Prologue

I was terrified, what if I’d been wrong? What if everyone was right and I wasn’t ready for this? What if what I’d learned, and seen, and thought for so long wasn’t true? I looked to Raven, her green, cybernetic eye blinked, the motors whirred in the darkness. She was as steady as the world’s floor.

“Ralph, you got this,” she said, quietly.
She was right. It was time, I had to prove what I knew to be true. There was so much more outside the maze; outside our world, and not all of it was bad. It couldn’t be. I was going to challenge the very notions of Cheese World society. I was going to find out who The Cheese Gods really were.

The Sky Tile was heavier than I expected, as I struggled against the corner of it. Razer stepped up beside me, his sleek muscles rippling as he joined me in shifting it to the side. Light blazed up through the opening, illuminating our squad of adventurers, six in all. As I lowered himself into the bright world below, I thought, “This is it, there is no going back for any of us, unless we succeed.”

I was turning my back on everything I’d ever known, staking it all on the idea that our meager existence could not be all there was. As I lowered steadily toward the cold hard floor of the world below, the thread playing out through my paws, I thought of everything we’d left behind, and whatever awaited us beyond the shelter of Cheese World and whispered, “Well, what’s the best that could happen?”

Chapter One

Cheese World was an amazing place for a young rat. There was so much to do and see. I was born to a tall maze runner and a Norwegian teacher. From day one I could almost sense the expectations that everyone placed on me.
I was born at Red Bubble One, Second Yellow Tunnel, The Nursery, Back of Cheese World, or at least, that’s how the mail came addressed. The Nursery was in a glass box house, hidden deep behind the main wall of Cheese World, which consisted of 120 glass houses, four rows high, and 30 houses across.

Cheese world, also known as Procorp Research and Development Laboratories, Special Studies division, Group Three, was a self-contained universe for those of us who lived there.

The Cheese Gods were the creators, and maintainers of Cheese World. They conducted the rituals surrounding the maze and the other trials in our world, donning white ceremonial robes to conduct their priestly duties. They were so-called, for the simple fact, that they controlled the supply of cheese and other rewards to the maze, as well as the rations of the entire colony.

They were omnipotent, and rumored to be all knowing. Where they came from, no one knew, except one rat, the elder, Rasmus.

“In the beginning, “ he would say, on Maze Days, “The World was empty, and the Cheese Gods took council, saying, What shall we do with this world? And it was decided that the foundations of Cheese World should be laid. And the first citizens, Raphael, and Rosalyn, were brought here, and placed in a home in the first Great Wall of Cheese World. From them, came all that you see. The Cheese Gods, in their grace and mercy, granted us The Maze and The Trials, that those found deserving, should earn for their fellows reward, and so it is, and so it shall be.”

Many in Cheese World accepted this story as so, since Rasmus, the son of Raphael and the second mother, Roxana, was the oldest rat to ever live. He held a highly honored position, and even the Cheese Gods acknowledged his uniqueness, rewarding him on the merit of his age alone and bringing great Cheese God dignitaries to test and examine him. His wisdom was nearly limitless, when it came to the inner workings of Cheese World.

There were more than 300 residents of Cheese World, including the “seens” and the “unseens”, although the official census marked us at 180, the number which The Cheese Gods worked hard to maintain.

They counted us daily, and if not enough heads, or too many, poked up in a house, it was taken down and ID bands were checked against The Book of Lives, with any rat, unfortunate enough to have been caught without proper identification, being removed, never to be heard from again.

Birth mothers came here, to The Nursery, Back of the Great Wall, to give birth. When that wasn’t possible, they brought their litter here to grow in safety, as soon as it was practical. This kept most of the infants out of the hands of The Cheese Gods, who would scoop up entire litters, sending them off to parts unknown. Rumors in Cheese World, had them fed to giant, writhing, legless lizards, known as serpents, in a world not too distant from our own.

“Eat your seeds, children, or the legless lizards will be feasting tonight,” was something every young rat in Cheese World had grown up hearing, to the point that it almost became a joke, and was the first conclusion jumped to whenever any young rodent was not found where it should be.
As children, we were taught the importance of not being seen. Rats in cages, where they were supposed to be, were a good thing, to be oohed and aahed over and rewarded for a job well done. While rats in unexpected places, especially unbanded, were a cause for terror and brought immediate and violent reactions from The Cheese Gods, with entire families sometimes disappearing.

We had all heard the story of “The Day the Sky Fell”, before the New Cheese World Rebuilding, when the nursery had been hidden high up in the laboratory ceiling that served as the sky of Cheese World. It was said that too many rats had gathered on a single sky tile, weakened by water, from the world above. When the sky collapsed, bodies were strewn across Cheese World, tiny pink pill infants, crushed, dazed nurses falling to their deaths on the maze table, and then came the reapers.

The Cheese Gods had been fierce in their retribution. Cheese World had been disassembled and moved into other worlds for a time, while the new wall was constructed, and the Reapers waged war with traps and poisons, until not a single unseen remained alive, outside of a few infants rescued and hidden, including my father. So, now the Cheese World High Council enforced a strict curfew, no rats were ever allowed outside their homes when The Cheese Gods were present in our world, and no rat was ever to leave signs that they had been anywhere outside the wall of glass houses.

The punishment for breaking the curfew, or leaving signs, was banishment. Truth be told, the punishment for even the slightest infraction of the Cheese World High Council’s ever-changing rules was banishment. Out during curfew? Banishment. Trading without consent? Banishment. Unspecified housing construction? Banishment. The only ones safe from banishment were the Maze Runners, it was far too likely to be noticed if one of them went missing. Instead, they would be fined a portion of their rewards, above their normal contribution.

The rats selected for banishment had their bands removed, and were placed into “the cell” a house that was used specifically to hold rats who were being transferred out of Cheese World. A banished rat would take the place of another subject, his identity given to the transfer, who was then welcomed back into Cheese World society. The banished rats were kept under guard by the council, until banishment day, when the Cheese Gods wheeled in their silver cart and dropped the hapless victims, one by one into a metal tank, and wheeled away, never to be seen again.

There were exceptions to curfew on Maze Days, when as many rats as could go, without being missed, made the trek to the top of the world to watch the runners. The first time I ever saw the races, I was barely bigger than a pill. My father took me, clutching the longer hair between his shoulders, as we made our way up to the top of the world. From there we could look down on the colony, four rows of neat glass houses, all facing out onto the world. Beneath us, gleaming white, was the maze.

I’d heard about it my whole life. I’d watched as the runners left, excited, being lifted from their homes by the gloved hand of the cheese god. Then we waited for them to return, sometimes in triumph, bearing reward, sometimes in defeat, exhausted.

On the day I first saw the maze, Rutger was running. His sleek black fur glistened under the lab lights. A Cheese God carried his sleek muscular body to the box and the crowd sat frozen, waiting for the gate to lift. Over fifty rats, all perched, side by side in the front row seats along the edge of the beam that ran across the top of the world, supporting the lights.

The gate lifted and and the crowd leaned forward in anticipation, unable to make a sound, as the cheese gods stood, surrounding the maze, in their ceremonial positions directly beneath us. Rutger sniffed, rotating until he’d found the scent. He plunged down the track, through turn after turn, as the cheese god lifted the stop watch, Rutger moved, closer and closer, dodging barriers, as he moved ever closer to reward.

Then he was there, in the reward box, his muzzle slightly lifted to the Elder, who sat in his place of honor where the two light support beams intersected, lifting his cheese for the admiring rats.

The cheese gods applauded. They congratulated each other, slapping backs and marking down Rutger’s run on his maze record. Ridley, our own timer, looked happy as he ticked off the time from his stop watch. The news passed in a whisper, Rutger had set a new maze record, and every rat in the colony knew what that meant, a new maze would be constructed.

A new maze in the world, was cause for celebration. New mazes brought extra reward. The runners were tasked double duty in new mazes, with full reward for even the shortest run. A new maze meant the beginning of a holiday season.
There would be extra corn in addition to the cheese and if we were lucky, sugar. Sugar, for rats, is a drug. Even a small amount puts us in an almost drunken state. Not only would there be additional rewards in the maze, but the runners would be treated to extra rations, which meant more for everyone.

The whole Cheese World colony was nearly always on rationing. The cheese gods were generous, supplying each of us from their limited stores, but only exactly what we needed with nothing to spare. This made it a constant challenge to provide for everyone when so many were among “the unseen” and didn’t get official rations. So, when the cheese was in short supply, our economy took a hit.

“The Cheese Gods have increased the difficulty in the mazes, so everyone is going to have to tighten their belts a bit,” the Council would say, from their lofty perch in the Cheese World capital, a group of twelve separate glass houses, on a shelf overlooking the maze.

“We’ll have to increase contributions, until the cheese is flowing again.” Then they’d send their enforcers through Cheese World, collecting a few seeds here, a few pellets there, to support the “Unseens”, they’d say.

It was this world that I’d navigated for more than ten Maze Days, before I entered training and became a full citizen of Cheese World, a “red” and the greatest maze runner in all of Cheese World history, and then everything changed, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.