Space Project

The New Boy asked lots of questions.

"He's very curious," said Lisa. She was proud of the New Boy and everything he could do.

"He doesn't know anything," said Mary. "That's why he asks so much. How can he know anything, when he can't see anything?"

The New Boy asked all about the Project. He asked about things that everybody else just took for granted.

"Why doesn't the door work? Why doesn't the window work? Why don't you work, Mr. Mahoney?"

Mr. Mahoney, Mary's father, didn't know what to say. He was one of the people who just sat on the steps and stared.

Mary didn't know what to say either. "You're silly," she blurted out to the New Boy. "You're always asking the wrong kind of question. Nobody knows why things are the way they are."

"Why not?" asked the New Boy.

"Because," said Mary. "Just because. Don't be such a silly. Ask real questions."

"What's a real question?"

"Ask where we are."

"Where are we?" asked the New Boy, and he sounded like he really didn't know.

"We're in the Project," answered Mary, proudly.

"What's the Project."

"That's a big building with lots of families, just off the Freeway."

"And where's the Freeway?"

"In the City, of course," answered Mary.

"And where's the City?" asked the New Boy.

"Don't you know anything?" asked Mary. "The City's on Earth, of course."

"Are you sure?" asked the New Boy.

"Well, everybody lives on Earth," said Mary. "Everybody but astronauts and spacemen."

"Are you sure this isn't a Space Project?" asked the New Boy.

Mary laughed. But Lisa and Sandy didn't laugh. They knew that the New Boy was special. They looked around at the high walls of the Project. They had never wondered before. But now they wondered: What was the Project, really? Where were they, really?

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