Shades (eBook)

CHAPTER ONE:
FACELESS

Partly cloudy. 9mph winds blowing northeast. Fifty-nine degrees fahrenheit. With wind chill, fifty-five point two. No rain is expected.

First day on the job.

Lam put on her apron, the store’s logo and name printed on it in big, colorful letters. She pushed the kitchen door open.

She could see the inside of the store from behind the long granite counter. Dozens of empty chairs stood lit by the soft blue light of a cold morning. It was quiet and peaceful outside, and just as much inside. But it was time to get to business. Lam turned on the lights, put up the “open” sign, and waited.

A half-hour of silence later, the sound of a bell rang through the store. Lam straightened out of her slump and leaned over the counter to see her first customer.

It was a small boy, wearing only ragged clothes far too big for him, his skin a dark gray. But it was something else about him that startled Lam.

The boy had no face.

Despite this, he took his time looking around the store, at least as much as he could without eyes, and then finally he walked up to the counter.

“Is this place new?” the boy asked.

Lam didn’t know what to say at first. All she could do was wonder how in the world this boy could talk, or see, or do anything at all. He had no foreign accent, but appeared to be from somewhere she’d never heard of before. And his voice was strange. It was obviously male and young, but Lam couldn’t tell if she was actually hearing his voice or if it was just being projected into her head. Strange appearances were nothing unusual, not in a place like Nur—it was populated by people from all around the galaxy—but she had never in her life seen a person without a face. Was it some strange type of Val? Lam wondered.

“Yes, this is our first day in business here. We’ve been trying to expand our stores to other planets, and Manim was one of the first.”

The boy was paying attention to the menu hanging above her.

“Where are you from?” Lam asked as politely as possible, awkwardly trying not to stare at where his face should be.

“I dunno.”

This puzzled her.

“How old are you?”

“I think I’m nine. Maybe ten.”

“Ten…” Lam quietly said to herself, almost disbelieving. “Zystinian years, right? Not this planet’s years? Aren’t the years here on Manim like… ten Zystinian years long?”

“Yup. Ten years.”

“Then you probably only remember seeing winter and spring before, right?”

“I only really remember up to a few years ago.”

“Really? That’s strange. What’s your name?”

“I don’t have a name.”

Looking at his disheveled attire, Lam wondered if the boy was an orphan. But with no orphanages in their small town, he was likely lacking any parental support. She felt a pang of pity for the boy.

“Is there anything you want?” she offered.

“No, thanks. I’ll eat at Grano’s. I didn’t recognise this store, so I wanted to check it out.”

He turned back momentarily towards the store window. A few other small stores and buildings lined a nearby block. Lam could see clearly one among them, “Grano’s,” in big comical letters above a red-painted store.

“Oh. Well, you can take something to go if you’d like. For free.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

“Can I have a Bletim wrap?”

Lam turned away from the boy and prepared a Bletim wrap. The boy stood on the tips of his toes to watch her make the meal. After finishing, she reached over the glass on top of the granite counter and handed him the food, wrapped in aluminum foil. He took it and held it in his hands for a bit, looking at it intently.

“It looks yummy.”

“That’s good. You stay safe out there, okay?”

“Yeah.”

And with that, he left the store with another ding.

The faceless boy was also nameless. He didn’t have much at all, for that matter. Not even many memories. But he did have some, and one in particular was bothering him, distracting him from the wrap he was enjoying.

It was a vivid dream he had had the previous night: he was surrounded by inky blackness, flying in no direction in particular. Then, he saw tiny pinpoints of light, little stars shooting by at high speed. For a moment, he felt free, but then the view around him became obscured with dark-colored metal. He looked back in front of him, and the scene had changed; he was now falling down at high speed. He braced for impact, but instead of a jolt of pain, he found himself in a new location entirely. He was floating in a flesh-coated chamber now, completely immobile. All of a sudden, a thin, metallic rod protruded from one of the fleshy walls, slowly growing closer to him. But right before it was about to touch him, he woke up.

As strange as it was, and though it disturbed him, he knew he had other things to pay attention to. And since he had no idea of what the dream meant anyway, or if it meant anything at all, he found himself snapping back into the moment.

This was one of many unusual things about the boy, though he wasn’t aware of how unusual some of these things were. He saw the world through different eyes, or in his case, none at all, gathering sight, smell, sound, and taste from an unusual organ attached directly to his brain. This organ was attuned to a specific wavelength of visible-infrared light that could penetrate the skin and tissue in the front of his head, thus letting him see. In lieu of a nose, a permeable membrane where his face should be let in oxygen and the right molecules to register smell, and his body registered the vibrations bouncing off of his head, transferring all of this information to this master organ in his brain. Unbeknownst to the boy, his anatomy proved to be a highly efficient way to achieve the goals of a face, but without a face at all.

Everything he needed was all there, but it was hidden under the barely permeable, slightly translucent surface where his face should have been.

At Grano’s now, the boy pushed open the glass door and walked up to the plump man at the counter. The man noticed him quickly, and a big smile came across his face. The boy smiled too, or at least made a mental attempt. The plump man could tell the boy was happy to see him.

“Hey there, little buddy!” the plump man said.

“Hi Mr. Grano!” the boy cheerfully responded.

“You here for breakfast again?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Alrighty then. Coming right up.”

The boy sat down excitedly at one of the many tables, taking extra care to get himself comfortable in the leather seat. He grabbed his fork and knife and eagerly watched Mr. Grano prepare his meal from behind the counter. And when Mr. Grano had taken it out of the oven, he presented the steaming dish to the boy with pride.

“Grand Soman just for you,” Mr. Grano said, sliding the platter onto the table.

It was a triangle-shaped bread with a scrumptious green sauce coating all but the crust, ground up meat sprinkled generously on top. It appeared far too big for such a small boy, but he ate it ravenously, to Mr. Grano’s delight. Grand Soman was the boy’s favorite.

With no mouth, or any face at all, the boy didn’t eat the way other people did. Instead, the part of his face where his mouth should be became malleable, and he simply absorbed the food into his face.

Mr. Grano sat on the other side from the boy as he ate, patiently waiting for him to finish. When he did, the boy slumped down into his chair, relaxed as ever.

“How was your weekend?” Mr. Grano asked.

“I liked it.”

“Good. Was the Soman good, too?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s the search for your parents going?” Mr. Grano asked, trying his hardest to be polite.

“Not well. I can’t find them.”

“Hm. Sorry to hear that. Did you see that they opened a new place a few blocks from here?”

“Uh-huh. I went there.”

“Did they tell you where they came from?”

“No.”

“They’re from our galaxy’s capital, Zephyr. I expect that if they have the money to expand all the way to Manim, they’ll provide some good competition. Don’t let them put me out of business, alright?” Mr. Grano joked.

“I won’t. Don’t worry, Mr. Grano.”

The boy grabbed a handful of chips from a basket on the table and laid them out in front of him, eating them one by one.

“By the way Mr. Grano, why is our planet called Manim, anyway?”

“Good question. You see, Manim is the only planet for quite a ways out that has life on it. When the colonists who originally came to Manim saw our planet, the only planet for lightyears with life and plants and air, they saw it as an oasis.”

The boy cocked his head, confused. Mr. Grano elaborated.

“An oasis is… think of it as a safe place. A small safe place in a universe of unsafe places. The colonists saw our planet as an oasis and named it Manim, which was their word for ‘oasis’ in their original Bedinian language. And, funny enough, Nur is the only town on Manim. An oasis on an oasis.”

The boy was amazed. “Wow…”

“And while I’m sure you already know this, every year here on Manim is equivalent to 10 standard Zystinian years. Soon, you’ll turn one here on Manim! Isn’t that amazing?”

“I’ll turn one?!”

“I know, right? Our galaxy is so cool....