For the fourth time in a week, Brother Jack was questioning his lot in life. His bare head itched almost constantly, his feet ached and his hands were a mess of ragged open blisters. He didn't find Brother Yan's reassurance that they would quickly harden into callouses remotely reassuring. He hated his stupid orange robes and he loathed pushing this mop around the floor every day since he'd arrived. He was effectively swabbing the deck.
He slid the bucket along the floor with his foot, only just resisting the urge to give it a firm and derisive kick. He sloshed the wooden handled mop back into the soapy water and swirled it round before wringing it out, then slopped it back onto the deck. He made one half-hearted sweep across the polished wood, then stopped and glanced around. He couldn't see Brother Yan, Sister Andrea, the Abbot or any of the others around, so he planted the mop down firmly and rested his weight upon it. He closed his eyes and sighed.
Brother Jack had heard all the stories about the Staten Island Ferry Monks before he had decided to join. It was why he had decided to quit the job the Mayor's Office had found him after Orientation and pledge himself to the Order.
There was one large orange ferry moored at the Whitehall Terminal, called the Mary Murray and she had been there as long as anyone could remember. Jack could dimly remember that in the World Before she had been decommissioned and ended up rusting near New Jersey. Here in Mockhattan, what he assumed was a perfect replica of her in her heyday was home to the Order.
The Brothers and Sisters all wore orange robes, almost matching the boat itself. Many new arrivals to Mockhattan mistook them for Buddhists or Hare Krishnas, but other than the superficial resemblance and some organisation similarity, the Staten Island Ferry Monks were dedicated to trying to understand the where, how and why of Mockhattan itself. The first Abbot had picked the stranded ferry as a symbol of their shared predicament - beached against their will in an oddly familiar yet completely bizarre land. He had spoken of his hope that one day the Order would crack the mystery of Mockhattan and cast off, piloting their massive boat into the fog, never to return. To that end, the engine room was regularly maintained and the engineering monks were highly venerated.
The idea was noble and the aim was appealing, but Jack was too selfish a man to have pledged himself to those goals alone. It was the manner by which the second and current Abbot had decided to pursue this truth that had piqued his interest.
Everything was to be explored and investigated in this place. Expeditionary monks set out to cover every corner of the island city, climb every building and descend into the depths of the Subway and sewers. This frequently brought them into conflict with the Prospectors Guild, who were desperate to find the new caches of Arrived Goods. It was a potentially exciting life and it had stirred something within Jack. The uniform appearance seemed to give the monks a sense of belonging too.
But the tipping point had come when he heard about the Abbot's new decree regarding drugs and sex. Everything was to be explored and investigated in this place, he had reiterated before recalling every monk from the city. He then sealed the ferry boat for a month and the Order embarked on a hedonistic orgy of wanton pleasure and abandon. Afterwards, the Mockhattan Messenger had run a week long series of interviews with the Abbot and some notable Brothers and Sisters. They would return to the city now and invited anyone who wanted to lie with them to seek them out - all in the name of enlightenment. Somehow, the Abbot had curried quite some favour with the normally dour Editor of the Messenger, because the piece was enthusiastically supportive of the Order's renewed endeavours.
A week later, Jack had had a particularly brazen encounter with two Sisters in Central Park under the light of the moon. His life in Mockhattan had been relentlessly dull up until then, working at the Messenger laying out the printing blocks for the next edition. But a couple of bottles of Brew near the Swedish Cottage had led to a chance encounter and he was hungry for more.
Instead he was stuck mopping the floor. The only action he'd seen since he arrived was a smile from Sister Andrea. The two women in the park had disrobed each other pretty quickly, before leaping on him in the throes of wild passion. He hadn't really appreciated how shapeless the orange robes could be, and the androgynous appeal of women with entirely shaven bodies was wearing off now that he could only see the top of their heads. Apparently as an Initiate he had to work his way up. The irony was not lost on him. A brief daydream of that memorable night had brought him up in seconds.
A loud splash broke his randy reverie. For a moment he thought he'd slipped and knocked the bucket over, but as his eyes snapped open he could clearly see that wasn't the case. A cry rang out from the deck above him. "There's someone in the water!"
He rushed to the windows and peered out. There was indeed a figure in the water, thrashing around. Clearly this person had hair and bare arms, possibly naked. So not a fellow monk. Jack realised he was now frozen and forced himself to snap out of it. He dropped the mop and ran to the back of the boat, pulling his robes off. He skidded onto the rear deck, only to find Sister Andrea had beaten him to it and was already naked and climbing over the railings. He stopped in his tracks, robes clutched in his right hand.
She looked back over her bare shoulder at him coyly and smirked, glancing down to his still erect member. He could see that her right breast was firm and achingly pert. Then she winked and jumped into the bay, disappearing beneath the waves only to break the surface a moment or two later. She swam towards the flailing individual with swift strokes.
"Put your robes back on Brother Jack!" The Abbot's snappy voice made him jump and he rushed to comply. Chastened, he took a step back and away from the Order's leader, nearly standing on Brother Yan's foot in the process. Yan simply rolled his eyes, then refocused on the action in the water. Glancing around Jack could see most of the Order had come to see what was going on, lining the side of both decks.
In front of him, the Abbot took a step closer to the railings and peered down. "He fell from the sky," he murmured to himself.