(continued)
I finished the third page and looked up at him, saying nothing.

He nodded. “Hard to fathom, isn’t it? Just an optical illusion, beamed from a satellite burrowed deep below the Nevada desert. Just an image, like a projector screen” He smiled. “Smoke and mirrors, my boy. Smoke and mirrors”

I just stared at him.

“As you read, it’s been there since the fall of 1917” he continued “when the American government completed work on the satellite and first beamed the image up. And it’s been there ever since, slowly shitting on our innocence” He shook his head sadly. “And it will continue to do so, until people realize the truth, and band together to destroy the satellite” he said, eyeing me gravely “Perhaps you will lead them, my boy”

“Wait a goddamn minute!” I said angrily “1917?! What on earth are you people talking about?! People saw the moon before that! Ancient civilizations saw the moon in the sky! This—” I gestured at the envelope “Is bullshit!”

“People before 1917 were crazy” he said with a shrug. “They were probably seeing things, all hopped up on opiates, or sick with diseases that sprung forth from the filth in which they lived. Degenerates who couldn’t be trusted, all of them were”

“But-“

“Were you alive before 1917?” he asked calmly

“Well… no, but”

“Then there you have it” he said coldly, staring me down as he stirred his drink. “There you have it, indeed”

“But what about astronomers!” I protested “Surely they would realize at some point it’s just an elaborate image, with their fancy telescopes and so forth. I mean, wouldn’t one of them at some point come forward and say something? For the honor of their profession, if nothing else”

“Astronomers?! Ha!” he spat “Astronomers are crooks and crazies, ghoulish wretches pulling the wool over the eyes of the public, and then choking the public with the same piece of wool. My boy, there is a special circle of hell reserved for astronomers, I will tell you that much. They make me sick, the lab-coated slime who peer into their little toys and croak their gibberish: ‘Look, a Quasar’, or ‘Ahh, a Supernova!’. Utter nonsense. They should be publicly beaten and pissed upon”

“Well… but… but anyone can use a telescope, not just astronomers” I protested, choosing my words carefully so he would not tear me apart so easily. “If I were to look at the moon with the right tools, I would be able to tell it was a man-made hologram, as opposed to all the other asteroids and stars-“

“Stars!” he threw his hands up in the air “Don’t get me started about stars!”

CONTINUED