One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy (17 page)

Hieronymus saw the look of disgust and fear on the face of poor Windows Falling On Sparrows. He thought this was a pretty awful place, too, but he was used to this — standing at the fence, watching the two moon moose fight it out was not a hell of a lot different from a typical day in remedial math class.

If you took off your goggles, what things would be colored by the fourth primary color? For example, to you, would green become something different? Does white become your new color? Does black become something new?

It is nothing like that. This color exists as a translucent. It is a fading trail that is left behind by movement. All movement leaves it behind. This color also appears before the movement occurs. It fades into existence, the object moves through it, it fades away.

That is senseless. That is mad, and you are either insane or you are lying.

To look at the world without these lenses, when there are people all around and there is movement in every direction, can be jarring and confusing.

What you are describing is incomprehensible.

I agree. You cannot comprehend it.

If you looked at me, you would see a trail of this color? You would know where I walked in from?

That is true. And depending on the light in the air, if your trail does not fade too quickly, I could retrace your steps for a long distance. The problem is that everyone else’s trail would collide with yours. And the movement of everything else, too — cars, animals, falling objects.

And you also see a trail of where I am going?

This is true.

If I were to walk away, you would know the direction I was going to take.

Yes.

So you could see into the future.

Sort of. I know what direction you are going to take. I could see exactly where you will go before you have even decided to go. I could see the direction that everything will take in my field of vision.

It sounds like a lie. It sounds like a phony lie that psychics claim to be true.

I am not a psychic. I cannot read your mind. But without these goggles, I can tell where you will go. It is scientific. It is proven, and for me, it is as clear as day, because this color exists as powerfully as yellow and red and blue.

But how can you possibly see movement before it happens?

I can see it because I can see the fourth primary color and the fourth primary color does not exist in the same time schedule as the other three primary colors.

Time schedule?

We can only perceive of time as moving in a linear direction. We are human beings. Our bodies age progressively, in one direction. And, for us, color is only a part of the linear world. Colors all fade with time unless they are replenished with fresh ones. Our eyes perceive the colors and the types of light that help us to navigate properly through our own existence. But we are also as perceptive as worms are to us when we are forced to consider the limitations of our own mechanisms of contact with the world outside ourselves. We are arrogant enough to imagine that our own perception of reality is the final one. We are arrogant enough to assume that there are only three primary colors because that is all we can see, and therefore, no other colors can possibly exist. We are arrogant enough to imagine that time travels only in a set and measured direction because we age and break down and eventually stop working. We are arrogant, but we are no more arrogant than the parasite worm who lives in the intestines of a moose — for, to that parasite, there is no more reality than its dark existence among others like it, never knowing more than what its perceptions indicate to it, never knowing that, in fact, its whole world rests deep inside a strange beast that fights with another beast while drunks and other assorted riffraff bet over which moose will win the stupid fight.

My ability to see the fourth primary color is only a peek into the general reality that is denied us by our own crude organs. If I can see this color, then I can see what will happen before it happens because the color exists in the genuine reality of time itself. I am no more than a viewer, but I see this color and its place in the actually existing world in much the same way that anyone who looks up into the night sky will see the lights of stars that no longer exist. This color cannot be seen by you or most people because it has no place in the normal experience of human rapport with reality. But it is real. It is as real as we are. As those animals fighting over there. As real as the planet up there where you come from. It is real. The fourth primary color has no name because it is not allowed to by the people who cannot see it. But it exists. The fourth primary color exists. And contrary to their stupid law, it is lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis that does not exist. I have no condition, nor do I have a disease. I am not a mutation. I can only see what most others can’t.

This was the first time in his life he had ever explained any of this forbidden subject to anyone. As he spoke, he knew that at any moment, he could be arrested. However, the amusement park was noisy and, from what he could gather, completely lawless.

They went to an aluminum pizza stand and ordered slices. They stood at the counter, the bright white light bulbs strung in a line above their heads. He watched her eat, the way she folded the slice in half, the way she blew on it, her black eyes glistening. They shared a secret. He committed crimes against the state by even talking about himself. But she had an extraordinary aura of trust about her. He did not believe she would get him in any kind of trouble. She told him that the pizza on Earth was a completely different thing than what they ate.

If you show me the color of your eyes, no one will ever find out.

Everyone will find out. Starting with the police.

Do you see any police here?

I refuse to show you my eyes.

I think you want to. I can tell. You want to show me your eyes.

Why would I want to show you my eyes?

Because you like me. You fancy me.

This…is…true.

Then why don’t you show me your eyes.

Because it might hurt you, and I will be sent to prison.

I won’t get hurt. I am very strong. I am from the Earth. The gravity there would be too much for everyone you know. I can take it. Have you ever met an Earth girl before?

No.

Have you ever kissed an Earth girl before?

Hieronymus bought a booklet of tickets and they went on some of the rides. The first one was a twirling contraption called the tarantula, and it actually did resemble a giant spider, except it had about twenty legs instead of only eight. Along with every other ride, it was covered in light bulbs. Hieronymus had never seen so many light bulbs in his life — they were considered archaic, outdated, and even dangerous. They walked around and entered into a house of mirrors and soon left, laughing at each other’s distorted images. After that, the two of them went onto the roller coaster. They sat in the front. During the long steep climb to the top, he looked around. Colossal white hummingbirds hovered in the air and traveled upward with them. The world of neon stretched of into forever, through the Sea of Tranquility. The glittering casinos. The flowing rivers of endless, illuminated traffic working its way across webs of elevated highways — thousands of Saturn-on-side cars jammed together and following each other like industrious ants pretending to be fireflies. More hummingbirds, farther away, journeyed in fast-moving clouds through the distance. Millions of them, everywhere. They saw the glowing silhouettes of cities and towns in the distance, apartment complexes, craters filled with water, concrete and steel Ulzatallizine pumping stations, refineries, and tall docking stations for the many Mega Cruisers that floated in the distance, massive sturgeon-shaped vessels, either ascending into the red sky or slowly searching for places to land after their impossibly long voyages from everywhere far away. Windows Falling On Sparrows pointed to one of them with her long finger. “Look,” she said, with a very slight tinge of sadness. “That’s my ship — that’s the
Ragmagothic Chrysanthemum
.”

The roller coaster began its sudden jolt downward, and they held onto each other.

You want to show me your eyes.

Yes. I want to. But it is forbidden.

And that is all the more reason why.

I have never purposefully shown my eyes to anyone.

So I will be the first. Intentionally.

Yes. But you may never forgive me.

I will never forgive you if you don’t show me your eyes.

I will be the first.

And I will be the first that you have ever intentionally shown them to.

I hope we won’t regret this.

If we do, it doesn’t matter. I’ll go back to Earth. You will continue your life here. We’ll forget about each other if it turns into something we regret.

My heart is racing. I can’t wait to see you, to look at you without these goggles on.

I can’t wait to see your eyes and their color. Feel my heart. It’s racing just like yours.

The boy from the Moon and the girl from Earth discovered a small alleyway between two old abandoned brick buildings. Holding hands, they ran into it. It led to a very secluded yard, completely dark except for the reflected light from the Earth directly above them. They were alone, surrounded by walls and three or four hummingbirds, one of which started to circle around them. Outside, the twirling lights of the nearby rides revolved, churned with the music of a thousand bells.

They faced each other, holding each other by the arms. First they kissed for a delightfully long time. Her mouth, from so far away. Both were fairly new at this and the slight awkwardness was wonderful in and of itself. Their noses touched. He felt her breath air as it mixed with his own.

They could not stop. His spine was on fire. He felt her fingers on his arms.

Never in his life had he ever felt so completely alive.

They continued to kiss.

Then their faces parted. The Earth hung directly above. It cast a blue light on her as she looked at him.

She reached forward and with her fingers, she lifted his goggles up and off his face.

It was a disaster. She was completely unprepared for what she saw, and he was beyond irresponsible for allowing it to go this far. But he couldn’t help it—he really liked her. She liked him also. But as soon as he saw her face crumple up into a pit of inhuman confusion just a second after seeing the fourth primary color, he knew he had done a very bad thing.

She saw the color. Both disks. Black pupil in the middle of each iris. Each iris a circle filled in with—that color. Yes, it was a primary color. As individual and as different as red and yellow and blue. How could she look at it? There was no reference. It was profoundly alien and profoundly normal, as it was a color and no more, but it was also an outsider color. After a couple of seconds, her eyes began to hurt, and she felt as if she had looked directly into the sun. There was a clicking sensation in her head. Those two circles of color. Was it a color or was it a disruption? This boy, this strange boy just in front of her, he brought this color to her. How could she ever forgive him? He stood, a god, a creature. He was not a human being. He was a stone. He came from the center of the Moon. With his eyes, he did not have to touch her to crack her head open with this intrusion, she felt so utterly displaced from herself, inside-out, her peripheral vision closed, only a pinpoint of the world visible in front of her, to focus on that dreadful intrusion, that color, that horrible porthole into both Hell and Heaven, all movement disjointed. She swore she could feel chemicals shifting and mixing. She thought of those men who were crushed just a few hours ago, the way their spines collapsed as if they were a stack of wooden coins covered in red strawberry syrup. Her own spine felt the same way, wobbly, unable to maintain itself, and her mouth was dry, and her teeth were just crystal objects about to break. Her physical self, her lungs barely functioned, her heart worked in overdrive, and her brain did not work at all. She was a blank vessel. Her tender tears flowed out from her eyes and into a world where water does not fall from the sky. What was she doing on the Moon for God’s sake? What was she doing in this unnatural, man-made place? It was a false world, and that boy was false. He was a false human with his false eye color, and he tricked her with his good looks and his exotic goggles. He must be a demon or he must be some kind of strange god from the far side of the Moon. She never believed in God or any type of god, but what else but a god could he be? A god of the underworld. That color, both wondrous and nauseating and crippling, that was him. He and that color were one and she wanted to kill him and she wanted to worship him because she hated him and she loved him and now she was forever attached to him. She’d seen his eyes, and she cursed herself for being so stupid. He warned her but she was so goddamned cocky and sure of herself and this was what happened and forever after she will know that she is half-blind as she now fully understands that the world contains a fourth primary color. She has seen it, but only for a second. It is real, but she would never see it ever again and the existence of this color confirmed that human beings are so pitifully limited in their communication with the world, and she resented the boy in front of her for spelling this out with just a blink of an eye.