation, scared and disgusted at the state of the Zulags, and not having a large enough vocabulary to speak anyway. I simply sat on my hard bed, which even had its leg broken at that time… probably by the previous occupant…

Before we knew it, Apell lurched into view of the open door.
‘Boys,’ he said, ‘if you would kindly join your friends – I’m about to show you some of the workings of Zulag Twenty-Six.’
‘Do enjoy,’ he added. Around this time I noticed that he had a very pronounced accent, as if he had practised speaking for hours at a time in order for his words to come out refined and up to personal expectation. His voice was all deeper than the average mudokons, and it had a strange throaty feel to it. Nonetheless, we followed, and this time I dropped into place directly behind him.
He seemed very tall, but then, I was very small.
I thought I could perhaps fit entirely in his hat.

‘Why do you wear that funny hat?’ I asked. He didn’t answer.

He led us down a remarkably long ladder, then down a couple of dozen more floors in a rickety lift. As we passed them, I could see many adults working through the large windows and wondered if I would be doing what they were doing. It didn’t seem like fun work.

When we stopped, we entered a large metallic, yet cavernous room. In the middle was an enormous cylinder, at least fifty feet in diameter, in which there were a thousand tiny holes of fire. I remember seeing about a dozen older workers, and they shovelling rocks into the holes.

‘This-’ proclaimed Apell, ‘-is your workplace! You won’t be doing complicated work, being such youngsters, and there is more that enough to getting on with for the amount of you. All you have to do is take one of the many shovels, which you can find on hooks of the outer wall, and then take all of these small rocks into those small furnaces. You are helping the running of this factory! One day, you will be proud of this.
‘Now, as you can see, there is an Information Kiosk against the wall to the North of the room. I think you’ll find it more than answers any of your questions, though I am willing to answer any preliminary ones that may have formed in your half-developed heads.’

He looked expectantly at us all, then added, ‘Any questions?’ to our looks of plain confusion.
Nobody spoke. I doubt anybody knew we were supposed to be asking questions. I still didn’t know why I was in a very large and very hot room.

‘Okay,’ said Apell. ‘Our guards will take further care of you. If you are not one hundred percent clear on the instructions you will be fulfilling for a good three years, please feel free to ask one of them. Do try not to disturb your fellow workers with pointless chit-chat, and do try to visit the Information Kiosk only once. Using it is a privilege I can and I will remove at any time.
‘Chop chop!’

He turned on his heel and re-entered the elevator, which moved sideways before moving upwards and through the ceiling. Two guards immediately moved to the spot where it would later return, while another couple began pushing shovels into peoples’ hands and then forcing them into digging at the rocks.
We all soon caught on.

After just ten minutes, in which I had only reached the furnace once, I saw one of the workers being shouted at by a guard. I couldn’t understand the guard; it made very odd noises which sounded highly animalistic. I think I giggled. The worker he was shouting at was crossing his arms over his chest and not doing any work. I remember wondering why. He was the same age as me, even from the same area of the Nursery. I think his name was Fooba, but that was probably just the way I falsely pronounced it in my primitive young tongue.

The guard reached down, grabbed a piece of wood and hit Fooba (for lack of a better name) in the back. Immediately, the boy fell face down on the ground, and began to cry loudly. The guard pulled him up and I noticed grazes across his chest from the rocks strewn across the floor.
His face was crying into his hands but he still didn’t pick up the shovel. I wanted to call out to him to pick it up, but noticed others, those who were closer and they were already shouting at him:
‘Come on Fooba!’
‘Work Fooba!’
‘Don’t cry. You always told me not to cry!’

Fooba didn’t listen, and the guard hit him again. It was about to pick him up again when another guard moved closer and shouted a command. Immediately, the first guard desisted.
Fooba was still crying loudly on the floor when the second guard moved directly over him. It swung its arm over its shoulder, produced a gun, and then shot Fooba around ten times in the back.

The sound was so loud, the blood so vivid in colour, that everybody had stopped working and most people had gasped or whimpered. I can’t remember how I reacted, but I remember dropping the shovel I was holding. The shovel that was twice as tall as me.
The guard who had shot Fooba gave a short horrid laugh, before dragging him behind a nearby rock hill and out of sight. A blood trail remained there for a good many months.
Everybody was soon back at work.

This murder has always stayed with me. I remember wanting to run over at the guard, to hurt him. How dare he shoot Fooba?! Fooba was dead. Why was he dead? I didn’t attack the guard though. Instead, I picked up my shovel and tried to dig into the pile again.