There came a time when the world was dark. And no color was left.
Not a single stream of color remained, not in painting nor photographs. Not in the pale pigments of human flesh nor the feathery fire of a robin's bosom. And life went on, with great smoke trees sprouting from the ground and wrapping their tendrils around the bitter gray earth. Fog swept through the streets past humans with hair as black as charcoal. People with eyes as gray as a sweeping storm cloud. And flames in the factories arose such a clatter as they whistled and twisted like a blizzard in the night.
The color had been harvested, the light nonexistent, and it was only in one man that this process could be reversed. There was only one man who could take his last bit of light and use it to restore the spectrum to reality.
This man discovered it at a graveside. As he bent down in prayer to a forsaken god he knew nothing about, his senses picked up something peculiar. He looked around, trying to identify what was making his hair stand on end.
The culprit took form in a rose that had seemed lifeless without the luster he remembered from flowers containing color. It was a little piece of red with a stem of green. The petals, although strewn oper the gravestone several days prior, were still lush, and the newfound radiance brought a certain sparkle to it.
It took him a second to collect his thoughts. It had been lifetimes in his mind since he'd seen a morsel of color, a deviation from the black and white and shades in between that had dictated his sight.
At first, he just stood there, staring at the hunk of marble above it. Then he kneeled down, and in one swift motion, plucked the flower from the grave. "Oh Clair," he murmured over the place her sleeping body lay. "Oh Clair, my darling. My sweet, beautiful girl, I thought miracles didn't exist anymore."
He departed from the cemetery where he'd laid her to rest. It was about a half mile from the city he'd walked from. Not many people walked anymore, he'd found. This city of his was the destination of fancy cars traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. It's where many businessmen, many greedy corporate users went, for it was the source of the world's demise.
This man had been a faithful worker once. He used to work for Cortec, sucking the color off of all objects and leaving rooms barren. He sucked the soul of the eye away, returning its juices to the factory to be harnessed into electricity.
Before its existence, he hadn't believed that you could ever feel color, that it was anything more than a quality. It wasn't any different the depth of an object, or assigning it a mass or amount of matter it contained. It was just a word given to an attribute that was already there.
But he learned as he stared, glassy-eyed into beaker upon beaker at a greasy liquid that sloshed and burbled not unlike soup that his assumptions had been incorrect. He partially blamed himself for what had become of Earth, but when he saw that last glimpse of vibrancy, a bubble of hope returned. It was like a candle in the dark.
He started walking away, eyes filled with wonder. He wandered past white picket fences of the domestic sectors in the countryside. He took a deep breath when he reached the long stretch of hill leading up to this city in the sky.
A friendly sign to his left beckoned him in. 'Dirk, ¼ mile,' the sign on the highway read as cars whizzed by him. At first, he feared that somebody might catch sight of the rose, but he abandoned this grievance. Not one noticed him. He was simply a blur of motion, a blended blob that was there for a second and then gone. He had no need to worry that workers from Cortec would find it and destroy it in all its beauty.
He trekked up the hill, entering the dank ruins of the city. The entrance passed through the untouched space, where buildings were desolate and deserted. They harbored memories of black shadow people clinging to the walls, people that would forever be there, plastered to stone. Some had shock on their faces. Others were busily pampering their yard with a wild ferocity.
The man hurried along past these permanent murals made from flesh. He entered into the sector of the city where shops were occupied and people on the countless screens jabbered. Their voices were deafening enough to distract any customers from his hidden possession.
It wasn't until his heart was beating wildly in his chest that a single human noticed him. He had just entered a large, steaming building. The machines within screeched like a mother mourning their lost child. As his footsteps changed the humming pattern, a worker looked up.
"Who are you?" the worker asked.
"I used to work here," he replied. "Thought I'd take a little visit back."
"This is not a visitation hour. Right now our facility is closed to the public," the worker told him.
"I know, I know," he said.
The worker walked over to an input machine. "ID number?"
"420190," he complied.
"Phil Saffrage," the worker looked at him after a moment.
"That would be me," he nodded.
"Huh. This is odd. It says that you haven't worked at Cortec since 2218. Nine years," he looked at him.
"What's so odd about that?" he asked.
"Well, this says that you've been unemployed since then, no wife, no children. Arrested on multiple accounts for regressive tendencies," the worker explained.
"Yes. Life has been a bit odd for me," he said. "I just need to receive a bit of closure. Quitting this job, it caused great trauma for me in my personal life."
"I doubt that," the man mumbled. "It appears... a psychological facility is seeking your capture. A psychological facility that you were admitted to only a few months after you established that you were dissatisfied with your position at Cortec."
Phil stood with an essence of calm, although internally his heart was thumping like the hooves of a stampeding wildebeest. "I am aware. That's why I'm only asking you this one simple favor."
"And why should I help you? You... you paint! You deserve to be returned! And the reward... it's quite impressive!" A giddy smile spread across the face of this cheeky man. A disgusting face of greed enveloped the worker, causing an aromatic feeling of lurking doom.
But the painting... his passion, an embellishment of acrylics on the large canvas that he'd discovered, that was well worth the misery encountered afterward. And Clair... "Darling, why do you commit such evil theft? You know that I could very turn you into the authorities here and now! Put the brush down this instant!"
"But Papa! Don't you see? It's not evil. It's art. I've engulfed the world and replicated it in such a way... such a way that it shows every detail, every aspect of the landscape! You take a glimpse at the scenery and soon forget it, but this is an embodiment that will last forever!"
He stood back and tried to envision what she spoke of. "What is it supposed to be, exactly?"
She giggled. "Why, it's a mountain, of course, like the ones in Colorado! I was going to give it to you!"
Yet she never did. A woe, a tragedy, the authorities stated. A grievance to the community, a decline in society! She was an asset, a helpful contribution to the forward progression in technology! Ha! A mere script! He doubted that a single tear had been shed over an unknown girl being held in a mental institution by the end of her days. Only his own.
But he'd made sure that her painting was drawn out to completion.
"If only it had a little color."
If only it had a little color.
Phil turned back to the man. "You're absolutely correct. I deserve to be returned, to be subject to demeaning practices due to my inability to comprehend modern society. I am depressed, violent, and incoherent when it comes to the subject of my actions and choice of hobbies. But let me just have this one visit, and you can return me yourself!"
The worker, a gullible fool, thought it over only briefly and agreed to the request. "Just don't mess with any of the machinery. If you ruin anything, it'll be deducted from my paycheck!" A long sigh. "Just return here once you're finished touring the facility. After all, you won't be allowed anywhere important. You don't have the clearance."
There was a quick swipe of hands, a snatched item, and a long shuffle began from Phil's part, advancing towards the blank horizons before him. He had a motive, one single destination at which he could achieve the only goal left in his life.
It was as if he was in a trance, a long hypnotic walk down the aisle to be greeted by his groom- the door single he was to enter. Bottles chugged, steam condensed into a thick powder, and electricity crackled and burned like a tree splitting down the middle. He stared up at the electricity. It was on fire, licking at the ceiling of the factory. It was a cat, running, crashing its paws against the ground in the sky. A leopard that dominated the sky. The product of Cortec. It always fascinated Phil, this demon that gushed through the tubes. The generated power. The stash of hidden treasure that was being depleted now that its source was extinct. It was bottled up like the tension in a pistol before the trigger was pulled. The trigger she'd pulled before it was all over. His life had ended in the moment, just as hers had.
"Their next feat will be to harvest the sun!" she exclaimed. "Do you not see? They've taken the world already! First, they take the coal, then the oil, then the color! When does this monstrosity end? When do we stop fueling the world's generic instant gratification?"
Dirk, homeland of the apocalypse of everything beautiful. The site of Armageddon.
Phil swiped a card and opened the door. Access was granted to the greatest criminal ever known to mankind. A criminal of humanity, savior of the natural world. The flower was still carefully embedded in his pocket, untampered with. Phil retrieved it and stood at the base of the switch. The sleeping giant. Setting it down on the plate, he took a deep breath.
The machine roared with an unquenchable thirst.
But it was no use.
It spurred to life, calculating, compressing, analyzing the beauty he'd brought so far.
And then it coughed...
Once...
Twice...
It sputtered to life, then died.
He stood there in silence, watching the last bit of color evaporate into the air.
And then the shadow men of Cortec took him away.
And they laid him beside his daughter.