Authors: Chad Leito
A big smile filled my face and as I watched. It was something that I had waited my whole life for
—something that my parents had died waiting for.
“Good evening,” he began. A nervous applause came out around the audience. As soon as they were quiet,
Strunk smiled and said into the microphone, “One thousand seven years. That’s the length of time that our ancestors and we have waited for this day. One thousand seven years.
“
One thousand seven years ago this ship left earth and has been moving through space ever since. But our ship wasn’t the first. Forty years before our ship left, there was another spacecraft that departed from earth. This was called the Salyer ship, and those on the ship are referred to as the Salyers. Then, twenty years after that, the Beardsley ship left. Then, twenty years later, the same metal that we are standing on left our home planet.
“We, the people of the Greco ship have been in the dark for over a thousand years. Our fellow humans gambled on Mungus, placing the lives of many on the line while guessing that it is habitable.” He smiled. “And now, I guess that you want to hear if the scientists of yesteryear made a good decision.”
The whole auditorium was quiet as Strunk looked over them.
“I think they did.” The whole place went wild. Whoops and hollers filled the air below and it was minutes before the president was able to get them under control enough to speak.
“In my time that I spent down on the planet I have observed some things that make it my and my cabinet’s belief that the people who are willing to abide by certain terms will be able to live on Mungus as soon as next week.” Applause swept over the audience again. People whistled and clapped and hollered and stomped their feet until the whole auditorium was shaking. Saul began to cheer beside me and I had to remind him that we were hiding and had to be quiet. After a few minutes the applause died down. Strunk cleared his throat and looked up into the audience with his sparkling, honest green eyes. “It’s beautiful. The air is so fresh. To feel the wind blow! I’ve never felt anything quite like it. The air is alive with the sounds of animals. Insects and birds make noises all around. The clouds form overhead like God’s great painting in the sky. My skin feels fresh. I feel young after my visit. I think that you all will love it.” The audience did not applaud after he said that, but instead remained perfectly still as if they were too mesmerized by his words to clap or cheer.
“I have met with the leader of the government on land,” the president continued. “There is a nation set up called Ramus. My best judgment says that the people of Ramus are good. Both of the ships before us have made it to Mungus, and both have produced smart and kind people. They have a fantastic government in place. There is a bill of rights that grants us all of the rights that we are accustomed to. They have a group of voted officials with a president as the head of government, just like we do here on the ship. I was assured by the people’s kindness and hospitality that Ramus would be a great place for the Greco’s to call their new home.
“As I have said, people can begin to move down onto Mungus, perhaps as early as next week. But there is one condition. There is a contract that you must sign before they will accept you into their nation.”
People in the audience begin to murmur.
Blaine turned to me with his eyebrows up in question.
The president shifted on his feet before delivering the next information. “The contract requires that any person who wants to live in their cities and use the facilities that they have created must devote seven years of their lives to working for Ramus.”
The crowd erupted in angry noises; hisses, booing, and yells of disapproval came from the audience. The President remained calm and refused to continue on with his speech until the audience was under control.
Someone shouted up to the stage, “
will we get paid?”
“No.”
Blaine cursed under his breath and the rest of the audience began to shout. President Strunk stood on the stage with his arms at his side. He didn’t show any emotion until the crowd had calmed. “Please, listen. The Salyers requested the same thing from the Beardsley and now they are free and many of them have high paying jobs working for the government. It will be okay. And after some thought, I think that it is only fair.”
“How’s that?” someone shouted.
The president gave an angry look in their direction and then went on. “They have been there for forty years. Forty years! They have been building roads, buildings, and forming their society. They have done their grunt work and now they ask that we do ours.”
“And what if we don’t want to?” someone else shouted. It came from the opposite side
as the other outbursts.
“If you don’t want to sign the contract, you don’t have to. You have a choice. You aren’t being forced into anything. You can either join Ramus or you can choose to be a part of a new nation that the Greco’s are building on Mungus. It will be called Terra. Those who refuse to sign the contract will have to stay on the ship a little longer, but they will be able to go to Mungus too. I am putting together a team of people to lead the project. If you would like to live on Terra instead of Ramus you will have to be a part of building the new nation. You will be sent down with a team into a completely undeveloped part of Mungus and you will build up a society there. We will need a lot of specialist and a lot of laborers. The work will be difficult but rewarding.
In order to be a part of this group, since it will be dangerous and will require a certain level of skill, we ask that those participating are of at least 18 years old.”
The crowd erupted again in anger and
Blaine cursed again, more loudly this time. President Strunk put up his hands and said, “Please, be calm. Allow me to explain.”
“We should go,”
Blaine said.
“What? Why?” I was captivated by what was going on.
“The Ms are going to rent a cart to drive themselves and the kids back down to the orphanage. We need a good head start.”
Saul and I both wanted to stay, but if
Blaine King was worried that we had been gone too long, it was probably a good idea to leave.
“You’re right.”
Blaine nodded and led the way down the ladder.
As we climbed down the dark tunnel I heard someone shout from the crowd, “so if you’re under eighteen you are forced to work without pay for seven years.” I couldn’t hear
Strunk’s answer, but I didn’t need to. The roaring of the angry crowd was all the answer I needed.
Once we reached the bottom of the ladder we hopped over the ticket counter and dashed back over the white turf toward the orphanage.
Blaine ran out ahead of us, his ponytail bouncing with his long strides. I stayed behind as Saul trudged along as quickly as he could.
The three of us entered the orphanage and got down on our hands and knees and began to scrub again. Saul’s face was red and he was breathing heavily from the jog. “Try to not
breathe so hard whenever the Ms come back,” Blaine said. Saul nodded his head and we continued to scrub.
We
cleaned in silence and the speech that I had just heard consumed me. I was going to be leaving my home soon; the ship that my parents and grandparents and many generations before me had lived on. I had figured the stories that I had heard and what a lot of the kids speculated about Mungus was stretched a little bit. I had heard stories of everyone getting 100 acres of land just for living on the planet, that everyone got their own castle, and that everyone would own thousands of livestock. Those ideas had seemed ridiculous and I hadn’t imagined that they would have come true. But slavery? Forced labor? I would not have imagined that I would have found that on Mungus either.
Ten minutes after we began scrubbing for the second time the children from the orphanage returned along with the
Ms. All of the boys and girls walked around us with their dirty shoes ruining the floors that we were working so hard on. “Hey, quit that,” Blaine shouted at a plump boy who ran through a sparkling section of the floor that he had just cleaned.
“
Blaine, Walt, Saul,” Miss Mary said. “Will you come meet me out in the hall?”
‘We’re caught!’ I thought and as I looked up into Saul’s face I saw that he was under the same impression.
Blaine, however, walked out into the hall with such a calm expression that even I began to doubt that he had done anything wrong.
As soon as we were out into the hall, Miss Mary shut the door behind us, muffling the sound coming from the children inside. My palms grew sweaty and I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry that you three weren’t able to go to the meeting today. I know that it was very important to all of you, but rules are rules.”
The three of us nodded in harmony as if we had no objection to our punishments. We all held the same solemn expression of a martyr being read the charges placed upon him.
“But, I am very grateful that you all were so obedient. From now on, you three are relieved from scrubbing the floors during free time.”
All three of us let out a sigh of relief and Blaine said, “Thank you.”
Ms. Mary nodded. “I also wanted to explain to you three a few things that you missed during the assembly.” She then went on to explain to us about Mungus. She told us of all the things that President
Strunk had described and we smiled and frowned appropriately, trying to seem like the information that she was giving us was new. She did tell us one last thing that we had not heard while we were spying in the projector room. She told us that on our contract we could list the people in our family that we do not wish to be separated from. She said that, for instance, Saul and I could list each other that would be a formal request that we were sent down together.
“There are no guarantees, though,” she said.
At this comment, Saul began to cry. “So I might not be with Walt?”
“I’m afraid that’s true.”
The orphanage was quiet that night. Saul and I filled out our contracts and requested that we be together on Mungus. We didn’t want to waste any time in filling out either of the papers. I thought that maybe if we were on the top of the stack that ther
e would be a better chance we could be together. After an hour of free time it was lights out. I lay on my back in my springy little bed with my blankets pulled all the way up to my chin. I thought about what Miss Mary had said, “there are no guarantees.” I didn’t know how I would deal with being separated from Saul. The thought tore me up inside. Missing him wasn’t what made me the saddest: what broke my heart was thinking of him missing me. I shifted on my pillow, pulled my knees up to my chest and did something that I would have never let Saul see me do. I cried.
2
Waiting
I had nightmares for the next two weeks. They tried to tell me that I wasn’t going into slavery and that I had to work as a way to pay back what I owed to Ramus, but I couldn’t see the distinction. I had a reoccurring dream that I was trapped in a cage. I looked down and saw my arms (then the arms of an old man with white hair and cracked skin) desperately shaking at rusted metal bars that wouldn’t budge.
Blaine
was wrong about being on land in two weeks, but not by much. He was gone twenty days after we snuck into the main hall to watch Captain Strunk give his speech. He wasn’t the only one. The turf streets of the ship were becoming less crowded and more beds in the orphanage were always made. For the first time in a thousand years, people from our ship were going down to land.
Every night or so, I would hear the phone ring as I lay in bed at night. Through the doorway I could see Miss Mabel’s body in her nightgown with big curls in her hair
as she walked over to the phone and answer it.
“Hello,” she would whisper into the phone. As she talked she kept her voice low even though there was no point; every boy and girl in the orphanage was awake and wide eyed, wondering if it would be them that she came and pulled out of bed so that they could travel to Mungus that morning.
“Okay, I’ll get them.” Miss Mabel would then hang up the phone and walk down the aisle in between the two rows of beds and pull a few lucky children up and tell them to grab their suitcases. I held my breath when she passed either my bed or Saul’s.
Both Saul and I had all of our possessions packed and ready to go in a leather suitcase under his bed. We were supposed to each pack our own in case we were separated, but we were determined that we would be leaving the ship together. Our suitcase was small
but heavy. We each had two pairs of pants, three shirts, a coat, a blanket, and one possession that we kept to remind us of our parents. These were our favorite things that we owned and the only things that could never be replaced.
Saul’s possession was a baseball that our mother made for him before she died. It didn’t look exactly like what
Dimaggio used to play with. It was brown, lumpy, and the stitches weren’t in the right place. Still, it was the closest thing that any kid had to a baseball on the Greco ship. “Did you know that they used to use seventy-two every game, Walt?” he would ask me as he admired his lumpy sphere.