Sometimes he wondered why Mel had never questioned it even though all of the clues were there. But then again, many of his companions had been of the sort who looked but did not see. When Mel had told him of her encounter with the two "Rezzies" who would later try to eat her and her bizarre rescue by Pex, the final pieces of the puzzle had slotted into place.
A slang filled pidgin language could be expected amongst children, but that coupled with the quasi-religion of the Kangs, the almost religious devotion to the rules on the parts of the Caretakers, the supposedly trained soldier Pex behaving like the hero from some over the top children's show, and the ease with which the "Rezzies" who had an affinity for dressing in the colors of the Kangs had broken a number of their people's cultural taboos in the supposedly few years they'd been there added up to something else entirely.
Aside from the building which was made of materials that could take a great deal more punishment than their Earth equivalents, the Caretakers themselves were an anomaly, considering a number of them were only a few years older than Pex, and others about Pex's age and others just a few years younger. Caretakers who were all male just as the Kangs and the Rezzies were all female. Considering their ages, they should have been sent off to fight in the war that Pex had supposedly deserted from. Pex who seemed to fancy himself a superhero of some sort despite his status as a coward.
Another point of interest was the Rezzies. Not only had a number of them resorted to cannibalism with an almost shocking ease considering the fact that they should've spent the longest time steeped in the morals and strictures of their society, but not a one of them had mentioned a son or daughter who'd been sent off to fight in the war of which they spoke with such strange detachment as if it were an abstract concept to them.
The Kangs, while odd, were your standard wild-children. Wild children who still should've known how to operate the technology in the building such as the beverage machines which their parents would've shown them how to use before they left them in the care of the elders who should've been raising them rather than allowing them to run loose like that.
He really should've spotted it much earlier, but the thing is, when things are the way they've always been for some people, they often never say anything that would alert you to the fact that things aren't what you'd consider normal.
It had probably been a good thing that Mel had been asleep when he'd gone back to Paradise Towers to confirm his suspicions. The nurseries had been segregated by gender and tended to by robots who'd been left left behind by people who'd understood that they might lose the war and that the residents of Paradise Towers would be the last of their people. Robots who never realized that thanks to the poison gas that had been released by the Great Architect, their charges would never wake up and there'd be a while before there would be more to care for. More that would include a new generation of Caretakers, a new generation of Kangs which would tick over to become Rezzies when they hit about thirty or so, and yes, another Pex.
