One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy by Stephen Tunney Read Free Book Online Page B

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