Chapter 9
Tattoos for All!

Frederick just looked at the ground. After a bit, he looked up at the guy. "Hey, thanks for saving my life."
 "Don't mention it." He replied.
 "Hey! So, now we can get down to some explanations?" I asked.
 The guys exchanged glances.
 "Fine. My name's Alex. What's yours?" he asked.
 "I'm Andrea, and the smurf's Frederick."
 "So I gathered." he replied. "What are you doing here? No one but me is supposed to come down here. Does she know you're down here?"
 "Who's she?" asked Frederick.
 "What do you mean, 'Who's she?"! She is GOD!"
"Does God know we're down here?" Frederick asked, confused.
"Actually, I don't really believe in God . . ." I said
"No, no, no!" Alex said. "What I meant was she is the one who knows all and sees all. She's the ruler of this dump. Actually, no one really knows who she is. In fact, we don't even know if she's really a girl. We suspect she is, however, because of the way the first class level is decorated. We're only allowed up there when it needs cleaning or repairing and no one's ever around during that time. But everyone knows to stay away from her, and never make her mad."
 "Woha, woah, woah!" I shouted. "You totally lost me there. So, what? She's the head of this whole thing? Does she own this castle?"
 "Yeah, she controls everything that goes on in here. You can't do anything without her knowing. Which is why I'm surprised that you were able to get in here." he said as he looked us up and down. "Hey!" he yelled. "What happened to your tattoo!"
 "What tattoo? I don't have a tattoo, do you, Andrea?" asked Frederick.
 "No, why would I?"
 "You mean she hasn't gotten to you yet!" shouted Alex. Then he lowered his voice to a whisper, and gasped. "Every human left on this island has a tattoo. See?" he showed us his arm. He had the number 7 tattooed on his left arm, with a symbol underneath it.
 "What's it for?" asked Frederick.
 "Identification" said Alex. "The symbol indicates that I'm not a prisoner, I work for her, and the number indicates my importance. You can be important for any number of reasons. Such as: how well you work, how important your job is, how difficult you are to deal with..etc. The higher your number, the more careful the robots have to be with you. She doesn't want anyone important to be hurt, or to hurt the robots. I know guys in the range of the number 18, through to 2. I don't however, know who has the number one."
 "Only guys!" I exclaimed. "Aren't girls important?"
 "We suspect that there are some girls with high importance. After all, she must need company. But we've never seen any. After all, she never comes to see us, why should her friends?"
 "You mentioned not being a prisoner. She-I mean, she has prisoners?"
 "Oh yeah, there's only a few guys that work for her. The rest, the people who aren't strong enough, or obedient enough, end up as prisoners. She has hundreds and hundreds of them. But they slowly die away. It's nearly impossible to live only on blueberries, and the occasional loaf of bread."
 "That's appalling!" I yelled.
 "Woah!" whispered Alex. "Shh!  The last thing you want is for her to find you! How did you manage to stay hidden for the past 5 years anyway? "
 "We just got here a few days ago!"
 "How? The waters are guarded by huge submarines! And what made you want to come here anyway?"
 "We didn't want to come here and we didn't arrive by boat." said Frederick. We then told Alex our whole story. He didn't believe us in the slightest. He kept rolling his eyes, saying "Yeah, sure." When we were finished we asked him if he's help us out. He asked us what we wanted to do. We didn't really know ourselves. We wanted to get home, that was clear to us. I didn't know how I intended to do that. Obviously, I couldn't go back the way I came.
 "Well," said Alex. "I know where we can get a hold of a map."
 "What good will that do us?" asked Frederick.
 "I'm not sure, I'm just brainstorming." replied Alex.
 "Maybe it'll just give us some ideas." I suggested.
 "Alright, I'll go get it. You two stay here, keep quiet and low."
 So me and Frederick sat in the corner and waited. Not long after, Alex returned with a very small piece of paper. He put it on the ground, and spat on it. After a few seconds, it grew to about the size of a professional football player in all his equipment.
 "Now, let's do what we need to do, before it dries and shrinks up again."
 We leaned over and examined it. It was only of the bottom floor. Alex said he had the other ones in his pocket. We could use them if we ever made it to those levels. It was huge and quite complex looking. Corridors everywhere, with rooms going off in every direction. We were in the "Juicing room" just down the hall was a "Packaging room". Alex said that even though the outside world doesn't know what goes on on this island, they still do trading with her. She has the best garden on Earth.
 Further on down that hallway was a large room, labelled "dorm". Alex told us it was where all the guys slept-if they got the chance. Some of the rooms weren't labelled. When I asked him why, he said it was because these maps were made by the guys down here and that none of them have ever been in those rooms. There was also a portion of the map that wasn't finished. No one Alex knew had ever gone down there. Apparently it led to the dungeon where all the prisoners were held.
 We all decided our best bet would be to get to one of the many stair cases located around the map and head to the higher levels. We found the closest one and headed off towards it.