One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy (4 page)

Sometimes, people called the Moon the round rock.

Eighteen years on the round rock.

And it was worse for their son.

No One Hundred Percent Lunar People were ever permitted to visit Earth. Period.

An entire life condemned to the Lunar surface. His son. In exile. Forever.

Barbie finally opened her eyes, and quickly she looked away. Out the window, the sky hung in its usual, never-ending twilight of artifcial red. It never changed color, never became fully day or night. Always in-between. From here, the new parents could see all the neon-covered skyscrapers of South Aldrin City humming with a billion grains of endless human activity. A lone hummingbird hovered close to her window. She stared at it. It knocked on the glass with its beak, probably thinking she might give it food. Barbie only stared at it, and seconds later, the hummingbird flew away. One of the skyscrapers in the distance appeared to be experiencing a power outage. None of its lights were on — it just stood there, bland and blank, a dark pink slab among the gaudy urban decoration.

She turned her head slightly, just a few centimeters, to look up at the muddy brown Earth. A ball of twinkling lights and smoke and filth. An abomination. An eyesore. An example for any world never to become.

Eighteen years.

As she stared up at the diseased object, in her ears, she understood someone had entered. She had no interest whatsoever in whom that person could be. She did not even know if it was a man or a woman, and she didn’t give a damn. She continued to stare out the window. And whenever any cloudy snippet of conversation made its way into her ears, she tuned it out.

“Yes,” said Ringo. “Our son’s name is Hieronymus.”

“A very nice name,” said the social worker, smiling. “Did you or your wife choose that name?”

Ringo’s voice was resigned and unfocused. And he hesitated, as if he were hiding something, something he wanted to speak about but simply couldn’t.

“I chose it on my own. My wife has not been herself lately — she waved me away when I asked her what we should name our baby. She refused to be a part of the decision.”

He looked up and noticed the social worker was sitting next to him. Her name was Joyellenbacx and she was wearing a suit made of aluminum paper, and her shoes were very chic — bright red with drawings of grizzly bears etched into the shiny plastic. She wore a women’s tie that had a matching grizzly bear printed on it. She had large black eyes. Her hair was black. She smiled, and Ringo managed only a half-smile. And that was because he found her to be attractive — if she was only neutral in his eyes, he would have given her a neutral glance. With no smile at all.

“Why did you name him Hieronymus?” she asked, her smile unwavering, yet sincere.

“Oh. Well, you see…I was thinking that…you know, she might…” His eyes glazed over with suppressed tears. “That name, that name, is… well, I wasn’t thinking very clearly when I filled in the birth registration.”

“And is your wife okay with your choice of name?”

“I think so. I told her yesterday. I can’t always tell if she is paying attention. I’ll ask her. Barbie? Barbie, do you like the name I picked for our son? Hieronymus — remember? Our son’s name is Hieronymus.”

Barbie sobbed louder for a few seconds, then with her limp, barely living, horribly pale hand, she waved him away and continued weeping, her face deep in the moist pillow, no longer interested in the window and the landscape and the tower with the power outage in the distance.

“It’s fine with her,” Ringo said, as if his wife had somehow communicated something other than go away. “She likes the name.”

Joyellenbacx continued to smile, but not as sincerely as before. After a moment’s awkward pause, she began to speak in a hushed voice.

“Your son,” she continued, “suffers from lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis, also known simply as LOS.”

“Yes,” replied Ringo, his voice barely audible. “I know.”

The social worker was about to start in with the usual — that the misinformation surrounding those with LOS was completely untrue, that their son would indeed have a completely normal life. One Hundred Percent Lunar children always grew up to be completely normal One Hundred Percent Lunar adults. They got educated side by side with other kids. They got jobs and they got married. They had children like everyone else. They were citizens, and on the Moon their rights were equal to all other citizens. On the Moon, that is.

But she saw he was a very well-informed man. He was less interested in the statistics and clearly worried about his son’s health.

“Is LOS a disease?”

“No. Not at all. Your son is extremely healthy.”

“So there is nothing wrong with him.”

“Correct.”

“Well, if LOS is not a disease, what is it?”

“We don’t know. Lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis began to show up about two hundred years ago. There are theories as to why some are born with it, but nothing has been proven. It is simply the ability to see a fourth primary color.”

Ringo already knew. But the idea was too abstract for him to grasp its social and even political implications.

“I don’t understand what the big damn deal is. So what? My son can see a few colors that the rest us can’t. If that means he’s just a little less colorblind than most of humanity, well, so be it — I can’t imagine why he is forced by the law to wear those ugly goggles, and I especially don’t appreciate or understand why he is condemned to live his whole life on the Moon! You yourself said that he is healthy — that this is not a disease!”

Joyellenbacx waited for Ringo to collect his thoughts, and to calm down a little. Actually, he and his wife were taking this news fairly well compared to others. Two weeks ago, a man and a woman in Brothersoftang attacked her while having an identical conversation to this one. They could not accept their daughter’s eye color. They were now in jail, their daughter in an orphanage. He used to be the manager of a bank in William’s Hamlet. She was the Lunar liaison for the C.R.Z. Corporation. They had both been born on the Moon and reacted as horribly as any uninformed Earthling.

Ringo noticed the woman sitting next to him was holding an umbrella. He had not seen one in three years.

“Why are you doing with an umbrella? It
never
rains on the Moon.”

“I know.” She smiled. “My husband brought this back for me. Water fell from the sky. He used this to protect himself.”

“Believe me, it’s not a big deal — it’s actually a pain in the ass if you get stuck in it.”

“Rain. A world where water falls from the sky. It’s hard for me to imagine that.”

“So you’ve never been to Earth?”

“I was born there, but we moved to the Moon when I was only a few weeks old.”

“Well, you’re not missing much. And rain is highly overrated. It’s only good for the farmers — and even they think it smells bad.”

“Which is why it is so important to carry an umbrella.”

“You won’t need it here on the round rock.”

It is hereby stated that all Lunar Citizens shall comply with the regulations listed below in accordance with Lunar Law. Failure to comply shall be punishable within strict interpretation of Lunar Criminal code 489B.

All Lunar citizens legally identified as bearers of Lunarcroptic Ocular Symbolanosis (hereafter referred to as LOS) shall be permanently restricted to the surface of the Moon. Any attempt to visit Earth or the terraformed colonies on Mars, Venus, the Thirty-Seven Asteroid Confederation, the League of Jupiter Moons, the Cooperative of Saturn’s Moons Assembly, or any inhabitable or uninhabitable colonial entity within the legal frontiers of the Solar System shall be punishable by no less than twenty-five years imprisonment.

Any Lunar Citizen bearing LOS who attempts to breach the national planetary border of the Moon shall be subjected to criminal penalties. All Lunar Citizens bearing LOS must strictly adhere to the following social regulations while residing on the lunar surface among the local population.

Schmilliazano lenses MUST be worn at all times. A list of acceptable goggle manufacturers can be found at any hospital, school, or mayor’s office. Failure to wear Schmilliazano lenses is considered a criminal act.

IT IS ILLEGAL to show one’s uncovered eyes to any Lunar or foreign citizen. Failure to comply will carry with it SEVERE criminal penalties. No exceptions are permitted, including family members and close friends and spouses.

The purposeful showing of one’s eyes will be considered the equivalent of assault in the context of the law. It is illegal to attempt any visual reproduction of the so-called fourth primary color.

It is illegal to attempt to name or classify the so-called fourth primary color.

It is illegal to speak of the existence of the so-called fourth primary color.

The so-called fourth primary color does not exist.

Ringo stopped reading the dreadful document that she had politely handed to him. He ran his fingers through his thick black hair.

“Why does this even exist? Why aren’t people outraged by this?
Why?
”

Joyellenbacx shrugged her shoulders, somewhere between compassion and resignation. And a hidden measure of contempt.
No one cares why until it happens directly to them, she thought to herself. Including yourself, Mr. Rexaphin. Did you really give a damn about this until you yourself got sucked into it? Of course not. Were you ever outraged when it applied to others? I doubt it. But now that it has happened to you...

One of the broken neon stripes on the wall behind her sizzled and blinked on and off. She started to speak. She had said this all before and knew it all by heart. It was technical. She hated herself as she recited it.

“The first recorded case of lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis occurred two hundred and seventeen years ago. It fell upon a girl — her name was Eleanor Biie. She only lived to be about nine before the people in her town killed her. Her mother had already committed suicide and her father was reduced to a mumbling idiot. No one had any proper explanation, and it is public record how the shock of the girl’s eye color created the most inexplicable mayhem wherever she was, starting with her own home. You are aware, I suppose, of what happened at your son’s birth. A nurse stared directly into your son’s eyes. She experienced a short circuit at the most profound neuro-perceptive level. Your son has an eye color that cannot possibly exist. The human body and mind can only reject it if one sees it. It is an intrusion of the cognitive assembly of human perception. And her reaction was indeed normal. The mind uses its eyes as its first communicative portal of sensation with the outside world. But eyes are only organs — flesh, made of normal body tissue. For millions of years, humanity and, most likely, its animal predecessors relied on a sensory schemata dependent upon only three colors: yellow and red and blue. A fourth primary color disrupts the basic three-color tripod of our visual relation with the world. We cannot comprehend the fourth primary color, especially when it is shown to us. And because people cannot comprehend it, they invent their own surprisingly crude reasons for its existence. Totally logical people accept farfetched mythological and religious explanations. And historically, this has gone in both directions. Some of the early One Hundred Percent Lunar People were thought of as gods or demigods. Others were condemned as being agents of the devil or something like the devil.”

But Ringo could not bear to hear any of this. The more she spoke, the more technical and awful and pseudo-scientific and fanatically religious the whole thing began to sound. She lost him. He stopped listening. In the middle of her last sentence, he got up and walked out.

She ran to the door and caught sight of his back as he walked away down the long neon-lit corridor. She ran to catch up with him.

“Mr. Rexaphin! Wait!”

He turned around, his body stiff as if he were a wooden board revolving. Two wet lines ran down his face from the tears he had successfully kept locked up until his back was turned.

“Mr. Rexaphin, there is something else. Something you have to know. Something you must tell your son once he is old enough to understand.”

His dark brown eyes stared into hers, resigned, defeated.

“Sir, this is painful information I am about to give you. But it is true. And your son must be aware of this. It is very important. Your son must never become friends with any other child or person with LOS. Never. All LOS citizens, for their own good, must avoid one another.”

“Why,” he began, his voice barely a whisper, “why might that be?”

“If two people with lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis look at each other without their goggles on, they…”

“They fall in love like normal people?” he asked bitterly.

“No. They die.”

Lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis was rare — but not quite rare enough. It lay somewhere on the horizon, an ancient phantom from the dark, barely inhabited far side of the Moon. It would sweep in through the open window. It would leave a ball and chain on whomever it chose. It chose Hieronymus Rexaphin. Stay. Stay here. Its breath was older than the craters that had long since been filled with the water of melted comets.