Monochrome - SCP Foundation

by Captain Kirby

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After the first five years, Agent Cervantes forgot there were other colors. Observing the world through a crimson lens had brought her so much excitement. One second she saw an artist's passion, a mother's embrace, and the exchange of Valentine's Day chocolates. Then the view hurdled her into operating rooms, warzones, and red-faced arguments. Each moment a rollercoaster.

But after so much time, the visions lost their vibrancy. Her days turned monochrome. Cervantes could've sworn she'd seen that cherry pie, or that blood transfusion. The wine all tasted the same, and her tongue numbed to strawberries.

"Excuse me?" Cervantes didn't know how to address the Red.

"Yes, Ava?" the world echoed back.

"I was just wondering, are there other… things like you?"

"I am not sure I understand."

"Like, is there someone who archives the world's blue?"

The universe paused to contemplate this thought. A long time passed. It could've been minutes, it could've been years, but Cervantes waited for a reply. And after what could have been an eternity, existence answered:

"What is blue?"

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Forgotten, and stumbling in the cold, the only features Agent Ramirez could distinguish were the warm orange lights, now too far away for her to reach. One dangled high in the sky; the other radiated from the city of Lamplight.

Ramirez felt like she was dying. Like the cosmic cold flooding into her would not leave, no matter how close she got to those beacons of heat. So she gave into her fate, and took a seat on whatever matter she was standing on.

It was a pathetic way to go out, really. She wanted answers so badly that she gave up the comfort of the extradimensional settlement. And now that she found her answers, she wished she had remained ignorant. She was cold, alone, and unsatisfied.

But her train of thought continued despite her expectations. She was expecting to die five minutes ago. Now ten. And now she was livid, so she took it out on the citizens of Lamplight.

How could they be happy just sitting there in that orange bubble of theirs? They said they wanted to experience the mystery, build the world around it, but that was nothing more than an excuse. It was lazy. Questions this, intrigue that. No one in that entire goddamn town had the conviction to step into the dark to find the answers.

Ramirez liked the sound of that word, "conviction". She might be cold now, but at least she had follow through. At least she did what she set out to do.

"Fuck them," she whispered. It made her feel better at first, but then disappointed soon after. Disappointed this was how she'd spend her final minutes, which had now stretched into hours.

As she sat in the cold, Ramirez found herself apologizing to Lamplight. She became thankful for its orange glow, to brighten up her eternal night. It was almost as if she wasn't dying alone.

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All that Graham felt was regret. If she could remember more things she would have felt loss too, but regret was the only thing left. So she just felt regret that she did not understand why she should be feeling loss.

She had been alone in the desert world for three days now. And while the facts slipped from her mind, the facts were present nonetheless. She killed the only other thing in here with her. Yes, it was for survival. No, it did not care what she was (besides edible). But three days ago, she wasn't alone. Three days ago she had a purpose. Three days ago, there was more to her life than miles and miles of yellow hills and golden grains.

The thing sometimes shifted to look like one of Graham's colleagues. Other times it became her partner. And one time, it even mimicked her. In each of those moments, just before it attempted to feast on Graham's shambling mind, she felt relief. Because a friendly face broke up the world.

One day, she forgot how to walk. She tripped while scuttering down a sand dune, and planted face first into the ground. Her arms would not respond, and her neck held a mutiny. All she could do, was open her eyes to see the sand, or close them to see nothing.

Her last thought before she went, was that there wasn't much of a difference.

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Hawley laid back against a moss covered rock, at the top of a grassy hill. He could see leaves and stems and blades of green for miles and miles. The breeze was cool, and the sun was just right. He had earned himself a rest after a hard day's work, but something about napping felt wrong.

"So, what now?" he called out to the forest. There was no response, which made him smile. He was talking to the trees like a goddamn hippie, what else did he expect?

But, as the forest remained silent, Hawley grew impatient. That tree girl must've heard him, right? Kind of rude to ignore him after all Hawley did for her. For all of them really.

Hawley got up and reentered the forest. He went from tree to tree, knocking on logs, and calling out.

"Are you just going to leave me like this?" he shouted. Then he kicked a tree too hard. Probably broke a toe.

"Fuck!" He fell on his ass, and clutched his foot, "Damn it! Fine bitch, be like that. I see how it is. Just leave after I'm no longer useful."

Hawley heard a shuffling of leaves behind him. He forced his neck as far as it could go to see what was back there. Just out of the corner of his eye, Hawley caught a few vine-like locks of hair.

"I'm sorry. It's not on purpose," she said.

"What?"

"You can't come with us."

"But— but I joined your psychic contingent, right? I'm here in this synthetic world, just like you."

"The others don't trust you."

"I gave you an opportunity for revenge. A gift."

"But you're still Foundation."

"Not anymore! I left!" Hawley felt defenseless, having this conversation on the ground, still massaging his foot. This girl spoke to him like a younger brother.

"Not in title, but in spirit."

"That's bullshit, and you know it."

"Then why do you still have your ID card?"

The girl pointed to the small plastic rectangle hanging from Hawley's belt.

"Wait, that wasn't on purpose."

"Exactly."

"But—"

"It is not up to me. Thank you so much, Douglas. I won't forget you."

A small breeze fluttered through the trees. Hawley covered his face, but when he looked again, the girl was gone.

Careful not to push on his (probably) broken toe, Hawley stood up. They weren't going to just leave him behind. He'd follow them, wherever they went. He'll chase them all the way to paradise. He hobbled and hobbled. He traversed endless miles of forest, always with green grass below him, and green leaves above him, blocking out the sun.

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The two bluest things on earth are the sky and the sea. Abagail Liu experienced both of them softly flanking her as she fell to her death. She was not afraid. It didn't feel much different from her flight a moment prior. And everyone knows blue is a calming color.

Abagail just wished that Olivia was there to experience this endless blue with her. Views like this are meant to be shared.

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DATA EXPUNGED

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In his last moments, Sforza could see the following:

A dozen men or so. All of them cheering as Sforza gasped for his last breaths. They filled the king's courtyard like an audience fills a theater. The sting of their hostility is dulled greatly by knowing Sforza's end at least bring joy to some civilians.

The courtyard furbishments (largely obscured by the men mentioned prior). Sforza decorated his courtyard top to bottom with royal banners and drapes, everything purple of course. There is nothing more royal than purple. He would've doused the whole castle in the color if he had the time. It is the only color fit for a king such as himself.

Sforza's younger brother Gonzalo, standing between the hanged man and the crowd, up raised on a crate. Gonzalo was never fond of the decor, or Sforza's choice of wife, or a number of other things. But he was very vocal about the amount of violet Sforza used around the castle. It was likely the only matter that Sforza's brother felt he could dispute.

In documentation of Sforza's death (which would later be mistaken for fiction) a number of details were incorrect without any excuse. Most of them to do with the nature of Gonzalo's betrayal. However, no one could fault the historians for assuming that Sforza was aghast. That he spent his final moments cursing his brother for committing such a sin. But that is simply not the case.

I wonder, would Gonzalo still hate me if I changed up the color scheme more?

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They live their lives with gray on all sides.

Wake up in your containment cell. Go to sleep in your containment cell.

Gray gray gray. The walls, the floor, the ceiling.

Just you and the gray.

The door never opens.

The gray is not a good friend.

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We all die alone.

There are no colors here.

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And we may be reborn, or we may move on, and enter the unknown alone. But in the transition, in the moment in between, the dark turns to bright and all the world is white. There is so much of everything. Nothing stands out. It is overpowering. There is only white and its constituents are lost in the shine.

This is where colors go to die.

A blind man made broad strokes across a canvas. He used watercolor, but he was equally skilled with acrylics and oils. Friends of his asked if they could observe, see his process. Everyone thought that watching a sightless man paint would be a spectacle of sorts. But the blind man declined. His art was created more through guesswork and instinct than method.

The only time he let anyone in on his artistic secrets was when the neighbor boy asked for lessons. The blind man had declined any previous apprentices, but something about the young lad's candor struck him differently.

So now, the boy watched as the blind man flew. Not in the literal sense, but the blind man believed that the rush of doing something so absurd must feel just like flying. He soared across his canvas, did loop-the-loops with his brush, landing and taking off from his palette to refuel and adjust course.

When he finished, the blind man had no clue what he made.

"How do you know it's finished?" the boy asked from the far side of the room.

"Because, I started with a palette where the colors were all separated. They had their own little space, carved out just for that part of the rainbow."

"But you took them out of that space."

"Yes, I did. And I introduced them to each other. Red met yellow. Orange said hello to blue. Violet and green had a nice picnic together," the blind man motioned for the boy to join him, "Come closer and see."

A pair of shoes clicked along the ground, until the blind man could hear the soft sound of breathing.

"The painting is in harmony. No color is lonely or overshadowed. And once I bring every shade and hue together on the canvas, I know I'm done."

"But how do you know if it's any good?" the boy asked.

"I don't know if it's good. All I know is that it makes me happy."

The boy nodded, but the blind man didn't know that.