Chapter I
"Well, what do you think?" Asked a pale face mudokon, brimming with excitement.
The other mudokon looked over the popper with cold, calculating eyes, he tossed the carbine in his hands, looked down the barrel and squeezed the trigger, well, some slig was now missing a weapon and the Magog Mudokon Front had another one. He breathed heavily and rested the gun against the wall. It gleamed against the dull flashing platform lights but the weapon was poorly maintained and the mudokon new just from sight it would be too risky to use in a battle. It would only make for spare parts.
"All right, four hundred, no, two hundred food stamps or sixty luxury stamps, its up to you, the gun's ok but it's condition is crap, I'll have to fix the bloody chamber before I can even take it apart," He smiled but the tone of his voice was agitated.
"Just four hundred? I was told you'd get me enough to get by Morbodd, this is bulshla. Right, well," the pale faced mudokon sighed thoughfully, "I'll take the luxury items, I need a lung buster bad and I might try to put some on the employee stock markets."
"Waste,"
"Yeh well, what do you know Morbodd?"
"A lot."
Morbodd heaved the rifle over his shoulder and brandished sixty small purple stamps with the letter 'L' written on them in bold, red font, the approval chip was good and the pale face mudokon nodded at their legality after a short inspection.
"Well, I'm off, gotta get back to work, no doubt I'll get another beating but if that new slig does it, I'll push him into a grinder, bloody newbs, don't know their place...I been here six years-"
Morbodd growled and closed his dormitory door behind the mudokon rudely, he hated early morning calls and the product of the conversation was nowhere worth the sacrifice of an extra cycle of sleep. He was slowly getting more and more tired. He had entered his twelfth year of work now and life was dull and muck.
It was a grim morning, he looked through his curtains and the barred window outside into the forest. The oil facility was complete now and the fumes billowed out of the smoke stack already choking the once beautiful Paramonian atmosphere. It was a crude building, it looked like an enormous slanted iron tower. At least six hundred feet high, probably higher, and fat at the base, with each story getting thinner. It was so sharply out of place in the natural forests that it was a shocking contrast. Morbodd had watched the place build up, he had worked on the machinery, he had built up the second level, he had fixed the elevators, and now, he was bored. He had been transferred here from Rupture Farms 728 on his fourth birthday shortly after maturity, it was a dim recollection of grainy memories but it was sufficient enough to force the Mudokon onwards in life. Perhaps he'd get lucky and get moved again. Then again, Odd, in all her wisdom, was quite happy to allow her children to stagnate in Glukkon facilities, why would he get out? He didn't even want freedom. He just wanted change.
He thought about the ancient stories that sometimes circulated the building, stories of heroes, mythological god beasts with ruinous powers invested in Mother Odd herself. In all honesty he didn't want any saviour, some single mudokon rampaging through the facility, blowing everything up and making those that didn't escape, redundant or worse, dead. The stories of the Great Oddysee and the Great Exoddus were always going to pass around, even the Scrabanian Stockades had some twisted form of the parable to share. The story of great hero Abraham, saviour of the opressed mudokon, desrtroyer of the glukkon cartel. Well, it had been fifty years since he first destroyed Rupture Farms and what good did it do? Temporarily shutting down the factory, stunning Molluck. The stockyards, he should have set the creatures free or something. Not 99 wretched mudokons. And what was the problem with sligs? Morbodd had worked almost all his working life and he had made some good friends, sligs, even slogs. Of course social standing dictated the sligs would never descend into the ranks of the unwashed masses but nevertheless, you could tell a friend was a slig when it didn't beat you for being ten minutes late. And if you could catch the odd word with them, it all helped to strengthen a relationship that could be life saving in a dangerous situation. Of course the paramonian sligs were never intelligent, you have two types, those who blunder around stupidly, enforcing strict laws, shooting any worker who runs and generally blithering their way into a short life. Or you get the marginally more brainy creatures. These sligs go on to live long and prosper. They are cold and calculating in their jobs but still lack the brain power required for extended conversation. There was a fascinating account of a slig under the name of Fillin who around thirty years ago had killed a mudokon and went on to find the ancient slig temple, of course this was obviously legend, but it was just another story that circulated through the depths of the forests.
"1544, you up?" The sudden voice from behind the cell door startled Morbodd and threw his contemplation out the window were his dreams followed quick suite.
"Yeh I'm up sir, just getting my loincloth on," In panic, Morbodd flung the gun into the shadowy corner behind his bed, he should have taken in apart, some sligs didn't even know what a deconstructed rifle looked like.
"Piss off 1544, I'm coming in, I'm your fucking resident guard, fucking telling me not to come in, stupid mudokon," The slig's voice trailed off into grumbling.
Morbodd hated the slig, he wasn't a friend, one of the more intelligent sligs around, an efficient worker who had more powers than the pumped up big brother sligs that wandered the more high security pathways. The slig barged in almost immediateley and eyed the mudokon suspiciously, not because of the gun but because he hated all mudokons.
"What 'ave you been upto little mudokon?" He asked, shining his custom blitzpacker against the light.
"I been sleeping Resident Commander, what have you been doing?"
The slig growled and hurled Morbodd across the room with a swing of his weapon. He crashed against the wall and rolled his head.
"Don't ever fucking speak to me like that again," he turned to leave but stopped and grinned under his grisly tentacles, "You don't want to know what I've been doing but I'll give you a clue, Accident 23412 was no weapon malfunction, you'll here about it in Sligs Weird no doubt, like fucking cleansing it was." He slammed the door behind him and Morbodd could here him barking down the corridor, no doubt an attempt at laughter.
.: The Chroddicles - Morbodd :.
