The Regime of Blindness. She will tell him. He knows it’s true.
Slue sat there for a long time looking at him. Through his goggles, she saw him blink both his eyes. She knew he was not looking at anything, and she waited for him to speak again, and his lips did move, but nothing came out. He reached up and brushed something imaginary from his hair. He was about to apologize, but he couldn’t. I’m sorry, I’m just jealous, those boys don’t have goggles covering their eyes...
Dear Hieronymus, I did not know this about your mother. It was your secret. I have a secret, too. But I can’t tell you. Not yet. It’s about my older brother, Raskar. You remember him? He lives in the District of Copernicus. He’s an attorney, and he works in the Lunar Federal Court, and he has accidently discovered some things that are unimaginable. Things that have direct consequences for you and I. What the government and its corporate partners are doing. My parents are terrified that he is going to get arrested, but they are even more terrified of what may happen to me if his ear and eye on the truth are disrupted. He has joined an underground society, secretly gathering evidence that all is not right here on the Moon. All is not right, but one thing is for certain: The lies began when they told us all we can never look at each other. That’s what they fear the most. You and I, and others like us, looking at each other.
Eventually, she asked him a question. It had to do with their project.
“You really aren’t reading The Random Treewolf, are you?”
Hieronymus shook himself out of his wandering mind. Of course. Their school project. His page was still illuminated and hanging in midair only inches away, next to her page. The texts were entirely different.
“It was a surprise I wanted to show you. We really are reading the same book by the same author, but…” He paused. “My copy is a direct translation of the original edition. What we have in the library here in school is the standard version that students have been studying for at least one hundred and thirty years. I found out that this book has been ‘updated’ three hundred and forty-eight times in the past nine hundred years.”
Slue was astonished, and she reacted in her usual manner whenever she was astonished at anything — she shrugged her shoulders with a noncommittal “So?”
“It is a completely different book,” he replied. “It is evidence of the crime of ‘updating’.”
“The crime of ‘updating’?” she whispered. With her stylo-point, she flipped the book imagery back to the title page. It read: The Random Treewolf by Naac Koonx (Natalie Koolmahn) Translated from the Ancient American English by Reno Rexaphin.
“Reno Rexaphin? Any relation?”
“My uncle. He’s a Professor of Ancient Literature at Quadroff-Maxant University on Earth. But he comes to the Moon quite often for research. He’s here now, as a matter of fact. I saw him two days ago.”
“He comes to the Moon — to research ancient literature?”
“Of course. The Moon has the largest paper book library in human history.”
“Paper books? Here on the Moon?”
“Yes. You didn’t know that?”
“I never imagined such a thing.”
“It’s not exactly a secret, but it’s not open to the general public either. Only researchers like my Uncle Reno have access.”
“Where is this library?”
“On the far side. Inside of a mountain. It’s more like a vault, from what I hear. But it was the only way to save all of these ancient books from being lost forever.”
“They sent them here to the Moon?”
Hieronymus recalled the long conversation he had had with his Uncle Reno. Reno Rexaphin had made a name for himself in the tiny world of academics by discovering most of the current editions of classic literature made available to the public today bore almost no resemblance to their original editions that had one time existed on paper in their original languages.
Reno concluded that gradual laziness, anti-intellectualism, and fuel consumption were to blame for what he considered to be this colossal human tragedy.
“Hundreds of years ago, the Earth ran out of fuel,” he’d explained to Hieronymus during his last visit. “Then some idiot discovered that old paper books, with their highly combustible paper sheets, made a fine substitute. No one cared that this meant destroying millions of copies of novels — because nobody read them anymore. Literature itself had been transferred to a digital format, but it was done badly and carelessly and the experience of picking up a book and flipping through the pages was lost. Books were considered these archaic things, taking up space, no longer readable because the general vocabulary of humanity had diminished to such a pathetic level that nobody understood them anyway. Great works of literature were lumped together with common magazines and newspapers. Burned as fuel. And nobody, absolutely nobody, cared. Books became akin to the organic matter of dinosaurs and prehistoric forests that eventually became oil. Those who protested this were openly mocked.”
Slue looked at Hieronymus as he explained what his uncle had told him — how, at last, a movement was begun to bring the last copies of books to the far side of the Moon, how the hidden library was constructed, how through the centuries that followed, it grew into the largest vault of human endeavor and archiving in history. They kept millions — maybe even billions — of paper books there. Many of them written in languages that didn’t even exist anymore.
“Do you think your uncle would let us come and see this place?” she asked.
“As long as he’s there, I don’t think there would be any problem at all.”
“I have never seen a real paper book in my life,” she half-whispered.
“Nor I,” replied Hieronymus.
They looked at the image of the title page again.
“When did your uncle translate this one?” Slue asked.
Hieronymus smiled. “My uncle did this while he was in graduate school, twenty-something years ago. It was one of his first. He was surprised when I told him you and I were assigned to make an exposé on The Random Treewolf. It is a book he knows backward and forward — and then he suggested, because he was able to get me this copy right here, that if we really wanted to have fun and get an outstanding grade, we should use the original-original-original version that he translated himself from the first twelve-hundred-year-old paper edition.”
“Paper edition?” Slue sighed almost dreamily. “Extraordinary. He knows what it’s like to read a book where the words are printed on paper pages…”
“I guess it must be a little like having rain on the Moon,” added Hieronymus.
They looked at the two sets of text in front of them. Slue’s copy suddenly appeared to be very plain, short, and uninteresting when compared to the image floating in front of Hieronymus, where the sentences described things they did not fully understand, and passages appeared to be written for the beauty of themselves, and the images they provoked, and the sounds they made as the words were echoed in the reader’s mind.
The version translated by his uncle had three times the number of pages. There were entire chapters and numerous characters nowhere to be found in the modern version. The more they directly compared the two, the blander and more superficial the standard version became. Slue pointed out an idiomatic expression she knew for a fact was invented only a century earlier. As they directly compared the two texts, their task, which started out as a type of detective game, soon evolved into a tragic comprehension of cultural and intellectual loss.
“According to my uncle, the real interesting part is not so much the physical condition of the paper books, but the gradual deterioration of their meaning through the centuries. Meaning, that as languages changed, ever so slightly, literature itself became less understandable — as vocabularies shrunk, and as generations passed, entire novels became incomprehensible.
“There was a hemorrhaging of words and meaning, and instead of publishers protecting their original works, they began to slightly ’update’ novels for younger generati
ons. Entire books were shrunk to accommodate the dumbed-down, shrinking vocabularies of the population. And once they started chopping words, they started chopping paragraphs. Then they started chopping pages. Novels by this time were no longer produced on paper, so it was easier to cut them in half without having anyone notice. And nobody cared anyway.
“Nobody cares now. You and I care because we’re in the smart kid section — but all those students who passed through here on their way to the auditorium? Would they be the least bit curious to know that the original version of The Random Treewolf is three hundred and fortynine pages and the copy we all read in school is just under a hundred?”
Before Slue had a moment to contemplate this amazing discovery, there was a rude interruption. The disturbing ruckus of a desk falling over.
The Loopies entered the rotunda. About fifteen of them. All of them loud, shouting, laughing, and fighting.
Hieronymus froze.
His two worlds collided with a cacophony of smashing glass and crashing furniture. He had never been cornered in one room with both Toppers and Loopies at the same time. They didn’t mix.
“Look!” one of them shouted — this was a shaggy little guy named Plennim. “Look who’s here! It’s Mus!” Plennim had a scratchy voice, and his eyes were bloodshot. He wore a white shirt with a sizeable oil stain on its front.
“Mus! Muuuuuss!” bellowed a fellow whose long beard reached the middle of his chest. Jessker — one of the worst. He had a tattoo of a third eye on his forehead and he carried around his neck a small silver box on a chain. He had the annoying habit of going up to people and opening the top of the box just under their noses, insisting that they "Smell! Smell!” and the odor that wafted up out from the inside of this cube was, without fail, always horrendous.
Within seconds, two Loopies started wrestling, and another table was smashed when one boy jumped up on it for no apparent reason other than to check and see how the traction under his shoes would grip.
In front of Slue’s disbelieving eyes, Hieronymus, with a wave of his stylo-point, quickly shut down the floating image of the book project he had been eagerly discussing with her just seconds before and stood up. Two very attractive girls walked over to him. One was dressed in a fannel pajama, and she wore rollers in her hair. Her large eyes had the most unusual allure to them, unfortunately spoiled by the bruise on her face. This was Clellen. The young lady just next to her was shorter and her name was Tseehop. Tseehop had long black hair to her knees. She wore white jeans with red polka dots. On her black t-shirt was a drawing of a man on a horse holding a submachine gun. The man’s eyes were plucked out. So were the horse’s.
“Mus!” Clellen cooed, batting her eyelids as soon as she came face to face with Hieronymus. “Mus, we missed you in math today.”
“Yeah, Mus, where were you?” added Tseehop. “Debbie and Johndon were thrown out of class for making out — ”
“They were doing a lot more than making out, Tseehop,” Clellen said, her eyebrow raised. “He had her shirt up over her neck and she had her hand in his — ”
But Tseehop didn’t let Clellen finish her sentence.
“Did you cut class?” she abruptly asked Hieronymus, fake-inquisitor style.
Hieronymus’s grin widened. He then said with an enthusiasm Slue had never heard before, “Yes! I always cut math on Tuesday. You know that!”
Slue froze as she sat looking up at this unfolding spectacle. Hieronymus knew these Loopies. He knew them! They knew him! They had an affectionate nickname for him! Mus! They called him Mus! He had a Loopie nickname! An ugly-sounding Loopie nickname! Mus! So vulgar, like they couldn’t even bother to attempt to pronounce his whole name.
And what was all this business about cutting class? Hieronymus is not in any Loopie classes! That would be impossible. He’s a Topper.
Slue shook her head. It was like she was in a horrific dream all of a sudden.
When she looked up, the noisy spectacle had only gotten worse.
Clellen put her arm around Hieronymus and touched the end of his nose with her pointer finger.
“So,” she continued in her coquettish voice. “When am I going to get to see what you look like without those goggles — I heard you have the most gorgeous eyes…”
Hieronymus touched the end of her nose. Slue was amazed at how familiar he was toward this girl.
“Now who told you that, Clellenie-clel…”
“Oh, word gets out. Some girls…have seen…your…eyes…”
Was this really Hieronymus? Slue wondered. Talking and flirting with...Loopies?
She quietly and quickly put away her research. She felt numb. Three of her classmates from another table several meters away, stared wideeyed at her, terrified. They were also Toppers, and they were behaving as if they were about to get pummeled by these criminal types who hadn’t even noticed them yet.
One scared Topper boy, Poole, silently mouthed, Let’s go! repeatedly. But she was frozen.
The counter where the librarian normally sat attracted the attention of three Loopies, who quickly took out screwdrivers and magic markers. With a loud blunt cackle of laughs and obscenities, they proceeded to carve and mark up and vandalize the main desk with a destructive abandon Slue never thought possible.
One boy punched another directly in the mouth.
A tall boy in a trenchcoat went up to Tseehop and they started kissing, first standing, then passionately crashing upon a table where another group of terrified students got up and fled.
Slue looked back at Hieronymus.
“Clellen, my naughty she-cat,” he said to the strange girl in the rollers. “You know that if these goggles ever come off for any girl, it would be you…”
“Mus,” she laughed, "You are suuuuuuch a liar…”
Clellen began to stroke his face with wide, affectionate sweeps of her hand, which had the number "10" tattooed on it in dark green ink. She was obviously trying to kiss him, and Hieronymus glanced at Slue as he made a slight effort to resist.
Another table crashed. The boy with the traction shoes jumped off his second wreck.
The two wrestling kids shifted gears and hurled the crudest and most vicious insults at one another, making Slue wince. And then, out of the blue, from another corner, two extremely tall Loopie girls in raggedy velvet tuxedos began punching the Hell out of each other, and within seconds there was blood flowing from one of the girl’s noses. Nobody cared, including Hieronymus.
“Show me!” Clellen laughed.
“No!” He laughed back.
“Show me!”
He covered his eyes with both palms, and Clellen wrapped herself around him tighter, as if she were an octopus trying to open a cartoon treasure chest. They immediately fell to the floor, and Hieronymus’ attempts to get her off him were clearly lackadaisical. He seemed to love this little game she was playing with him, and they rolled around as if they were lovers on a haystack, Clellen laughing and Hieronymus mildly protesting between giggles.
Slue got up from her seat and walked toward the Toppers who were slowly walking backward out of the room, taking long silent steps to avoid getting the attention of these hoodlums. She joined them, and as they all left, Slue was suddenly overwhelmed by an emotion she could not fully comprehend. She stopped. She walked back into the rotunda by herself and went up to the rolling forms Hieronymus and Clellen on the floor.
“Hieronymus,” she called out to her changeling friend. “Hieronymus, I’m going.”
She immediately regretted bringing attention to herself. Silence swept through the room as every Loopie stopped their destructive, noisy behavior and looked at Slue.
Only teachers called him Hieronymus. And Bruegel, but he was not there.
Then Clellen and Tseehop exploded in excitement.
“Ohmygod! Ohmygod! This is SSSSOOOOOO CUTE!”
Clellen jumped up from the floor and in two seconds was uncomfortably close to Slue’s face. “You are so cute!” she exclaimed, as if she
were a little girl in a toy shop picking up a stuffed doll she wanted. “A One Hundred Percent Lunar GIRRRRRL! And you know Mus! You even call him Here-on-uh-mus!”
The boy in the trenchcoat sat on the desk just next to where Slue stood. He reached up and poked her elbow.
“I didn’t know Mus had a sister. Are you his sister?”
Tseehop was more direct.
“Hey, you must be Mus’ girlfriend! I’ll bet you both take your goggles off when you’re sliding in each other’s sweat!”
Slue froze. She was surrounded by these criminals. Why do they even allow people like this in school? She glanced at the students destroying the counter. A loud crash thundered out from the lounging area as more furniture was destroyed. Where are the teachers? she wondered.
Hieronymus slowly got up and sauntered over to the gathering around Slue. Even the way he walked was drastically different when he was among this riffraff.
The trenchoat boy shouted unnecessarily loudly over to Hieronymus.
“Mus! How can this girl be your hop-on if she’s also a goggle-freak like you? I thought all you goggle-freaks hated each other.”
Hieronymus pushed himself through the crowd and placed himself between Slue and Clellen.
“Everyone,” he announced to the Loopies. “This is Slue.”
“Slue!” Clellen exclaimed. “That’s a sexy name. I love your hair!”
Slue nodded. The big bruise under Clellen’s face was extremely difficult to look at.
“How do you know Mus?” a boy in the back shouted.
“Uhhh,” began Slue, obviously scared. “I’ve known Hieronymus since the third grade.”
“How come you’re not in our class?” demanded another.
Slue had no answer for that, so she just looked away.
Two or three other Loopies came over. One of them, Jessker, clutched the silver box around his neck. As soon as he saw Slue, he did what he always did when he met someone for the first time. He opened up the lid of the tiny box and held it up to Slue’s face.
One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy Page 7