You come up on the abandoned gas station twenty seconds later. Or it might have been fourteen hours.
The lights are on and flickering weakly. There is no one around. Taped to one of the posts is a plastic sign: Welcome to Kansas City!
Kansas City. The name unearths something in your mind.
The gas station does not look like a city. There are seven gas dispensers sticking out the ground. Your world has been nothing but straight ground under you and straight sky above you for twenty days. These boxes poking out of the ground and into the sky make you unsure of where they are really at.
Your numb fingers crack open the book. Turn off the lights, it says. Do not trust electricity. Turn off the lights.
You stand under the roof and look up. The lights are yellow. On one of the support beams there is a light switch. You walk over to it and turn off the lights.
Suddenly the sky falls and you can't see anything. The boy cries out and clings to your arm, terrified. You can't see the sky or the grass. It is like you have closed your eyes- but your eyes are open.
You stand there, frozen. The longer you stand the more you begin to see. Lines. Blurs. Blotches.
Slowly you work up the courage to step out under the roof of the gas station. You think you are in the same place, but it all looks and feels so different.
You look up. You should see the sky but it is not the same. It is not endless. It is not dull. It is not gray. There are dots in it. Speckles of something. You reach out to touch one but you can't. The dots sparkle.
The boy looks up and gasps. Look! Purple! He points up. The sky has changed color! Now it is wide and expansive and humbling but soft and proud and calm. Purple.
You stop being afraid. The grass has changed color too, you say. What color is it?
He looks down. Green, he says with wonder. It is dark and ominous. It shrouds the earth. It is certain but uncertain to you. You do not understand green. Green is secretive, unknown, uncanny. It is both good and evil, and neither.
You gaze at the purple sky and green earth, until something else catches your eyes.
They are bright like the specks in the sky, but bigger. They are in front of you, not above you. You tug the boy's arm and you start walking towards them. All your weariness is gone! You find you are running, and smiling. You have a picture of Kansas City in your head- the color of laughter. Orange. Orange. Orange.
