One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy (6 page)

He looked down at the dead kid. This kind of thing had happened before — getting picked on by bullies, getting the goggles torn off, and the result was always similar to this. Except no one had ever died before.

The principal, two policemen, a detective, and a forensics expert arrived at the scene. Shortly afterward, they were joined by another figure — a completely silver mechanical man. A rescue robot. He moved into the classroom as gracefully as a ballet dancer. He pointed his featureless face at the huddled students and a humming sound vibrated upward and out of him as he quickly scanned the assembled group, measuring their heart rates and nervous systems, making sure none of the human beings were experiencing trauma or shock from witnessing the untimely death of a classmate. He was so shiny that all the students saw their own reflections in his body and in his blank visage. The forensic expert took blood samples from Hieronymus, the dead boy, and the other two, one of whom had discovered a corner in the shabby room. The blood samples were placed into a small handheld machine for immediate analysis. The detective stared at Hieronymus, then turned to the principal.

“You let creatures like this take classes with regular students?”

“It’s the law. We have to integrate them into the student body.”

“This is the first time anyone’s ever died from this.”

“Died from what?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh, the color that doesn’t exist.”

The detective glared again over at Hieronymus. Hieronymus glared back. This was a very strange-looking man. His face appeared to be made from sweat-dripping plastic, as if it were a mask molded to look as real as possible, but failing because it was so hot and uncomfortable. The result was a sad fakeness, a department store mannequin’s face with a moving mouth and a sad, angry eye behind the covering. An odor of lanolin hung in the air. A portrait of unpleasantness. Nobody liked this man. The other cops couldn’t stand him. But he was an expert in these cases, and Lieutenant Dogumanhed Schmet was perturbed that this dangerous, inhuman creature with those eyes was not in handcuffs. One of the police officers had already recorded Hieronymus’ statement. The other students were interviewed, but they, being who they were, gave twenty-five drastically different versions of what had happened.

No one cared what those psychopaths thought anyway. The whole scene had been captured by the classroom surveillance system, and it was clear Hieronymus had been hassled, then assaulted. The dead boy, Lester, had grabbed the Schmilliazano lenses while the other two held the One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy.

The forensics expert spoke to the detective after his analysis machine beeped with its result shown on its tiny, old-fashioned screen. “Okay, so the dead boy has a load of Buzz in his blood, along with traces of E-94 — he was raring to go. His levels indicate overdose. Those other two? They’re going to the hospital right now, and Goggles over there,” he pointed to Hieronymus, "is clean.”

“Do you think that boy’s overdose could have been triggered by something?” the detective asked.

“Sure. It was triggered by him taking too much Buzz and mixing it with E-94, which is probably the most jackass thing one could possibly do.”

The detective pointed to Hieronymus.

“You see what we have over here.”

The forensics expert, a balding man who combed his black hair over his shiny wet skull in the exact same way men have been doing for centuries and centuries, was extremely careful with his words.

“I see a boy, probably about fourteen years of age.”

“You know what happened. I want you to include in your report that even though his goggles were torn from his face involuntarily, the fourth primary color in his eyes triggered the overdose in the Buzzhead who’s about to go to the morgue.”

“Officially, the fourth primary color does not exist.”

“I don’t care if you think it exists or not — I want you to make the connection that that boy’s overdose was caused by the fourth primary color.”

“His overdose was caused by the ingesting and inhaling of too many illegal drugs. There is nothing in his blood sample that remotely suggests infuence by any visual stimuli. I am not going to include details in my report that are not scientific and true, that cannot be presented as evidence. And in the eyes of the law, this so-called fourth primary color does not exist.”

Annoyed and unsatisfied, Lieutenant Schmet then turned to the rescue robot.

“Belwin!” he shouted over at the machine. “Come here!”

Belwin, his silver form a marvel of anatomical engineering and chrome-plated minimalist style, moved eloquently toward Lieutenant Schmet.

“Yes, Lieutenant Schmet.”

“Belwin, please scan the dead boy, and scan the creature over there with the goggles.”

“Technically, Lieutenant, the expression ‘creature’ is not legally accurate when addressing the student with the Schmilliazano goggles.”

“Whatever. Scan them both and tell me the extent to which the dead boy’s death can be blamed on his exposure to the fourth primary color.”

“Excuse me, Lieutenant, but there are only three primary colors: yellow, red, and blue.”

“Belwin, are you familiar with lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis?”

“Only insofar as whenever I perform feats of rescue, should I come across accident or fire victims who are wearing Schmilliazano goggles, I am obliged to make sure the goggles remain upon their faces. It is a safety consideration that I do not understand, yet am programmed to follow most stridently.”

“Enough with the fireman shoptalk, Belwin. Kindly scan the cerebral cortex and optic nerve connections of the dead boy. Is there a rupture among the perceptionary axis that can be used as evidence pertaining to trauma from exposure to the fourth primary color?”

“Lieutenant Schmet, I am happy to assist you in all rescue operations. However, I am afraid that I will be of little use as an evidence gatherer. My scanning results only concur with my human colleague from the forensics department, which is that the overwhelming presence of the aforementioned illegal chemicals caused the death of this poor student. At this point, it is purely hypothetical for you to suggest that an unimaginable color could have thrown this deceased young man into a state of deadly trauma. And legally, there is no backing for it, as according to my legal statutes that guide my interaction with the human population, no fourth primary color exists and, therefore, it is outside my own understanding, as well as the understanding of the law and how it is applied to incidences of any criminal investigation. I say this not only as a machine, but as a machine who sympathizes with your curiosity of the perceptive conundrum. I do not see colors at all, as I am not a living entity, but I can imagine that were I a living being, I for one would be shocked to see any color at all, as I do not know what colors are, except as hypotheticals on the spectrum analysis data I am fed, which, by the way, only informs me of three primary colors. And three is the legal limit. You yourself are outside the law to suggest otherwise, and you may have to put yourself under arrest if you persist in confronting the civilian population about colors that, indeed, do not exist within the laws that govern our legal responsibilities when interacting with the population of our society.”

Schmet stared at the robot and saw his own unpleasant reflection in the slab of shiny metal where a face could have been constructed. He had one brown eye and one blue eye. They moved in unison, but not quite, as one was real and one was false. His real eye shifted to the boy with the goggles, and he made an intensive mental note to remember this one, this fish that got away.

That afternoon, Hieronymus was sent to his next class: ancient literature. He sat with his fellow students and entered into a class discussion on
White Jacket
by Melville and how it compared with Credolpher’s
Rhythm of the Scron
. The teacher was immensely pleased with Hieronymus. And the other students, so adult-like, so respectful, were astonished by his on-the-spot analysis of these old classic works as well. Slue was there — she was in all the Advanced Honors classes. She always felt a strange, suppressed pride in her fellow One Hundred Percenter whenever he started speaking of these dead authors and the relevance of their ancient words and how they tied in with one another and how they tied in with the current social and political and cultural spectrum of their own lives, today, on the Moon. Hieronymus even quoted, verbatim, lines from
White Jacket
in its original language, free of translation, and when he finished it, he explained what it meant, and some students were so moved they went through great lengths to hide the moisture in their eyes.

No one thought of the dead boy on the other end of the school who was at that moment getting transferred to the Sea of Tranquility central morgue. No one ever found out about it. It was a non-event, just like the non-color.

The next day, when Hieronymus returned to remedial math, the incident was completely forgotten. But the other students, despite their ever-rambunctious behavior and destructiveness toward everything, avoided him. They feared him. He was a demon, or some kind of ghoul who could kill with a glance.

Hieronymus didn’t even have to touch them if he wanted to kick their ass — he did it by just looking at them.

Two years went by. In all that time, nobody knew of his double life. Of his
extreme academic schizophrenia
. He dreaded someone would find out. Especially Slue. He was a master at avoiding the subject of
wait, what math class are you in
? Or
wait, where do you go for half the day?
Or the trickiest question of all,
wait, what were you doing on the second floor hanging out with those Loopies?

Loopies.

Everything in the teenage world has a derogatory name. Always a put down. People categorized, given a label that, no matter what, stays and stays and stays.

Was that you I saw walking down the corridor with those Loopies?

Is it true that you have a twin brother who’s a Loopie?

I passed by the Loopie class and I couldn’t believe it — I thought I saw you in there with them.

The Loopies were what everyone else called them. If you were in
that
class, you were a Loopie. Even the teachers used the expression. While visiting the main office, Hieronymus once heard a substitute teacher being told that
sorry, today you get the Loopies, and the sub just sighed and cursed and complained that it is going to be a long day today, I can’t believe that I’m stuck with the Loopies again, those kids are really horrible, oh innacaws it, on second thought I’m not doing this, no way
and the sub stormed out and the payroll secretary had to make a few more phone calls to find another substitute teacher.
Hello, this is Lunar Public 777, we have a call for a last-minute substitution, are you available. Yes? Good. Well actually, you will be subbing for section 241…yes, uh, that is correct, that is the Loopie section, but — wait, you just told me that you were available…

Nobody wanted to teach the Loopies. Some teachers did not even last a day. Substitutes never wanted to come back. That troubled class full of troubled kids went through at least fifteen teachers a year. Not counting the endless times substitutes had to be called in because teachers simply walked out.

Luckily, most of the students at Lunar Public 777 were not of the Loopie persuasion. Hieronymus was aware of this fact, but for half of every school day it seemed to him he was living in a world of Loopies. Their highly vocal concerns and reactive behavior over every tiny detail in front of them, their need to shout constantly about inane things that would never matter in a middle-class setting, their extreme physicality, their inability to stay seated for more than thirty seconds, their abusive name calling, all of it, the rudeness and the anarchy and the idiomatic expressions he failed to understand, the whole Loopie experience began to take a strange place in his heart. He was quietly becoming a part of their existence. Sitting in that crowded class placed him in a very privileged spot: he could observe, only because they left him alone — and they left him alone because he was a killer and a demon.

He took advantage of the easy work and he was the only one in class who bothered to do any assignments. He scored very well on the remedial exams and quizzes. With time, the students gradually stopped ignoring him, and through the ear-aching chaos, he found out he had some friends. Many of them had qualities he found lacking in some of the kids from the Advanced Honors class. None of the Loopies were pretentious, for example. They were all brutally, horribly honest. They never pretended to like you. Beneath the shifting waves of illogic and anarchy and cruelty and sentimentality was a code — the Loopie Code — and after his first few months among them, he began to understand the basics of it and how to communicate with them. It was fun. He became "the smart one" in class, and slowly, ever so slowly, some of the Loopies actually put the occasional schoolwork question to him. Once that started to happen, he almost became a type of liaison between the students and whoever the teacher happened to be at the time. He became one of them. He even had a Loopie name. The Loopies, in line with Loopie reasoning, simply dropped the first three syllables from Hieronymus. He simply became Mus. He was the Loopie who proved the schoolwork in remedial math and remedial science was not the problem, the problem was with the
goddamned way the innacawsing wrackball teacher was looking at my EEE shoes, what, does he think he can find foot houses that can crimp his pan-handle like that?