Colors

Another January came, yet in distant Januarys past, the rising orange sun was indicative of spirits sprung high with hope -- individuals would be inspired to apply aspirational changes to their lives when a new year began. For the past decade, however, setting suns struggled to protrude out of a smog that viscerally seemed to grow darker each moment that passed.

With groceries in hand, Rosse Marie’s day was as exciting as it could have been during such times. It would typically be another few weeks until that excitement would show its face again. Yet today had granted her social interaction and all the faces she saw including hers, being hidden almost completely with wrappings around them (other than on eyes and the skin around them), she did her best to see through the wrappings – to see new faces filled with colored complexion and individuality. Faces which, if she had dared, she would have reached out to feel.

Real faces were the best part of her months, going along with the one-person monthly allowance of canned food she received. Normally, citizens were not granted permission to leave their residences other than on these special days, so she would typically be inside with only her windows and computer screen as a means of seeing what the world was, or wasn’t offering. In the day’s final moments she approached her door, dreading the thought she might not have been chosen. Then she saw something that, perhaps, would have the utmost importance in her life.

“Librarians, plural,” she quietly whispered to herself. She saw the brown paper box innocently sitting there on her doorstep, as if it wasn’t misplaced in a world that no longer needed its existence. Maybe she should have hesitated, but she didn’t. Opening it revealed a golden chain with a companion heart-shaped locket tangled in it, which sent her giddy heart racing. She had heard from the bagger earlier that residents Nationwide were coming home from their grocery time slots this week to find unmarked brown paper boxes left at their doorsteps.

The bagger was a young man, yet still had to have been a few years older than her, judging by his maturity. Over the years, he would often make as much conversation in the moments they had, while he bagged her blacked-out cans with white letters, or black-lettered white cans. He gained her trust not only for the news she would not be able to find elsewhere, but for friendship which was even harder to come by these days. She would always choose the line he was working, inching toward him while her food was scanned. That trust did come with time, yet despite not knowing more than a set of hazel eyes wrapped with white skin, and a rough voice that she would hear sometimes in a dream, she did learn to trust this stranger. They both risked a lot in those few, accumulated seconds, making what was the most important information she would receive, sound like simple small talk.

He was the first to tell her about the Librarian - a rumor she would laugh off at first - then later, becoming an absolute truth in her life. No news that he relayed to her would ever be online, even though “Librarian” at the time, and “brown box” this week, were the most searched words when first rumored. Thankfully the freedom to use Google’s ancient implemented feature of seeing most searched phrases from any time was still allowed, but there was no telling when it would end as another freedom lost, to a past filled with traditions deemed “non-progressive” to humanity.

It would’ve been blasphemous for media outlets to cover such topics, and any posts slightly related would have been automatically flagged by the internet’s built-in policing system that regulated what citizens viewed. Once typed on a keyboard, a shadow banned term couldn’t be completely entered and thus began its erasure from existence.

The same two options Rosse had the choice of making were the same for people everywhere realizing what they received. One would be to - wisely discard the box and its contents discreetly, and if they couldn’t, take their chances and confess to proper authorities to receiving a brown box. Another type of person might automatically take the box and pray while hiding it in secret. Now, with chain in hand and no turning back, she and the one who left it, had chosen life of terrorism to the Nation.

The bagger couldn’t have said for sure what was inside the brown boxes, or who had left them. He did however say, before Rosse walked out, “Librarians had most likely left them.”

What stunned in the doorway for only seconds, while also seemingly being an infinite time, was the consideration more than one Librarian existed. A mysterious figurehead, that the Nation continuously tried to cover-up as a “non-threat”. Yet in truth, a man or woman was out there, reaching out every so often to the Nation’s citizens by periodically breaking through the government’s cyber security into the net. Once in, this mysterious personage breached each computer screen with lost color and art.

Typically, color outside of blacks and whites was reserved for those groups in politics, science, and the allowed arts that pushed the Nation’s agenda. Color was used for their banners and advertising - and even then, the color was dulled down closer to that with markings one would find left in a stained toilet. The loss of color in art and screens had eventually trickled its way through to not just the food, but the cans that held them. Dyes were added to fruits, vegetables, meats, in order to disguise their vibrant colors. And, thus, a constant reminder that things are BLACK and WHITE, with little or often no colors in between.

The idea to take away color came with that notion that freedom of choice was only allowed if that choice was to be a part of what the Nation dictated to be good.

Yet with all the “good” that was happening, Rosse only saw a world left without. Her early in life passion for music had led to her hearing and seeing music strictly in colors. “Synesthesia”, the bagger would call it. Another word that had been phased out of dictionaries and people’s tongues due to its relation with an individual’s perception of color.

A gaping hole was left in both people and their things - books, screens, even paint in rooms, was discarded by those who now controlled each infinite pigmentation. Never was it so hard to describe what a purple was, when there was no red in planted rose bushes of yards, or blue in the sky to sample off of. This simpler life, in favor of the blacks and whites, with almost always with some blurred grey making its way in between when the two collided.

Politics made a connection back to humanity’s most basic tool; language. Over time, words were stripped and reformatted to instead be utilized as weapons. The words of ‘colored language’, so to speak, now were sharp tipped daggers - with each breath now needing to be carefully planned if words followed. As the second amendment controlled deadly weapons, so, too, were words controlled. Over time these separate entities were in lockstep with science and arts now following suite to what politics dictated. Life in general was always threatened if people didn’t conform to what the three heavy hitters in the formation of human policy demanded. Slowly, as control was gained on one side, the loss of color increased on the other, dominating the Nation in ways seen and unseen.

Rosse understood both sides, and saw it had perhaps been only fair. People were doing the best for themselves and their families by guaranteeing a safety that was offered with simply conforming, despite their true stances. But with one’s sense of fleshly protection, came the control for a spiritual liberty that was now mocked and ridiculed whenever asked, “Where had it gone?”

The Librarian, however, was the biggest pushback seen in years.

Theory had it that almost every form of news media, scientific journal, and art (from comedic YouTube videos to Vincent van Gogh’s ‘The Starry Night’) had been saved and loaded onto thousands hard drives. The Librarian had preserved, even beyond the internet. Deep-rooted believers agreed the Librarian must also have the original pieces of these human creations (or so they hoped). Many times the Librarian made similar appearances on screens. People that chose to accept said ‘glitches’ to be the cover-ups, as identified by the government also chose a new reality. This new reality dictated these acts of protest did have validity behind them, despite the mass majority claiming they held zero percent.

No one knew if this “Librarian” had expected everything to be lost, or they were just a massive hoarder. But it didn’t matter. A growing number of people everyday grew tired of the spoon-fed thoughts that were supposed to taste better than the black and gray riddled mush in their cans. With time and faith, the Librarian appeared and provided a flavor to life never before tasted, even before the loss of color.

Rosse grew up in a time where it was evident how past generations had led themselves here today. Asking a constant, “Why?” or “How?”, had divided, instead of forming unification toward a righteous cause. They ended up tangled in webs of deceitful lies produced by government and perpetuated by media, always ending with the same angry people struggling against one another to escape alive. No one realized a spider and its woven webs would never play fair with those encased.

Rosse prayed that an evolution in humans today would come not from a third ear or eye sprouting, but rather, in a unification of human psychology and faith. Could people could all subconsciously as a unit, move forward with, “Where to next?” instead of spiting existence?

Now with chain in hand, the answer was clear - there was a movement looking to spread. It was something she had always wanted to be a part of, while still maintaining her next breath. All the answers to all the other little questions that came along with how this chain came possibly to be in her hand were hard to fathom. Yet at doorsteps all over the country arrived residents who hadn’t owned anything of color in years, and now, a priceless golden token of rebellion.

She rushed the door closed behind her with the locket gleaming in her hand. It read in quotes, “What a piece of work is man.” She ran to her computer and typed it in to see if the quote would appear or was already taken down. Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’. She marveled another second, then ran to her bathroom with no screen in sight.

Cracking open the locket, she found a small painting of flowers connected by stems. One, a black rose with thorns, filled with dark reds and blacks - and the other, a daffodil, with its splashed greens and yellows. The two held together in the middle with contrast that was reminiscent of the taijitu‘s yin and yang.

Floored, Rosse could only think of, “beautiful”. She instinctively took her new found hope to her old salvaged piano, took out a piece of blank paper and a black inked pen, and began to play and write lyrics. Words and a melody that had been locked in her all day, perhaps even all her life - had finally let loose in her mind, like staring at the iced over reflection from a frozen lake into the Northern sky, and witnessing it crack open with its green ethereal light.

I’m not praying about yesterday, I’m prayin’ for tomorrow

Brush on the canvas, swear I’ll start somewhere

Open the door, show you my colors, colors, colors.