Colors

Another January came around, yet in a distant Januarys past, the hued mounting sun was likewise indicative of spirits lifting - a time society openly celebrated this embarking into an unknown chaos and wonder from their time ahead. For the past twenty-three years however, setting suns struggled to scratch against an oozed smog, that likened to a spill from a child’s knocking over of something, seemingly getting thicker and more atramentous each moment that passed.

Rosse’s grocery days always ended with her standing in front of her doorstep with a white bag, staring at the door - wishing it wouldn’t be another few weeks until the excitement of being outdoors would show face again. Despite how bleak the world had become, in her eyes, these days weren’t so bad, as they had granted her a social interaction with others, something she was not too familiar with. Although bodies were forced to be hidden almost completely with wrappings around them (other than on people’s eyes and the skin around them), she did her best to see through – to see new faces filled with colored complexion and individuality. Faces which, if she had dared, she would have reached out just for a moment’s touch. Normally, citizens were not granted permission to leave their residences other than on grocery days, since the air was said to be filled with an unforgiving toxicity that citizens had produced, and pathogens that the same people were also said to constantly be spreading to one another. Which only left her with a smudged window she couldn’t open to clean, and a dulled down computer screen, as a means of seeing what the world was, or wasn’t offering. And in the day’s final moments as she approached her door, dreading the thought she might not have been chosen, she saw something that perhaps, would have the utmost importance in her life.

She heard from her bagger earlier at the store that residents Nationwide were coming home from their grocery time slots this week and finding unmarked brown paper boxes left at their doorsteps. The bagger was a young man, who must have been a few years older than her judging by his maturity. Over the years, he would make as much conversation in 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 news she would not be able to find elsewhere, but for a trusted friendship which seemed even more elusive these days. She would choose the line he was working, and he would work the days she came in. She’d inch toward him while her food was scanned by one of the monochromatics, and they’d chat in brief but accumulated seconds, making what was the most important information she would receive, sound like simple small talk. 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.

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. There was another time he told her of a man that had been caught growing a pear tree after a few years who was ratted out by a neighbor, and after another week, the world knew nothing of a man or that tree. It would’ve been blasphemous for media outlets to cover such topics, but if a whistleblower had let something slip, then that news piece too was quickly swept under the rug. Any posts slightly related would have been automatically flagged by the internet’s built-in policing system that regulated what citizens shared or viewed. Once typed on a keyboard, a shadow banned term couldn’t be completely entered and thus began its erasure from existence.

“Librarians, plural,” she quietly whispered to herself. She saw a petite brown paper box innocently sitting on her doorstep, as if it hadn’t been misplaced in a world that no longer wanted its existence. And maybe she should have hesitated a little longer in case anyone had seen, but nothing or anyone could have stopped her from instinctively opening it before she went inside in front of her computer screen. The box had revealed a golden chain with a companion heart-shaped locket tangled in it. Her heart had been sent racing with paralyzing fear and excitement, but also in preparation for her last breath if it came down to it. Now realizing the moment once she’d opened it, she’d be lost to the world just as the pear man had, as a terrorist to the Nation.

What stunned her for only seconds while also seemingly an infinite time, was the consideration that 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 exhausted down closer to that with the markings one would find left in a stained toilet - eventually, trickling its way through not just the food, but the cans that confined them. Dyes filtered their way into fruits, vegetables, and meats, deteriorating their once vibrant colors. Books, screens, even paint in rooms discarded by those who now controlled each infinite pigment. And, thus, a constant reminder that things are black and white, with little or often, no colors in between.

Rosse only saw the world that was now left without. She had vivid memories of being in love with the sounds that would come from her mother’s radio, reaching into the air and grasping the notes above the heavens, taking chunks from the clouds and bringing back with her cotton candy. “Synesthesia”, the bagger would call it, just another word that was left behind, phased out of dictionaries and off people’s tongues due to its relation with an individual’s perception of color.

It was easy to see some people were only doing best by themselves and their families by guaranteeing safety that was offered by simply conforming - despite any true stances on their humanitarian views. A loss of color was less of a burden than the horrors that awaited fighting for it. 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?”

Humanity’s most accessible tool, that of language, was reimagined by government to instead be utilized as a deadly weapon. Words of ‘colored language’, so to speak, where most had lived with no issue using or hearing in expression, were now sharp tipped daggers - with each breath now needing be carefully planned if words followed. With the second amendment completely done away with, there was less than no way to defend oneself from a government who took it a step too far, and on top of that, from the drones of people whose brains had been scrubbed and completely washed over from that same authority. Slowly, as control was gained on one side, the loss of color increased on the other, dominating the Nation in ways seen and unseen.

The Librarian, however, was the biggest pushback seen in years. The standing theory shared between her and the bagger was 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 beyond the internet. A genius, a mastermind, a planner, saw the only “safe haven” was on the internet for art and media, so it just as easily could be done away with once ‘we the people’ handed over control to the already overstuffed massed conglomerates. Deep-rooted believers also agreed the Librarian must also have the original pieces of these human creations (or so they hoped). There were times the Librarian made appearances on citizens screens, breaking their eyes just for a moments glimpse into another world of open expression. People that chose to accept said ‘glitches’ to be actually cover-ups as justified by the government, also chose a new reality. This reality dictated that these acts of protest did have validity behind them, despite the “mass majority” in the media 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 weary 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 one 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. She 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 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 a misplaced bloodstain that perhaps came from the person who had packed her priceless trinket, yet she was able to see past to its splashed greens and yellows. The two tied together in the middle, with a similar contrast reminiscent of the Taijitu‘s yin and yang.

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 an iced over reflection from a frozen lake into the Northern sky, and witnessing cracks open with green and purple ethereal lights.

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…