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Stephen Zacharus
MOONSCAPE

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There was really nothing out of the ordinary that day. As usual, we toiled for hours in the quarry -- hot sun scorching us mercilessly, sweat stinging our eyes. As usual, we forced-down our daily ration of bread and dirty water just quick enough to make our night shift on time and avoid the whips. Afterwards, as usual, we shuffled off to bed like drones, only to rise mechanically in the early morning and relive our never-ending burn, again and again. We'd all gotten used to it by then, of course. Such was life for the Quarry Boys.

No, I remember; there was really nothing out of the ordinary that day. Not even the suicide.

The boy -- Ben, I think was his name -- had been found that morning near the South Rocks, just before the entrance to the old, abandoned quartz mine. There's a scaffold there, you see, at the mouth of the mine, towering about a hundred or so feet high. If any of us wanted to kill ourselves, that scaffold would certainly be the best place to do it. Falling atop the sharp, angry, waiting boulders below would be enough to kill anybody.

And so the suicides would continue -- weekly at the most seldom, twice a day at the most frequent. Not that it really mattered to our Masters. There *were* over four-hundred of us, after all, with new kids added to our forces every day.

Orphans. All of us. Goddess knows where we were found. One could almost say that we just 'showed up for work' sometime. As it turns out, we've probably been working since the day we could walk -- or at least as far back as any of us could remember -- hauling rocks from the quarry, sorting the precious marble from the less important stone, day and night. Little sleep. Less food. Somehow we've managed to survive, though. Most of us.

Poor Ben. I'd talked to the boy only a couple of times -- a strong, healthy rabbit, tall and barely thirteen years old, only a couple of years older than I was. I remember his eyes most of all. They weren't glassy and blank like most of the other boys in our camp; they were ablaze with hope and resilience. He was more like me than anyone else here, really, except for maybe my friend Joseph. I was sad to let him go, but we all knew he was probably better off dead. We all might have been.

Still, it was hope that kept us alive.

'We're getting out of here someday,' I remember telling Joseph as we worked. 'I hear that there's a city past the North Mountains -- a city that will accept us and give us another chance. It's called Mobotropolis.'

The scrawny wolf brushed the hair out of his face, pausing his work to look at me. 'You really think that ol' King Acorn gives a yiff about kids like us? Trust me, Will -- if Acorn is the great man that everybody says he is, he would have put a stop to our slave-work as soon as he took the throne.'

'Maybe he doesn't know about us,' I said quietly.

'How couldn't he? Where do you think all this marble is going? He's probably using it to build himself a nice, big palace as we speak.'

Our conversation ended there, for one of the Masters had overheard. We were whipped shortly afterwards, and then sent back to work at midday.

Bedtime came for us eternities later. Our sleep quarters were small -- nothing more than a few empty rooms, packed wall-to-wall with thin, dirty floormats. There weren't enough mats for everybody, though, so we had to share. Joseph and I, out of habit, usually took the mat nearest to the door; it sure made things more convenient in the mornings, anyway.

Lights out. Darkness. Silence, except for Joseph's shallow breathing beside me.

I was on the verge of dosing off when I heard Joseph's voice in my ear, softly. 'I'm sorry about today, Will.'

I turned over to look at him. 'I'm the one who should be sorry,' I said. 'I was the one who wanted to talk about getting out of here.'

'I'm not talking about why we were whipped,' Joseph said. 'I'm talking about what I said. I just wanted to tell you that' I believe you. We might have a way out of here after all.'

'What made you change your mind?'

He smirked. 'Nothing, I guess. It's just kinda scary to think about, y'know? Life outside the Quarry. I think part of me doesn't want to believe it exists.'

I could relate to that in more ways than he knew' only I didn't have the heart to tell him then.

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'I see that our Quarry Boy team has thinned-out slightly since my last visit.'

'We have suicides every week at least.'

'Well, let them. We can't have any weak-minded workers out here, can we? Not when there's so much work to be done.'

'I trust that you're pleased with their progress?'

'Absolutely.'

From my hiding place behind a cluster of rock, I could see one of the Masters talking to a huge, mustached overlander in the distance. I'd always had really sensitive hearing (cats always do, everybody told me), so I could hear their conversation almost perfectly.

I recognized the fat man instantly. He was the one who was in charge of the quarry, I think -- the manager, so to speak. He stopped by monthly to check up on us.

'We're nearly finished with the construction of Mobotropolis Square,' I watched the man say with a grin. 'King Acorn is very pleased indeed.'

I couldn't move. When the Masters found me eavesdropping a few minutes later, they beat me until I couldn't walk. Suddenly, though, that didn't matter to me anymore.

Nothing mattered to me anymore.

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Lights out. Darkness. Silence, except for Joseph's shallow breathing beside me.

'I want to escape with you,' he whispered at long last.

There was this feeling that I had for Joseph. I couldn't explain it, nor was there a name for it to my knowledge. Nevertheless, this feeling forbade me from telling Joseph what I'd learned earlier that day.

Instead, I embraced him tightly. For the first time I could remember, I was crying and I couldn't stop.

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The expansive moonscape before me seemed to stretch into infinity. There were two paths. The first lead endlessly into the darkness towards Mobotropolis. The second was a scaffold that hung over the South Rocks.

I chose the shorter path, and I suddenly realized why my fallen brothers before me had jumped from here. It wasn't just an escape from our pitiful existence. We jumped because we couldn't bear to see our Masters torture the others we cared about.

Just before the boulders rushed up into my face, I suddenly knew the word that I had been searching for, and then--

Lights out. Darkness. Silence, except for Joseph's shallow breathing beside me.