Lunar Rising

There goes Charlotte, plunging into the hole that has just opened under her.

I look up just in time to hear her surprised breath. The next moment, I’m staring in disbelief at thin air.

“John!” I shout as panic bubbles up. “Charlotte’s fallen down a hole!”

“What?” John leaps down from the drill. “What happened?”

I have no time for John’s questions now. My heart makes the decision for me rather than my mind. I dive towards the hole, reaching outward for hands that I know won’t be there, and yet I still reach for Charlotte, hoping she’ll grasp me.

The hole widens thanks to my extra sudden weight, and I find myself tumbling in after Charlotte.

I scream and my voice fades into hoarse, dry coughs. The dust has entered my throat.

Before I shut my eyes, I can see John above me with fear dancing in his frightened eyes. He’s running towards me… and then I can’t see anymore. It’s too dark, and I’m falling away from the light, plummeting into a scene from years ago.

It’s another day that I can’t go outside.

The city domes still haven’t been repaired. Those useless robots! Mom makes sure all the windows have been securely latched shut, and the apartment is filled with simple lights hanging from the ceiling. Dad is stuck at work, and with no way to get home because of the faulty dome, we have been communicating through video chats and instant interactions through Lyria, a new tech company that sells various communication apps. Lyria is special. You need a simulator on both ends to get it done. Lyria creates a simulation for both people so that it feels as though they’re standing right in front of you, and that they can touch you, and you can hear their warm voices through tiny speakers, and it feels so real. But it’s not. It’s fake. As fake as the life I now live.

I’m only ten. I was adopted by this family, and we live happily, and you’d think that would make this a happily after ever, right? But I can’t shake off my shady past, and I can’t stop thinking about how my biological family must have really hated me to leave me in an alleyway.

I’m in the apartment with my new Mom. We know each other quite well now. I’m morphing into this new environment, I’m going to school and doing well, and she treats me like her kid.

I’m sitting the living room watching the news on a huge screen. I don’t turn on the 3D projector, so all I’m staring at is a curved, 2D screen. I’m bored, and yawning, and Mom is about to call Dad again to check on how he’s handling everything.

On the TV there are pictures of people with scary white eyes.

Mom, who are those people?” I question her with sheer curiosity.

“Bad people,” she replies at a glance.

“I don’t understand. What did they do?” There are videos being shown on TV, and the dry, solemn voiceover keeps enunciating: If any citizens see a person in the White-Eyes cult, they are to contact their local police right away. Dangerous.

“White-eyed people seem interesting.”

She spins around, alarmed at my statement. “Don’t say such a thing!” she exclaims. “Those people want to bring back the ozone layer and make many changes to the world.”

“Change isn’t always bad, right?”

“Change is good when it’s not to change into something old,” Mom says in deep thought. “Our planet was in a crisis during my grandmother’s time. The city domes weren’t built yet and the sun was very harmful.”

“What does the ozone layer do, then? Does it help with the problem?”

“No, Raven. The ozone layer only makes the sun worse. For the life of me I can’t understand why these people,” she scoffs, waving her arm at the screen, “would want to bring it back. The government and the rest of the world made everything clear. The ozone layer is very bad.”

“What happened to these people?”

“The government took their labs and their people. Still, I guess they’re looking for a few that they haven’t quite gotten yet. The white-eyes haven’t appeared on the news since…well, since you were four or five. But I doubt you’d remember.”

For years, I had thought that the ozone layer truly was bad, and so were the people trying to bring it back. I probably never would’ve imagined that in just a few years, I would be inventing a machine that produced energy from an alternate power source, and that I would be helping a girl with white eyes.

I would have never imagined finding what I would about to find next.