The Color of Life Once upon a time...
...a colorful man lived by himself in a dull gray city full of people who were less likely to show any more evidence of individual thought than a colony of ants. As he walked along the street contemplating his life, he would daydream of the somber browns of the living earth. If he were happy, he would skip with his imagination radiating veridian and canary with tangerine sparks lighting the air about him. When he thought of sadness he would slow to a trod with his head hung low as though weights of midnight’s darkest blue were anchored to his forehead.
For as long as he could remember, the colorful man had walked through the streets watching the colorless people as they followed orders with out comment or objection along their programmed itinerary in a tight, orderly fashion. The colorful man could no longer tell one of the city’s almost-mechanical denizens from another. He wondered how thy could spend their say trudging through the drab uncolored city along the same wrote path every day. He dreamed of the day that he would find an end to this street, full of people yet devoid of a single soul save his own, and find himself in a great wide world of color.
One day the colorful man’s feet became tired of walking. He decided to rest himself before he lost his precious colors to monotony. He sat down on the sidewalk between the ranks of marching ant-people with his legs folded, as would a Zen monk, and his eyes closed. His thoughts turned inward as dreams of a homeland with color taunted him in his rest.
He awoke to the bland world of the ants, who were men, carrying on around him. When he stood up he noticed a young man sitting next to him. He wore a colorless outfit of the sort a mechanic would wear. Stitched on a patch above his left breast-pocket was the number 59234. Some one had also taken a marker and scrawled the name “Savant” in bold blue letters across the bottom of the patch. When the young man looked up, the colorful man saw the reason this one had left the masses. The young man had hazel-colored eyes, grey-green with flecks of blue and brown.
The two remained locked in mutual contemplation for a while longer with all of the soulless city’s non-flavors and unhappenings still left non-tasted and not happening all around them. When the young man at last stood up, the colorful man turned and resumed his journey to the colors of his dreams. Savant tagged along, turning his hazel eyes inward and searching for some color of his own.
And so there were two; but three is the magic number.?:?:?:?:? A young woman had been walking home from her job as a secretary in office building number 756 when she caught sight of a young man walking in between the ranks and files of drones. She watched him from a distance. There was something outstanding about him. It radiated from his face and drew her in. She would follow the files in a pattern fit to allow her to watch him from a distance. Caught up in her voyeuristic activities, she was slowly drawn closer to him without her realizing.
The colorful man again sat down to rest with his dreams and Savant sat down beside him. The young woman was drawn to Savant’s side and timidly touched his shoulder. He turned his head and looked up at her. Then their eyes met, her vision changed. She could see the empty spaces in the city around her where the... , she didn’t know what was missing, but it clearly wasn’t there. Her head turned light and her mind felt like spilling out of her ears so she sat down and tried to rest.
She was awakened by the young man’s touch. His face shone with a quality that was absent all around her. It gave off a light of promise and beginnings
The colorful man felt the colors become stronger. His colors became
collected into a pure white ball floating along his path. ...She stood up slowly, her eyes never leaving his. When she was fully standing he turned and walked off in a hurry to catch up with something ahead of him. She could make out an area ahead of him, mostly obscured by the ranks of tin bureaucrats, where the uncolor was very weak. With great strain on her under-developed eyes she could almost make out the figure of a shadow. She strained harder, summoning all of her concentration on the odd specter and slowly she began to see a... . Her head split with the pain of fear. Her mind was numbed and she followed blindly behind Savant holding onto the belt of his mechanic’s jumper for guidance.
When her senses came back they brought a friend, a question, to occupy her mind. "What is it that the young man follows, or does it go before him? Does it protect him?"Confusion
... The ball became disrupted and decomposed into a muddled swirling
mass forming no particular shape..."Is it dangerous? It could hurt him, me, all of us in the city."
Fear
...then was dispelled by a flash of pale yellow, gone quickly..."It couldn’t be real. It’s too different. It goes against the laws of reality. It’s an abomination."
Hatred
...leaving behind a dark red cloud with quick bolts of obsidian lightning flashing across it and hungry flames eating at themselves and the cloud..."It must control him. It can’t have him. He’s mine. I have him. She grabbed his arm and stopped walking."
Jealousy
...until only a jagged hunk of jade was left where the heart of the cloud had been. It was saturated with a sickly green ichor of infected growth. ...He was jerked to a stop and turned to look at her with an angry, questioning face. She let go quickly. Her chest was heavy with ... a squeezing feeling. She felt like curling up somewhere alone. She couldn’t look him in the eye. She sat down with her face in her hands.
Shame
...which dissolved away the stone. It evaporated into a yellow veil with lavender swirls that avoided contact with anything solid. ...Savant walked away reluctantly, not wishing to loose the colorful man in the streets. When the young woman looked up again, she was alone. The city people hardly seemed real. They were nothing more than automatons. The city felt bleak and desolate. Was it always this empty?
Abandoned Solitude
...She was a rock left unnoticed in a puddle of muddy water on the back roads of reality. ...She missed the young man. She even missed the thing. Her heart felt worn and tattered in her chest. Her eyes were moist and small crystal drops rolled down the smooth features of her face.
Sorrow
...The fog condensed into a pool of deep blue dark with shadows. It laid there pathetic and unable to move or rise. ...After a long time crying, she realized that the longer she sat there the farther away the young man was. She stood up and looked around with urgency. Her heart felt as though it hollow and full to the brim at the same time, full of the young man and empty in his absence. She needed him to even out. She ...she had no word for it. Like all of the other ...feelings... that she’d found with the young man, she couldn’t identify it, couldn’t know it as...
Love
...The pool boiled and the steam that came up off of the pool was rosy and warm. It collected into a cloud and soon the pool was spent and gone. An aura of welcome pink was created as light shone off of the crimson mist...Her eyes picked out the young man quickly, his brightness shone like a beacon. She ran to him with her emptyfull heart pumping strongly. Her step was light and a strange expression creased her face. The corners of her usually straight mouth were turned up and her teeth were showing through a slight part in her lips. Her hair came loose of the bun it was hitherto imprisoned in and flowed out behind her.
Joy
...The pink aura intensified until the air hummed and the mist transmuted into an energy explosion contained in some invisible capsule. The yellows of the lemon, greens of a summer field, neon blues of a clear spring sky, and orange sparks from the fire of the soul all had a place in this celebration of being.She caught Savant man by the shoulders, spun him around to face her and kissed him full on the mouth. The last bit just came to her at the last moment. She felt it an appropriate expression of the rosy cloud feeling.
She looked at his face and gasped in wonder. His eyes had ...color.
She knew that word well enough now, like remembering a past life. It was the name of the feelings as a whole. She loved the crisp start of it, the soft vowels, the flick of the tongue in the middle, and when her tongue came to the ‘r ’ it rolled around it making a purring sound. His face became rosy as he blushed so he shook his dusty blond hair down in front of his face. His dull uniform was unzipped half-way on his front. His shirt was a swirl of colors dancing around each other.
The tears must have washed the uncolored contact lenses from her eyes. She too was in full color now. Auburn hair hung down past her shoulders. She was dressed in plain clothes of uncolor, though. She considered their drabness disapprovingly. They hung on her like chains from a prison she had just escaped. She stepped out of them into the world naked as a newborn baby.
The young man averted his eyes. He gave her the shirt off of his back. It was large enough to cover her. It felt so much more real than the over-plain clothes she was used to wearing. Its colors warmed her skin. The shirt felt alive.
She turned to see a colorful man walking down the street in a shade of contented blue, deep and abiding. He stepped off the end of the sidewalk into the world next door.