Mungus: Book 1

Dedicated to my Dad, Nana, and Aunt Sharon. Thank you guys for all of your support.

I want to think
Chelsey and Caitlin Bateson for making a great cover!

Introduction

Everyone is one thousand years in the future to somebody. Except for the first people, I suppose. But they were a thousand years before something. And there were probably a thousand years before that.

             
I was living on a space ship at the time. I had lived there my whole life. The contraption shot throughout space at the speed of light, but because of the way it rotated, we couldn’t feel any movement on the inside.

             
Most humans have more technologies than those a thousand years before them. Life is easier. Maybe the humans who first built wood houses looked back and thought about how hard life must have been in a tent. If you look at the year that computers were invented, and then take a look back a thousand years before then, you’ll find that plumbing hadn’t even been perfected yet. I guess that it’s a rule of human nature.

             
The generation I belong to is the first to break this rule.

             
I don’t know what life was like a thousand years ago, and we’re not allowed to talk about it. But we know that it was bad.

             
For now, though, our culture has embraced some of the old ways in hopes of stopping another tragedy.

1

The Ship

I moved the brush in soapy circles on the tile floor, trying to scrape off the dirt that the children tracked in over the past few weeks.  I felt as though I would
be on my knees, scrubbing for the rest of my life.  I looked down the long and narrow orphanage bedroom.  Unmade beds lined the walls with toys and books stashed underneath them.  I was going to miss the place.

Saul and I had lived there for two years, ever since Mama passed.  I looked up at my brother as he scrubbed beside me.  His face was red and blotchy.  Sweat stood out on his forehead.  He was a big boy
, with flabby cheeks and broad shoulders.  Even though we were twins, he was over a foot taller than me by the time we were eleven.

We had to go in for our medical checkups earlier that year.  When Saul got off of the scale, his face was beaming with pride.  “I’m bigger than
Dimaggio, Walt!”  He was talking about Joe Dimaggio, his favorite baseball player.  Saul was obsessed with the New York Yankees, even though they hadn’t played a game of baseball in over a thousand years.  He watched the games every Wednesday in the ship’s theatre.

My brother was sweet, but never smart.  I remember my mom, when she was still with us, sitting me down and telling me that
I had to take care of him.  My father had taken a fall from a ladder and died a year earlier—collapsed lung; maybe with better technologies they could have saved him.  Mama looked at me with thin white skin and yellow eyes surrounded by bags of purple.  She had been so pretty before.  She told me that I had to make sure that he got enough to eat.  I had to make sure that he always had a warm bed and shelter.  I couldn’t let him become homeless.  I couldn’t let him get involved in drugs.  I was smart and because of my aptitude I had a responsibility to take care of those who couldn’t take care of themselves.

And now, look where you’ve got him,
I thought. 
Serving a detention with Blaine Trotter! 
The three of us had been scrubbing the floor for well over an hour now without one word exchanged.  Blaine was always in trouble, and I didn’t want to be like him.  I didn’t want Saul to be like him.  And it was my fault we were in there.

But, looking back on it, I can’t really blame myself.  I was only trying to help.  We were sitting in Mrs.
Vander’s class, taking a heat stroke information exam.  I had gone over the terms and procedures with Saul late into the night before the test and was confident that he was going to fail.  No matter how many times we went over it, he just could not remember the material.  He shouldn’t have been in the normal classes, they had a whole school for people like him and I didn’t understand why he wasn’t transferred.  If he failed that test, Mrs. Vander would have made a spectacle of it for the whole class; she would have made his grade public information, and questioned him on his study habits, sneering while she did it.  I couldn’t bare to see his shy face up at the front of the room, being ridiculed for not trying when he really didn’t understand.

I ripped off a corner of my test, scribbled in the answers as small as possible on it, and handed it to Saul when I thought that Mrs.
Vander’s back was turned.  The moment I passed it she said, “Walt and Saul, would you two please come to the front and turn in your tests.”  The window.  I hadn’t thought of the reflection from the window.  I looked up and saw her smiling face in the dark reflection from the pane of glass that looked out into the streets.

Having to scrub the floors wasn’t even the worst part about it.  We were missing that month’s ship assembly.  The ship assemblies usually were boring, not much to miss.  They consisted of a lot of older members of the ship gathering in the auditorium
and discussing new policies.  What to do about the oxygen levels on the ship.  Should we plant more of this or that?  The livestock levels are getting low.  How can we produce more energy?  Is it okay to continue sending our waste out into space when we are done with it?  It all bored me and the meetings seemed to go on forever.  But this one was going to be different. 

President
Strunk had just returned from the first ever Greco—that’s what our people are called—landing on Mungus.  He took one of our small carrier ships down to the planet and had a meeting with the people who already lived there.  Our ancestors had been waiting a millennia to see what was on the planet, and President Strunk had all of the answers.  But because of one mistake, Saul and I were missing it.

I stopped scrubbing for a moment and cocked my head.  I could hear cheering all the way from the auditorium.  Saul looked at me and I could tell by his face that he was thinking the same thing that I was.  We wanted to go and see what was
happening.

Blaine
stood up, tossed his brush down on the floor and began to walk between the rows of beds towards the exit.  He was athletic and well built.  Quick.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To see what’s going on.”  He strutted toward the door, ponytail bouncing behind him.

“U-U-You can’t!” Saul stammered.  “We’re in trouble and Miss Mabel told us to stay right here!  If you get caught, you’ll be in trouble with the
Ms for a month for a month.”  The Ms were the orphanage caretakers.  There were five of them—Miss Mary, Miss Meredith, Miss Margaret, Miss Mabel, and Miss Mariana.  Naturally, we called them the Ms for short.

Blaine
turned around and faced us with a smirk, “How could I be in trouble with the Ms for a month when I’ll be on land in two weeks?”  Then he walked off towards the door, his shoes slapping on the clean tile.

Saul looked at me with worried eyes.

“He’s got a point,” I said as I stood up.  I dropped my brush and began to follow Blaine out the door.

“Walt?” Saul called after me.  “No, don’t go!  Walt!  Stop!  I’m not coming!  You’d better come back here!”  I didn’t turn, but just kept on walking. 

“I’m not going!  Have fun without me!  Walt, please come back!”  He sighed and I imagined the conflict going on within his head.
  Stay or go?
I already knew what he was going to decide.  I heard him shuffle to his feet and follow us out the door.

Once we were out the front exit, the three of us looked around to see if anyone was watching.  The street was completely barren, something that I had never seen.  Usually it was full of people walking to or from work, men and women pushing carts trying to sell merchandise
and steaming sandwiches , or children walking in a line and following a teacher to a class.  Everyone wanted to hear about Mungus and my guess was that the auditorium was packed.

“Do you want to take the rail, or walk?” I asked.

“Neither,” Blaine said.  “Jog.  It’s only half a mile away, but we need to go fast.  Also, I don’t want a conductor tipping the Ms off and telling them we were out.”

Blaine
took one more look around and then the three of us began to jog.  The road was covered in sterile looking white turf that softened the impact of our feet on the ground.  As we ran along the ship, we passed building after building on both sides of us.  A convenient store, a church, a school, a dentist’s office.  The main road wrapped all the way around the ship and was a little over 30 miles long.  We were lucky to have such a short distance to go.

Blaine
and I jogged ahead and it wasn’t until I heard Saul holler, “Wait,” through heavy breaths that I realized that he couldn’t keep up.  He was so big for his age and his muscles hadn’t yet caught up to his size.  His arms pulled and pushed and his body twisted and jerked with each step in an enormous effort of a boy to try to move his very adult body.  His huge feet pounded over the white road of the ship.

I stopped and waited for Saul.  “Let’s go, hurry,” I said.  Saul was doing the best he could. 
Blaine ran on ahead of us and whenever Saul caught up to me I began to jog beside him.

The closer we got to the auditorium the more nervous I became.  It was a combination of things.  I was nervous about the possibility of being caught; this was the first real time that I had ever been in trouble and I didn’t w
ant to make it my second time in the same week.  I was nervous about what President Strunk had found; what if all he found was a barren planet without oxygen?  Would we stay on the ship forever?  I looked up and over a restaurant at the windows out into space.  I saw a moon lit up by the light of a sun.  Surely we would die if the planet wasn’t habitable.  The nuclear reserves on the ship were only intended to last a little over 1000 years.  I was also nervous about Saul.  The boy panted as he ran.  I made a decision for him.  When I stood up and went after Blaine, I was sure that he would follow.  He trusted me and I didn’t want to lose that.

We began to see the auditorium coming up in front of us.  I still didn’t know how
Blaine intended to get into the packed assembly unnoticed.  It was one of the most impressive buildings on the ship.  The ceilings and fluorescent lights that lit up the road hung 70 feet above turf.  With that tall of a ceiling, the auditorium was made so that it would just fit under the hanging lights.  The whole structure was made of carved metal.  Statues and gargoyles stood out of the building.  The pillars were carved to look like snakes, former presidents of the ship, and exotic flowers that I wasn’t sure even existed.  I was told that the metal was shiny in the past, but it had grown dull and rusted.

We slowed to a stop right in front of the auditorium box office.  During showings of movies and plays
, a pimply teenager would stand at the counter and sell tickets.  It was empty now.  The monthly assemblies were always free admission.

Saul’s face was a blotchy red and he was panting.  “How are we going to get in?” he asked.

“C’mon,” Blaine said and in one swift motion he planted his hands on the admission counter and jumped over.  He walked to the back and began climbing a metal ladder that disappeared up into the ceiling.

Again, Saul looked at me with a worried face.  I cared about him, I knew that he was scared, but I couldn’t miss this.  “Well, if we’re going to get into trouble, we might as well go all the way,” I told him.  I hopped over the counter with less grace then
Blaine had and I began to climb the ladder in the back of the room.

“I’m going back, Walt,” Saul whispered after me.  I continued to climb and a moment later I looked down and see him ascending behind me.

I climbed the ladder up through the ceiling and into a thin tunnel that rose to a dimly lit opening above.  I came out of the top and into a dusty wooden room.  Blaine was sitting on a crate right next to a projector.  The only light that came in was from a window in the back that showed a glowing blue, green and white planet that, if we were lucky, would be our new home.  I pulled myself out of the ladder and ducked my head as I walked to a box that looked out onto the stadium seating below.  I sat and watched.  “We’re just in time,” Blaine said.

I heard Saul scrambling up behind us and then he yelped in pain.  “
Ahhh,” Saul cried.  Blaine and I both turned around and ‘shhh’ed him.  Saul had stood up too tall and hit his head on a wooden beam of the low ceiling.  I motioned for Saul to come sit down and he waddled over while rubbing his sore head.

“Sorry,” he whispered as he plopped down beside me.

We looked out over the auditorium.  Below us sat thousands of people in theatre seats.  They were jabbering amongst each other and the noise of their conversations echoed along the walls and mixed together to form one jumbled sound.  In front of the audience was a great stage covered in red carpet with a podium placed in the front center.  Blaine was right: we were just in time.  Captain Strunk was walking out to the center of the stage from one of the wings and waving at the crowd as they erupted in applause.  He was an older man with white hair and green eyes that twinkled when he talked.  He was wearing a bright blue suit that made him stand out against the red carpet.