One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy by Stephen Tunney Page B

remarkable and strange. At school, for years, there were endless rumors about these bizarre people who lived on the Moon, that they had to wear goggles because there was a color in their eyes no one was allowed to see. That they saw invisible colors enabling them to look into the future.
    And, the most fascinating rumor of all: One Hundred Percent Lunar People, with their ability to see all of that, were the only ones who were able to pilot all the fast stellar ships, including the Mega Cruisers. Only their eyes could transform the bending of unseen light across outer space into safe passageways through the solar system. Only they could see the pathways of the planets over the incredible distances.
    All of this was just rumor. But she did have a friend of hers named Slaquenn who, as it turns out, had a cousin who was a One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy. And something terrible indeed happened to that boy to support the rumors.
    Her friend nervously explained it one day. She was a classmate. It happened during a field trip their school took into the countryside to explore the overgrown ruins of a city that had been destroyed several centuries earlier. The two of them wandered of from the rest of the class. The air smelled of the usual mix between burnt plastic and sour foliage. Slaquenn insisted Windows Falling On Sparrows follow her to an isolated area because she had something really important to tell her. Windows Falling On Sparrows assumed it would be nothing more than her latest secret crush on some unobtainable boy. She followed Slaquenn to a spot beneath an ancient elevated highway, its concrete and steel structure now just a collection of cracks and rust. Sufficiently isolated, Slaquenn told Windows Falling On Sparrows the incredible story of her cousin.
    Don’t tell anyone what I am about to tell you, Windows Falling On Sparrows. I have to be quick, and I have to tell you before I change my mind. I have a cousin. His name is Bik. He is ten years older than we are. I never really knew him, but I did visit him once, a long time ago on the Moon. The Moon, by the way, is a very weird place. Never go there. Anyway, Bik is my father’s nephew — the son of his brother. Don’t tell anyone this, but Bik is what they call a One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy. I never completely understood what that really meant, but these are people who are born on the Moon and can somehow, and no one knows why, see colors that normal people cannot. They also have to keep their eyes covered because if you look at them in the eyes, you can get brain damage or you can become crazy. This is all a big secret. These people, like my own cousin, are not allowed to leave the Moon. The last time I saw him was nine years ago. I was seven. He was seventeen. I traveled to the Moon with my parents to visit our relatives there. It was a very nice visit, but it was strange to meet my cousin, Bik, who always wore these strange goggles. I was very young, and I just thought he was about to go swimming. Right after we left, Bik got himself into a load of trouble. He was arrested for purposely showing his eyes to someone. He was sent to a prison on the far side of the Moon. No one was allowed to have any contact with him. Not even his family. His parents tried to visit him, but they were threatened with arrest if they continued to try. Then, the government insisted that Bik had never existed in the first place. All records of him, his school records, his hospital records, everything vanished. His mother was committed to a psychiatric hospital for imagining that she had a son. His father, my uncle, was sent to prison for subversion. He’s been there ever since. Meanwhile, Bik has been officially erased. The lunar government is very stubborn, and eventually, after years of trying to find out what happened, my father gave up. Then, just as we were ready to accept the harsh reality of Bik’s disappearance and the imprisonment of his parents, something else came up to