We walk out into the hall, and it’s a 180 degree shift from when I was brought in here. Not just because we’re walking back the way we, or I, came, but because before I was being guarded like I was about to run off and cause mischief (which I must admit had crossed my mind, but, y’know, I was under guard). Now this guy is walking in front of me like an icebreaker making way for the flagship of the fleet. Other people in the hallway move deferentially to the side and mutter among themselves as we move past. Apparently word has gotten around. Of what, I have no idea. As usual, I will be the last to know.

As we reach the door to ‘my’ classroom, the brown shirt opens the door and stands aside, like a doorman at a fancy hotel.

“Thanks, man.” I tell him.

“It’s been an honor, Sir,” he replies, in a posture so upright that if you shoved a toothpick up his ass it would break both hips.

“As you were,” I say, waving a mock salute, and he blushes, trying to keep a straight face.

What the fuck is going on here? I walk into the room, and there is no one inside but Mrs. C and Hector. The door closes silently behind me and I notice the brown shirt standing at attention next to it, keeping an eye on anyone who might come near. He’s not worried I might get out. He’s worried about other people coming in — what the hell?

“What up, Hec? Where’d everybody else go?” I ask Hector.

“Dude, who the fuck are you? They made us take the test three times! Then said something about highly unusual results, took her away for an hour or two,” he points at Mrs. C, “Then took everybody off on some ‘advancement protocol’ or some shit they said. I told ‘em I wasn’t goin’ nowhere ‘till I saw you again, and Mrs. C took up for me ‘cause we had a connection in class. Thought I might be able to help explain shit, but I cain’t. What the fuck, man!”

“Cain’t tell you nothin’ ‘bout nothin’, bro, but you been with me this whole ride so far, and you’ve seen what I’ve seen, and it’s good to see at least one familiar face here. You know? Thanks man, you my homie.” I hold out my right hand and we fist bump, “And thanks for the smiley face, yo. Shit’s awesome.”

“Yeah well,” he laughs, “you gave me a gold star, it’s the least I could do.”

“Ahem,” interjects Mrs. C, appearing unhappy at not being included in the conversation sooner, “Well Mr. — Aaron, you should be happy to hear that your class passed with flying colors.”

“Really? Then why’d you have to test ‘em three times?” I ask with an open face.

“The first results were… anomalous,” she says, “So we administered two additional tests with slightly different questions and averaged the results.”

“Well, that explains why it took so long. So how’d they do?”

“With the average of the three test scores,” she says tightly, “Ninety five percent of the class scored ninety percent or above, and ninety percent of the class scored above ninety five percent.”

“Wow!” I say, lighting up with a big smile, “So that’s good, right? No one has to take remedial classes and we’re all good! That’s awesome! Wish I knew how I did it…”

“That!” she yells, finally losing her composure, “Is precisely the point! No one has ever gotten results like that, ever! And you taught a six hour course in just under two and a half hours and made us all look incompetent!” she’s openly crying now, “I know I’m young! I haven’t had this position very long, and I knew I was up for an evaluation! But why did you have to do it like this? You asshole! I’ve worked my butt off for years to get this job because it’s what I always wanted to do, and now it’s over because of you! Fuck you! Who the fuck are you, anyway!?”

“Woah, Woah, Wait!” I say, holding up my arms to block incoming, tantrum blows, “I’m sorry!” I say, fending off halfhearted, feeble blows from my arms and chest, “I didn’t come here to fuck up your life, or lose you your job, or anything. I got picked up by a space minivan and brought up here to Moon Valley High the same as Hector here, and the frizzy haired girl, and everybody else! I just did what I thought was right! I never studied any of this stuff and I don’t have any idea how I understand it as well as I do, I just do. I didn’t before, but I do now, and I’m just as confused about this as you are. Probably more! I mean, you’re supposed to know this shit! I just do, just now! Who the hell do you think I am and what the fuck is going on here!?”

“That’s exactly what I want to know, you bastard!” she, not exactly screams, but says emphatically.

“I know!” I say, grabbing her shoulders before she can start flailing me again, and then more softly, “I know,” drawing her into a hug, hoping she won’t go for my kidneys, “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to screw up your life. I got brought here and did what seemed like a good idea, because it made sense to me. I can understand that you’re freaked out, but imagine how I feel. You’re used to all this. This place. I just got here a few hours ago and now I’m being accused of all this secret squirrel shit just because I stood up in front of a classroom and said what I thought was right because it makes sense to me and it turns out it actually is. Ok. What the fuck?”

She steps back and wipes her eyes, “You really believe that don’t you?” she looks at me quizzically, “Then who???”

There is motion at the classroom door and we all turn to look. Three new brown shirts have arrived and my buddy who has been standing there like the castle guard has a few words with them and then walks off looking like a kicked dog. Poor guy, I kinda liked him. Then two of the new ones take post on either side of the door, I recognize them as owl and hawk from earlier. The third, shorter one enters the room and it takes me a second to recognize her: it’s the frizzy haired girl from our short bus!

“Well, Aaron,” she walks straight up to me, “That was a very impressive performance you put on. Care to explain to me just who the hell, you,” she sideways nods at Hector, “and your friend here are?”

“Fuuuck, that seems to be the question of the day around here, doesn’t it? Who the hell do you think I am? Who the hell could I possibly be? And before you ask me any more questions, I have a few for you. What the fuck is this place? Why the hell am I here? Why is everyone so damned upset that I appear to know what I appear to know? And who the motherfucking fuck are you!? You’ve been with us for the whole goddamned ride!”

“Who I am is not —”

“Oh wait!” breaks in Hector, “I know who she is! She’s the bitch who was supposed to be evaluating this bitch,” he points to Mrs. C, “but instead she ended up evaluating us. Musta’ done good, she gave you a smiley face! Ain’t that right bitch?”

I step over and give Hector a thumbs up power shake that we pull away and snap like we had it planned. Then we both turn towards them and smile, puffed up with our arms crossed over our chests and say, “’Sup bitches?”

At this point I realize that this does nothing to help my case that we don’t really know each other and weren’t in this together before now, but I don’t care, I just can’t stop laughing at how ridiculous this whole situation is. So I just stare down frizzy haired girl, who is now in a brown shirt and has her hair lacquered down and smoothed into a helmet like bob cut, looking much more put together and seeming to find something intensely fascinating about her own feet.

“You!” spits Mrs. C at our frizzy haired brown shit whoever, “It was you? You were here the whole time and you could have… What the hell, bitch! You want me to loose my job?”

“It’s not like that!” insists Ms frizzy-ne-helmet haired brown shirt, “Yes, I was to evaluate you, and I rode up on the shuttle with these two because that’s how we do it, to ensure you don’t know who your evaluator is or which class they’re in. And this one,” she nods at Hector, “was completely clueless when we picked him up, just like a thousand others, absolutely what we’d expect. But him,” she points at me, “He didn’t really seem to know what was going on, but he went with it real easy, and looked like he’d used the seat harnesses before. Even the other one picked up on it, thought he knew something we didn’t. The pilot, too. So I played along, and when he got up in front of the class I kept playing. I never expected anything like what we got, though.”

“And what did you got, woman?” I ask.

“Well, I’m not quite sure,” she says, “I never really believed the class clown bit, not after what I saw in the shuttle. But if you were an infiltrator from an unfriendly force I expect you would have been fishing for information, or at least trying to push your own agenda — which I suppose you were in your own way, it just so happens that your agenda appears to align with ours. You seem to have a more concise understanding of it than we do, a better way of explaining it, and we have no idea who you are. You are obviously quite clever, and you certainly do not appear to be an enemy, but by your own tuition, if you are an enemy, you are an exceedingly dangerous one.”

“Ah, now I see what you’re getting at,” I say, “The ‘action and intention’ example.”

“Quite right,” she says, “And since we have no way of divining your true intention, and you are such a great potential threat, it would seem that your time among us is at an end.”

“So, summary execution is it?”

“No, no, nothing like that. The worst you can be accused of is,” she looks up at me with a half smile and a glint in her eye, “a bit of mischief in the dining hall, and seeing as how you didn’t bring the contraband in with you, you cannot very well be punished for making use of what’s found, I don’t imagine. Besides that, all our rooms here are under video and audio surveillance, and the lecture you gave in here has the potential to revolutionize our entire intake educational system. It will take some study and evaluation, not everyone has your sense of humor and charisma, but if we can cut class times in half and raise test scores by twenty percent at the same time that would hardly be something to punish you for. And with the recording of your performance, I believe we can do just that.”

“So, just so I understand you correctly. I’ve caused a minor disruption, given you a major potential benefit, might be the most horrifying thing ever to enter the premises, and it all balances out to the point where you’ll just send me home and fuck off into outer space again? Seems awfully anticlimactic, doesn’t it?”

“When you put it like that, I suppose it does. Yet here we are. If I were you I’d be grateful.”

“Oh,” I roll my eyes, “Don’t think I’m not. Yet I must ask, I’m sorry, but it occurs to me that we are on the moon, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And it appears that many of you have been living here for generations in a giant swastika that could easily hold several aircraft carriers.”

“Yesss, perhaps.”

“And therefore it would appear that you have available some high levels of technology that are not to be found on Earth. Would I be correct in that assumption?”

“You quite possibly might. What the hell are you getting at? To the point please.”

“Do you have anything that can scan into my mind or possibly my DNA or otherwise genetic makeup to help explain why I know what I know now that I’m here and didn’t before I got here?”

“That, is an interesting question, let me ask,” she speaks quietly into what appears to be a normal lapel button on her shirt, then presses under her ear a moment later, “No,” she says, “But you can try going to the overseer’s office.”

“Ok, I’ll try that then.”

“No one ever gets in.”

“I’m being sent away for being too smart, and possibly too evil for my own good. What have I got to lose?”

“Excellent point! Out the door, down the hallway to the right, right to the end, and knock.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Best of luck!” she turns to Hector and Mrs. C, “You two, come with me.”

“But I wanna stay with him!” exclaims Hector.

“Fraid that’s not possible, now come along or I’ll have to have you ‘escorted’,” she says in her best ‘principal of the school’ voice.

“S’aright bro, be good. If I get into the overseer’s office and I can see everything goin’ on in here, I’ll bring this whole place down on her head if she fucks with you. You my bro.”

“You sure man?” asks Hector, “I don’t know.”

“Hey man, after what you seen of me today, and what you seen of her, what do you think?”

“When you put it like that,” Hector looks at me, and looks at her, “If I was her I’d be shittin’ my pants right now! Keep it real bro!” and fist bumps me as we head out the door.

I’m the last one out the door and owl and hawk bookend me.

“See,” says owl to hawk, “I told you,” then to me, “Washin’ out already, huh? I knew you wasn’t nothin’.”

“Yeah,” I say, “I just taught a six hour course in two and a half hours and had the whole class get ninety percent or above on the tests. Then I got locked in the lunchroom with two pretty girls, and found the only bottle of booze and pack of cigarettes in this whole place, and did that for four or five hours. How d’ya think that worked out for me?” I hold two fingers up under his nose and say, “Wanna smell?”

Owl jerks away and says, “There’s the door asshole!” as hawk laughs his ass off.

“They said I can go to the overseer’s office,” I tell him.

“Where the fuck is that?” asks an angry owl, “Ain’t no overseer’s office!”

“Told me it’s all the way down to the end and knock,” I say.

“Fuck you asshole, here’s the door!” says owl, pointing out into the hangar.

“Hey,” says hawk, “what’s it gonna hurt? We walk ‘im down there, there ain’t nothin’, we walk ‘im back. No trouble and he’s happy to go then, right?” he looks at me.

“Right,” I say, thinking ‘thanks hawk, for not being the dickhead your partner is’.

So we walk down to the end of the hallway, and walk, and walk, and, you know, it’s a long goddamn way down there, probably a mile at least. Maybe more. When we get to the end, another hallway goes off to the right, into the distance so far you can see the curvature of the earth, wait, I mean Moon. Anyway, we walk into the alcove here and it’s just like someplace you’d expect to see in any office building on Earth, just without the potted silk palms or ferns or doors anywhere.

“Alright, there ain’t nothin’ here,” says owl, “you seen it, so let’s go,” and moves to grab my arm and drag me back.

“Wait,” I slap him off, to his great annoyance, “They told me to come down here and knock, so just gimmie a minute.”

I go over to the right hand wall, because that’s the direction the hallway goes off to, so that’s where you’d expect an empty space to be, and knock on the wall. Nothing. I knock up and down along the wall. Nothing.

“Alright, asshole,” screeches owl, “You had your fun, now let’s go!”

“Wait!” I say, ”They told me to go to the end! I checked that side because it made more sense, but just let me try the end real quick.”

“Fuck you!” yells owl, and then…

“Hey!” hawk steps up and puts two palms against owl’s chest, making him take two steps back, “Just let ‘im do it! We’re already here, it ain’t gonna hurt nothin’! Don’t be such a dillhole!”

“Thanks!” I tell hawk.

“Just get the fuck on with it!” he says.

So I walk up to the end wall, where nothing should be, and knock, and the center of the fucking wall opens and it's a doorway into a gleaming white hallway like I’m used to seeing in space movies. Pick any one that has rectangular white panels on floor, walls, and ceiling… you know, most of them. That’s what it looks like. Hawk and owl stop being pissed off at each other and stare at me.

“What the fuck is that?” asks hawk.

“Um, apparently it’s the door to the overseer’s office. I mean, from what I’ve been told and all.”

“How’d you open it?”

“I knocked, you know, like they told me to.”

“But nobody ever gets in,” screeches owl.

“Yep, apparently that’s me.”

“Who… Who the fuck are you?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” I say, “You guys wanna come?” as I step a foot through the door.

“Fuck no!” shouts owl, “You go in there, we’ll never see you again! Good riddance!”

“How about you?” I say to hawk.

“No. I hate to admit it but he’s right. If we go in there we’ll never come out. There’s stories, but no one I know has ever really seen it. Go if you want, but I’m stayin’ here. I got a life I like, mostly,” as he side nods at owl.

I step up into the doorway, and then have a thought (ow! it hurts my thinking meat!) I’ve never called either one of these guys by their ‘bird names’ that I’ve given them in my head, so I decide to do that now, while I’ve got the chance.

“Hey, Hawk!” I shout, and against all odds, Hawk turns around, “Thanks!” I say, and give him a thumbs up. He smiles big and gives me a thumbs up in return.

“Hey Owl!” I shout next, and Owl turns around and says…

“Who?”

And I give him the finger as I step backwards through the door and it closes on them forever. I guess. Whatever. I am now standing in the kind of place you would expect to find in outer space, so that’s a definite step up in my book. I admit that I would prefer a campy, 1950’s ‘Forbidden Planet’ aesthetic over this stark, 1980’s vision, but I’m thrilled to be out of Moon Valley High and I’ll take what I can get. I just hope this place isn’t run by Hal 9000… although, the way this day has been going I would not be terribly surprised. This hallway seems to parallel the one we passed on the way in. In other words, when I walked through the door, I was moving across the hall, not down it. The floor, walls, and ceiling are all made of apparently the same type of large white panels, making it almost, but not quite, square. It is a little wider than it is tall, and not only is it quite wide (you could have two lane golf cart traffic in here, probably with a turn lane), the combination of the white, the light, and the squeaky clean uniformity of it all makes dimensions kind of hard to gauge. There do not appear to be any doors or windows. The doorway I entered through does not appear on the wall next to me, it just looks like wall. I reach out and knock on it, and it opens right up and I’m looking right back out into Moon Valley High. Ok, so that’s a thing.

The manner in which the doorway opens is quite confounding. From whatever point I knock on it, it just sort of melts away. It’s kind of like watching an iris open from a central point, but there are no moving parts. It is also similar to watching a ring moving across calm water when a stone is dropped in, but there are no waves. There is no sliding, turning, rippling, shimmering, moving, scraping, squeaking… nothing. No sound at all. There is wall, there is not wall. Neat trick!

I am standing in this very spot, pondering this magical bit of technology and wishing there was a sign with arrows on the wall saying something like ‘Overseer’s Office this way’, when I encounter the first signs of life in this heretofore fortress of solitude. There are soft footsteps, and then a light tapping on the opposite wall several yards down the hall. A door opens and a woman walks through pushing a cart, looking for all the world like a maid in a very fancy hotel. She is young, petite, and pretty, with fair skin, light brown eyes and dark hair parted in the middle and pulled back into two small buns above and behind each ear. She is dressed all in white, an outfit that looks kind of like a cross between a lab coat and a bathrobe. It looks quite comfortable. She is absorbed in her task, humming lightly to herself. I decide to make first contact.

“Hi there,” I say brightly, with a friendly smile.

She squeaks loudly and her feet come smooth off the floor, “Who?” she tries to say, but she’s all squeaked out.

“Sorry,” I’m laughing so hard it’s hard to talk, “I didn’t mean to scare you. Can you tell me which way to the overseer’s office?”

“Who… What… How did you get in here?” she struggles to get the words out in a straight line. I can almost see them crashing into each other in her brain, causing a traffic jam on the way to her mouth. The look on her face is absolute confusion, apparently this is something new for her.

“I came to the end of the hall and knocked, like they said, and the door opened for me. I guess it’s kinda rare, from what I’ve heard, but I can’t be the only one who’s ever come in here.”

“Ok,” she says, smiling a wry smile and shaking her head, “Who put you up to this?” and starts walking over to me.

“What? I just want to go see this overseer person to see if he can help figure out who I am and what’s going on with me in this place. Really.”

“Really?” she’s not buying it, not even a little, “Where’s the door you came in?”

“Right there,” I hook a thumb towards the wall next to me.

“Uh huh,” she says, and walks over and knocks on the door and — nothing, just wall. “Now, you wanna tell me another one?” she gets right up into my face, “Try to make it REALLY good.”

“That’s odd, it worked for me,” as I reach over and knock on the door and, Abracadabra! It’s a door! “See?” I smile my friendliest ‘I’m not making this up’ smile.

Her face goes instantly slack and turns as white as the clothes she’s wearing. She slowly turns to me with a mouth like an O and eyes the size of saucers.

“Wha… How…” the words are fighting for space again, finally a few make it out, “Who the FUCK are you?!”

I should have known, apparently it’s a running gag. I put my palms up, and shrug, and smile, and say, “THAT’S what I’m trying to find out! Think you can give me a hand?”