Lunar Rising

Looking out onto the sea of people sitting in the chairs set up for the concert, I can honestly say, right now, I’m feeling more proud and confident than nervous like the rest of my band. Jupin, the leader, is biting his nails again. A bad habit, but it’s lucky that he doesn’t use his fingers to play an instrument. He’s our lead singer. The other guys are tuning their instruments and strumming them absentmindedly. The chatter of the crowd from the curtains behind me make it impossible for me to think of anything besides the performance at hand.

I’m glad we got permission to host this event at the city park. I didn’t think we’d be able to, since we’re not that big of a band. I pluck a few strings of my electric bass and wait for Jupin to stop fretting.

Jupin frantically paces around, snapping at us to get ready, even though the only one who needs to get it together is himself.

The show starts, and it’s fantastic. As the curtains gently pull away, the lights set up around the park turn on slowly and point our way. Soon, the crowd has melted back into darkness. All we can see are the twinkling stars of USBs and the soft glow of the audience’s watches and microchip recorders.

The music begins, and the scenes behind us change with each song we play. There’s the one about nostalgia about good times with a friend, and the scene projected behind us and around the audience is one of trees and wildlife. We’ve turned the sound shield on for this song so that even if the audience can hear us, we can’t hear anything in the audience that can distract us from our playing. Therefore, people like Jupin would feel more secure. We switch to one of our big pop songs about city life. The background morphs into a colorful spectrum of nightlife, pulsing with the energetic heartbeat of our music. This scene shows all of us moving forward quickly, speeding past blurs of city lights and crowds of people. The sound shield is off, and we can hear the crowd cheer for us as I leap forward and rock my bass solo, my fingers flying as if conducting magic from the instrument.

The song finishes with a powerful beat. The relieved sighs of my bandmates from finishing this concert successfully are drowned out by the thunderous roar and applause from the crowd. They’re screaming. I smile back at the people and wave for them. After staying on the stage to receive the rest of the applause, I am the first to get off and start packing up.

As I pick up my guitar case and nod good-bye to my band mates, I sneak off to the darkened area to the side of the stage and wait for my clients. My band mates are busy handing out autographs, distracting the crowds for me without even knowing. After waiting for about one minute, I see them making their way towards me, two more people than what I had expected.

I recognize one of the three. Raven, the boy I’d helped out a few nights ago. The other two, a brown-haired, green-eyed girl, and a boy with ruffled curly hair, follow close behind Raven.

I clear my throat. “I didn’t expect to see so many here tonight,” I say casually, giving a small smile to Raven. “Who are these people? Friends?”

Raven shakes hands with me. “They’re on our side. This is Alicia,” he says, nodding to the girl, “and this is Neil.” He gestures to the boy with the curls.

“Actually,” says Alicia. “We can drop the façade. My real name is Charlotte.”

Neil widens his eyes but doesn’t say a word. Raven hesitates and sighs.

“Yes, her name is Charlotte, not Alicia. Her name is false because of certain… purposes.”

“Alright then, Charlotte. Nice to meet all of you.” We exchange formalities but get straight to business. “We have plenty of time to talk here, and privacy shouldn’t be an issue.” I take out a thin scanner out of my back pocket. “Mind if I…?”

“Go ahead.” Raven steps back and pulls his two friends with him. I scan them for listening devices. The scanner can’t scan microchips, but I’m pretty sure anyone with half a brain would turn off their microchip now.

I learn quite a lot from these guys. Neil and Raven have already known each from back on Earth and both their families decided to move to Tylius, and Charlotte ran away from the government. She says that she’s searching for a hidden, underground lab. I’m not sure if I can trust these kids, but for their sake, I might.

“So,” says Charlotte, after telling her story. “Raven told me to come to this concert so that we could talk to you. Can you tell us how you met Raven?”

“Whoa there, Charlotte.” I lean forward. “If anyone knows what I’m gonna tell you, I’m dead meat. How can I trust that you two,” I incline my head towards Charlotte and Neil, “will not give my secret away?”

Raven looks annoyed. “I trust them,” he says. “And under the circumstances in which we met, John, I’m pretty sure you already trust me.”

I won’t argue here. “Fine. If Raven says you’re okay, I believe him.”

Charlotte squints at me. “Raven didn’t tell me how you two met. I have a feeling it has to do with his nighttime expedition a few days ago?”

“Yes… it did.” I raise my eyebrows. “Raven wouldn’t have made it out without me that night. It was quite a risky business for the both of us.”

At the first sound of footsteps approaching the trapdoor, I know that I need to get this boy out of here.

I can’t make out exactly how this kid looks like, with his head turned away from me and the darkness hiding his features, but he looks a bit smaller than me, and he seems very determined. With a hunched back in front of the computer screen, he’s skimming through the files that I had already looked at previously. When the footsteps start to get slightly louder, I reach forward and grab him.

The boy nearly cries out in alarm and clumsily tries to tackle me back. I put a hand to his mouth and we roll on the floor, pushing and heaving. Suddenly, we both hear the loud thumping of footsteps on the trapdoor. We fall into silence, and I use this time to pull him behind a crate.

“Trust me,” I whisper to him.

The trapdoor opens with a bang, sending a narrow shower of white light down into the large room. A man wearing thick boots and a black jacket starts to climb down into the mobile room.

I leave the boy where he is and dash to the computer, quickly logging off for him. Then I get back to the boy, breathless, and without a word, we creep around crates and get to the wall. One of the crates has been moved aside to reveal a small square door in the wall.

I twist the knob on the lower middle half of the door and the door unlocks soundlessly. I send the boy crawling through the door first. Then I check behind me to see the man walking through the room to the computer, completely oblivious to the two boys that had gotten out from under his nose.

I gently shut the small door behind me. The boy and I keep crawling forward as the tunnel slopes upward.

Finally, we come out of the tunnel and into a room. By the looks of it, it’s a room on the bottom floor of the city.

There is a bit of light that filters into this room. Now, I can tell that the boy is wearing a red sweater and black pants. His dark hair is slightly ruffled, as if he has had one too many things blow over his head. He’s tall, but still slightly shorter than me. And I can tell he is not my age. He looks a few years younger.

I help the boy to his feet. “Thanks,” he huffs, his cheeks red with embarrassment.

“No problem, but what were you doing in there?”

“I could ask you that too.”

“Yeah, but I asked first. Besides,” I look into his eyes. “I’m pretty sure you and I are on the same side, kid.”

The boy sighs. “I’m Raven.” In a low voice, he explains to me his situation. When he’s done, I raise my eyebrows.

“Who’s this Charlotte you keep talking about?”

“She’s a friend of mine, and she used to be one of those people owned by the government since childhood. She ran away from them and got onto Tylius.”

“She must have impressive skills then,” I reply. “Not just anyone can get to Tylius illegally.”

Raven forces a laugh. “She’s unique.”

“Well,” I say, glancing at something folded sticking out of his pocket, “Did you find anything while you were there? The thing is, Raven, I was back there trying to find information too. Did you get anything important other than the computer documents that you skimmed?” Then I point at his pocket.

Raven nods and tugs it out. Smooth black paper slowly unfolds itself as the creases disappear. The velvety paper is very thin but durable. Raven passes the paper to me, and I inspect it carefully between my hands.

“This is a dark-wash document,” I say, returning it to him. “I’m surprised, Raven, that you snatched this. Only very secretive information is recorded and printed on a dark-wash doc.”

Raven smiles. “Can you read what’s on it?”

I frown as I flip the page to the back. “I’m afraid not. You need a light pen that’s specific to the code imprinted on the paper. See?”

I hold the paper up to a pale light shining through the closed door at the other end of the room. Tiny numbers are inscribed into the black paper at the bottom of the page in the left-hand corner.

“3802,” Raven whispers. “So, the light pen has to be the same code as it?”

“Yes.”

Raven pulls something else out of his pocket and hands me a light pen. I turn the pen to see the number shown. It’s 4204.

I shake my head at Raven and return the pen and paper. “This won’t do. But there could be information on this that we can use,” I say. “If you really want to know what’s on this piece of paper, meet me after my concert on Saturday. There’s more than one way to read a sheet of paper, after all.”

“Wait… concert?” Raven widens his eyes. “Are you… John?”

I chuckle. “Good guess.” I dig an old flyer out of my inner jacket pocket. “Here, in case you lost yours.”

“Thanks.” He looks at it and tucks it away.

“Meet me there,” I say.

And so here we are.

“Raven was video calling me that night,” says Charlotte. “No wonder he suddenly turned me off.” She playfully shoves his shoulder and he grins.

“So, John.” Raven takes out the black sheet of paper. “Can you read this?”

I take the paper and smoothen it out a bit. “Give me six hours, at least. I’m giving you my number, so you can text me.” I show him a holographic document from my USB and we tap our USBs together, transferring the doc.

“Shall we give our numbers to you, too?”

“It would be helpful; yes.”

I wait as they type in their numbers onto a new document, which is then transferred to me.

“Alright.” Raven nods to his friends. “Let’s go, guys. Concert’s over.”

“See you around, John.” Neil gives me a flick of a wave. Charlotte simply nods her farewell, and they turn and leave.

My name is John. I’m nineteen, and back on Earth I used to live in a complex with another band member. I met him through a friend we both had in high school. That friend told me that he was a part of a band, and that I should sign up. My parents disappeared sometime when I was in high school, so I dropped out and bunked with the band.

It wasn’t a pleasant place to live for many years, but it was home. We went on our own little “tours” and played for the neighborhood, for parks, and eventually, we even got booked for some bigger places like clubs and bowling alleys. We made some good cash by performing, but I wasn’t in the band for the cash. I liked music and I liked to play for other people. Besides, if I quit the band, I wouldn’t have a place to stay.

I found out from an old neighbor that my mother disappeared on the same day government officials came to our house while I was in school.

That aroused my first suspicions. I never really knew what my mother was up to, but I don’t think it was legal. Ever since then, I’d been trying to ask around about the government and occasionally peek into government databases to try to find out more. After all, I strongly suspected that all of this had something to do with my mother’s white eyes.

I caught up with my band back at our large apartment. With the money we made and saved over the past few years, we got ourselves places in Tylius and decided to come here to spread our music to this bleak moon-planet.

“Hey, John, what took you so long?” Jupin asks as I walk into the room.

“I was halfway back when I realized I left my tuner behind the stage, so I had to go back,” I lie.

My bandmates are sprawled on the couch in weird positions. There’s a tray of chips and beer on the coffee table which I don’t bother to approach, since it is obvious that Jupin is hogging the food. I wait a bit until their attention is back on the projector, and then I carry my things to my room.

It isn’t really my room, since I share it with another guy, but half the space is my personal space; at least, I’d like to think that it is. I have a private bit of space set aside for guitar practice. There are beds that fold out of the wall at the tap of a touchscreen panel incased in the wall. A shared desk in the corner of the room has some papers on it and a computer. I set my guitar case down carefully and toss the rest of my things on the floor next to the fold-out bed. Then I take the dark-wash doc and place it on the desk.

I get to work with the desk lamps and slowly, faintly, words appear in white against the pitch-black paper as I press the sharp, white light to the dark-wash doc.

I locked the door when I came in to the room, but I forget until someone pounds on the door so loudly that the sound-proof coating can’t contain it.

The knocking is brisk and impatient, and slightly scared. I shake my head in annoyance. I’m almost done with the paper. I just need, like, ten minutes before all text can be shown clearly.

Still, it is better to let my band mates suspect nothing. I sweep some stuff over it and unlock the door.

“What is it, guys?” I say, opening up. The three boys stand in a group, and Jupin leads. He must be the one who knocked.

“What are you doing in there, John?” he asks. There’s something eerie about the way he’s addressing me.

“Hiding from you,” I retort.

“Very funny.” Jupin leans against the wall with an elbow. A glass of beer swings from his other hand, held so loosely that it could fall at any second. His face is red, while the boys behind him, Avarice and Ellison, have drained and pale cheeks.

“You don’t look well,” I say with a small laugh. “Drinking too much?”

“John…” Avarice protests. “Stop talking and listen.”

“What is it?” They stared at me hard. “Why are you all looking at me like that?” I let out a nervous chuckle. “Is my presence too much for you guys?”

“A man came by,” Jupin says. “Said something interesting. You wanna hear it?”

I could care less.

“Said the government sent him. Asked about you, John. Said you’re not doing something right, and if they catch you at something wrong and find out we’re with you, they’ll come get all of us. It was a warning, John.” Jupin lowers his voice and grabs my shoulder, jerking me closer so I can smell the alcohol on his breath.

“You’re up to no good, John, are you?” he whispers.

I step back and push his hands off me. “It’s really none of your business.”

“It was, but you’re right. It’s not anymore. You’re out of the band,” says Jupin in a haze of slurred speech. He’s drunk, and he waves the glass around my face, eyebrows crinkled in disgust. And the rest of the band? Jupin’s the leader. They can’t do anything when he’s drunk. Especially if he’s drunk.

Then I snap. In a flash, I slap the glass out of Jupin’s hands and watch with some satisfaction as it lands on the floor, exploding into sparkling fragments of wet glass. “You can’t kick me out a band I helped start!” I hiss. “This band is my life. You can’t reject my life.”

Jupin takes a wild swing at my jaw. I block his fist and hit him in the stomach. He staggers back and is caught by Ellison, who looks at me with horror streaked across his face.

Jupin regains his composure, and to my surprise, he doesn’t try to hit me again.

“You can’t kick me out of the band,” I repeat. My voice can hardly allow me to speak. “This is my life. You can’t kick me out of the band.”

“We can’t afford a troublemaker in our group, John.” Avarice motions to the door. “Now, I hope you have a place to stay. We’re not taking in a fugitive.”

As Jupin is carefully led to the couch by Ellison, I gap at Avarice. “Dude, you and I have been bunking for years! You seriously want me out?”

Avarice shrugs. “It’s for the good of the band. We can’t have someone in our band breaking laws and expecting us to take care of you and shelter you. How can you not understand?”

I point my trembling finger at him. “What I’m doing,” I huff, “is for the good of the world.”

“Right. Now you’d best get out of here before we really get mad.”

With everything packed up and on my shoulders, I walk out the apartment and hear the door slam shut behind me.

“I can’t believe this,” I mutter to myself as I shuffle away. It’s almost one in the morning, and I have no clue where to stay. I flip out my watch and think about contacting Raven for help. Maybe he could let me stay the night? No, Raven probably has a family. Neil too. Then who…?

I type in Charlotte’s number. I have to call again and again until I hear a click. Charlotte has finally picked up.

“Hello?” the voice draws out.

“Hey, this is John. You know, from last night?”

“John?” She sounds as agitated as hell. “John, what are you thinking!? It’s one-fourteen in the morning! What’s wrong?”

I take a deep breath and raise my watch to my lips and murmur, “I need a place to stay for the night.”

“And?”

“I was wondering if I could stay at your place.”

“No.”

“Please!” I beg. “Just for one night. I promise that I’ll figure something out by tomorrow. I just need a place for one night. I’ll be in your debt.”

A pause and a click. She has me on hold. Then I feel a buzz on my watch. She sent me a text. I open it up as she continues the call.

“John?”

“Yeah, I got the text. This is your address?”

“No, it’s the code to a secret underground factory that—Of course it’s my address, you hollow-headed moron.”

Throwing insults at me? She seemed a lot more intelligent when I met her tonight. Then again, it is one-fourteen. I heard somewhere that girls should never be woken in the morning this early. Now, I know.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t want to hear it. If you’re not at my apartment in ten minutes, I’ll go back to sleep and you won’t be admitted. Is that clear?”

“Okay, Mother.”

“… Not funny.”

I did, in fact, take her words seriously. I arrive at her apartment in six minutes, breathless, having run directly through the city to her apartment. Clutching my chest and heaving for air, I pound on her apartment door, waiting for her to answer.

She doesn’t answer right away, but soon I hear the door unlock and she opens it.

“Your impression is getting better and better,” grumbles Charlotte. I decide not to point out the irony. She’s in her nightclothes, and her brown hair looks like an abandoned nest, huge and leaping in every direction possible. She lets me inside.

“Do you always call someone at one, asking them for a place to sleep?”

“Um, no.”

“You can have the couch.” She gestures to the plain brown seat. I feel it over with a hand; it’s a bit course and not too comfy. Still, I’m grateful she agreed to let me stay. I thank her as she gives me a look of deadly poison.

“When I’m less tired, you can explain to me why you’re suddenly homeless.” Charlotte stalks off to her room, and I try to make myself comfortable on Charlotte’s couch.

Finally, after what seems like ages, I fall asleep.

In the morning, I hear a doorbell. I groan, and Charlotte yells from her room, “John! Get the door!”

Well, that did make sense, since I was the closest to the door, but the person at the door was probably for her. Even so, I lift myself off the couch and stretch and yawn, and I shuffle to the door as the doorbell rings yet again.

“John!”

“I’m already at the door!” I shout back.

I stand there with my thumbs in my pockets, waiting for all the locks to unlock themselves. Then, the door swings open to reveal Raven.

Fully dressed, Raven stares at me in horror. His mouth falls open a little as he sees the state I’m in. Messy hair, disheveled appearance… I can only imagine what thoughts are running through his head. “John?” he sputters. Raven is at a loss for words. He fumbles for self-control. “What are you doing at Charlotte’s place?”

“I… uh… spent the night at her place.”

Wrong answer, even though it was truthful. Raven’s face darkens into a deep red. He stares at me very hard for a very, very long time. Suddenly, I hear Charlotte’s voice.

“Is that Raven?”

“Yeah.”

Raven looks over my shoulder and waves his hand at me. “Charlotte, why…?”

Charlotte comes up to us, looking as fresh as a polished red apple. I’m the only one who looks a little worse for wear. I took off my black leather jacket last night before going to sleep, so all I’m wearing is a white shirt, and my hair needs to be combed. I pat down the semi-long messy strands as Raven clears his throat.

“Why on Earth, or rather, Tylius, is John here?”

“He needed a place to sleep.” She says this so casually, it even throws me off. “Why are you acting so…like that?”

“You can’t just invite a guy you barely know to spend the night at your apartment!” In a flash, I know what’s going on here. My eyebrows raise at Raven.

Charlotte takes a deep breath. “Come in, Raven.” He hesitates, but then obeys. Charlotte closes the door behind him.

“Okay, you need to tell me why this guy’s here.”

I interject. “Hey, I’m not just ‘this guy!’ Charlotte already told you. I needed a place to bunk—she let me stay—and so I slept on her couch.”

“No, shut up,” he cuts in. “This isn’t right. Who do you think you are, sleeping in Charlotte’s home?”

“Raven, let me explain!” she says, exasperated, smacking her forehead. “John called me at one and said he needed to stay over. Logically of course, it was the best solution.” Raven gagged, and Charlotte continued, “You have a family that wouldn’t approve, Raven, and Neil lives in that small place above the workshop with his dad and no room for another person. I live alone, and my apartment is suitable for John’s needs, so naturally, it makes sense that John should stay here.”

“Naturally, huh?” Raven glares at me.

“I don’t see why you’re making such a big deal out of this, Raven.” Charlotte scrutinizes his hostile posture. “What’s the matter?”

“Charlotte,” he says slowly. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but it’s not normal for a girl to let a guy she barely knows into her home to sleep.”

Charlotte doesn’t respond to this for a second. Then she clears away the hesitation. “It doesn’t matter,” she mutters.

I ask Charlotte if I can go to the bathroom and wash up. She nods. As I come back from the bathroom, my hair still slightly damp from the modern table shower, I notice Raven eating something at the table. He takes large mouthfuls of something that looks like breakfast, but at the same time doesn’t look like it.

“What’s this?” I gesture my arm towards the dish.

“Food,” replies Charlotte simply, working in the kitchen. She’s making more of the lumpy stir-fried breakfast on the stove. Her face is contorted in concentration as she turns up the flames. “If you want to eat, sit down and grab a plate.”

I take a seat next to Raven and glance at his plate. “Um, are you sure that’s edible?”

Raven swallows. “This is incredible,” he exclaimed. “John, I know this may not look like it is good, but this is the best breakfast food I’ve ever had.”

I hear Charlotte sigh as she comes to the table, scrapes what’s in her pan into my plate, and goes back into the kitchen to drop the pan into the sink. She seems to be in a much better mood now. I’m very relieved.

Reluctantly, I take a bite out of the mush. The warm flavor spreads through my mouth. Raven was right. This is amazing.

“I didn’t know you could cook, Charlotte.” Raven takes his empty plate to the sink and turns to Charlotte. “You’re very good.”

“I accept your compliments, but this is my first time cooking. I don’t imagine this is the very best you’ve had, Raven.” Charlotte walks to the living room and sits at her laptop. “I’m going to go ahead and start looking for more important information. Raven, since you’re done, do you mind helping me? You know something about Project Tylius, so we can use what you have to help us search for other documents.”

“Sure, but I’m not that great at these kinds of things…” Raven follows her to the desk.

I finish breakfast and drop my plate into the sink too. I tap on a little panel next to the sink, and the platform that all the dishes and the pan are on begins to lower. The sides of the sink spill with soapy water. I turn away and go to the living room as the sink begins to wash its own dishes.

For a while, I do nothing except listen to Charlotte and Raven work together. Charlotte is doing the actual computer work, but Raven is giving her pointers on what to look for. “Project Tylius,” he says. “Project Tylius is very recent, so maybe if you look here…?”

“John, isn’t there anything that you can do to help us other than lay around on the couch?” Charlotte says.

To this question I reply with a jolt, “Actually, yes! I have something for you, Raven. Cost me my home and my profession to get this scanned and done.”

I leap up from the couch and go to my bags, which are in a messy pile by the side of the green armchair. I take out the dark-wash document. It’s very crumpled, but the work I did on it makes the words on it glow brightly.

“Here. I already revealed the print on it.”

Raven takes it and looks at it in dismay. “It’s in code,” he says, pointing out the obvious. “Charlotte, do you know what code this might be?”

Charlotte takes a long look at the words and inhale. “I think so…maybe Sceminan? I’ll look it up.”

“It’s blocked,” Raven announces.

“Thank you for your valuable input, Raven,” I tease.

“Hey!” he retorts. “It’s not like you’re doing anything right now!”

“Stop it!” Charlotte pulls up a decoding website. “Come here, both of you.”

I walk over and stand behind her. All three of us stare into the screen.

“Sceminan code works.”

Charlotte begins typing in the coded words from the dark-wash document into the website.

One by one, the words show up. Raven, Charlotte, and I stare at the screen as the message is slowly spelled out.

Side1: Project Tylius launches on December 9th, same time as the lunar rising. Exact coordinates: Tylius Southern, (149, 30)

Side2: 500 space-bombs designed to influence generation of dark energy. Light-sensitive, destructive. Must be transported with caution. Launch during lunar rising to area of maximum radiation. Surrounding area may take damage.

Side3: Error with launching system. Delay pending.

Side 4: Delay request cancelled. Project Tylius Launch to initiate on original planned date.

Side 5: Mr. Emios Ire reported suspicious behavior from his son, Raven Ire.