Colors and Clockwork

Chapter 2

Green doesn't start with the "are you okay?" nonsense. She just walks with me quietly as I ponder through my thoughts.

I don't belong here. It's the truth. Our minds can calculate equations in less than a second. Our programming is exceedingly advanced. Yet my eyesight is no better than a bat's. We don't waste our memory remembering names; instead, we just call each other the color of our dresses. Everything else about our appearances are the same anyway. And Bird is a bird. Simple, right? But even with these simple names, I can't figure out who I'm talking to. Everyone looks grey to me. I look grey to myself. The name Blue would seem alien if I haven't been called that since I was made.

Of course I've done my research. Color isn't really in objects, it's just reflected off of their surfaces. The surface of objects absorb all colors other than the one reflected, so eyes can only see the reflected colors. Doesn't that mean that everyone else is missing colors too? And plus, color is based on experience. Then when you're born, you would develop your own perception of color, right? So everyone sees things slightly different? Does that mean that it doesn't really exist? And if it doesn't exist, why is it causing so many problems for me? I can't seem to wrap my head around this. My world seems to revolve around this one word- "color." Which just happens to be the one word I can't understand. Maybe I'm seeing the real world, colorless and sad.

Green and I jump down the gears together until we reach the bottom. We carefully step towards the middle of the floor, where a small hole leads to the Restricted Area. I slide down the wooden pole first, followed closely by Green. A leaf made of wood is glued onto the end of the pole. We sit on either sides of the leaf, dangling our small feet off of it as it swings. If the owner saw us, we would be sent to the Fixer for sure. But I don't care about that. I desperately need fixing anyway. Tick tock tick tock...

My eyes glide over everything in the living room without actually registering much. A light grey couch sits against the wall with a dark grey painting above it. The rug under the almost white table in front of the couch looks like a pile of ashes. Dark grey circles are all over the medium grey wall.

I sit there with my only friend for what seems like an eternity, both of us in our own worlds. I love that Green can say the right things at the right time, but also stay quiet. Bird's sudden chirps almost make me fall off of the swing. The drop from here would break me for sure. Not that I'm not already broken. "Eight o'clock," Green says, climbing up the pole. I don't dare to come down here after eight, when the owner's awake. Sighing, I start to climb after Green.