The Rainbows in Our Eyes

*November 25, 2019*

Ernest strums a chord on his guitar, letting the emerald waves slowly fade as the sound hangs in the air of the Big Team Base’s music room. He yawns before strumming another chord, whatever his fingers happen to gravitate towards in the moment. There’s a songbook open in front of him, but he’s long since given up trying to focus his bleary eyes on the tabs. It’s not as if he’s trying to perform for anyone or practice anything in particular. As long as it keeps him awake, he’ll gladly sit here and play a random series of chords.

The tangerine tap of approaching footsteps jolts him from his thoughts, and Ernest looks to the door, blinking a few times to clear his vision. “Hey, Gwen! What’s up?” He tries his best to appear alert in case she’s gathering people for a mission. No chance of falling asleep when you’ve got adrenaline coursing through your body.

She sticks up her fingers by her ear in a two-fingered salute. “Hey Ernest, watcha playin’?” She says as she pulls up a stool. Her eyes wander over the other instruments in the room, and Morene’s terrarium, where the snake was coiled around a branch in the full light of a heat lamp. “I heard you from down the hall, but couldn’t recognize the music.”

“Oh you know. Just improvising,” he says, playing another chord. It might be the same as the one he’d just played, he’s already lost track. The coral haze it brings is certainly familiar. “Did you know I’m in the jazz band?” Never mind the fact that in jazz band he’d be improvising melodic lines and not chord progressions. He can’t muster the coordination to play that many moving notes right now.

Gwen picks up a bass guitar and strums it, listening to Ernest’s chords and trying to match him. “I did not. That’s pretty cool. I haven’t listened to jazz much lately, but they played it a lot in places I used to come.” She stares at Ernest’s fingers and tries to recognize the song he’s attempting. There’s no sense of familiarity to it. “That really sounds… original,” she says, intending it as a compliment, but something to Ernest’s music sounds off to her. Slow. Hazy. So unlike the faster-paced rock music she’s used to nowadays.

The noises of the two instruments overlay each other, gunmetal gray pillars from Gwen’s bass crowding against his guitar’s periwinkle chevrons, but they refuse to gel into anything cohesive. He can’t blame Gwen for the discordant sound; he certainly isn’t making it easy by lagging behind whatever tempo she might try and pick up. He places his palm flat against the strings, stilling their vibrations. “Sorry. Maybe you should lead for a bit?” Another day he would have been angling for the chance to play one of her band’s songs with her, but in this moment he can’t quite find the energy.

“Sure,” Gwen nods. She places her hand flat against the strings, thinks for a moment, and starts to play a more familiar tune. “I don’t know if you know this one, but the notes and chords keep coming back, so–” She picks up the pace with her strumming.

*“It’s about time we did this.*

*It’s about time we played*

*It’s about time you said what you meant*

*Instead of playing your silly games.”*

She continues to play for a while. Her eyes turn to Ernest, to see if he was following along. She smiles at him. “How does this look to you?” she asks while she continues to strum the bass. “Y’know, with your… synesthesia?”

Ernest relaxes as Gwen begins to sing, easily recognizing the lyrics and melody of a song he’s listened to hundreds of times. He adds in a few of the chords he remembers and hums along to the words, but mainly lets Gwen take the spotlight. With fewer instruments playing than the full studio recording, Gwen’s forest green voice dominates, pulling the song into a cooler palette than the version he’s familiar with.

Gwen’s question pulls him out of his trance, his fingers faltering and missing notes. It’s not as if his synesthesia is a secret – he’d mentioned it in his file that the whole team could access, figuring it might be relevant if someone had sound-based powers. But he didn’t expect many people to actually read those files, much less bring up the contents in casual conversation.

“Oh, it’s… greener than usual?” he says awkwardly, giving up playing along to the song after another botched series of chords. “Why do you ask?”

“Greener? Huh.” Gwen looks thoughtful. She thought of the songs she had written and performed. Some felt very aggressive, while others were cheerful. Most felt empowering, while others felt like an unleashing of sadness. She had never strongly thought about what colours she associated with her songs, let alone her own voice. “Green is a good colour,” she said. Then, sheepishly, “calmer than the rest of me.”

She put the bass guitar down. “I actually wanted to talk to you about your synesthesia. I’d never really heard about it before, so at first I thought it was a power you had, before finding out that it’s a thing lots of people have. Is it something that you have, like, all the time? Or is it only with some things, some of the time?”

Gwen’s question sounds genuinely curious, not judgmental, which soothes Ernest’s rattled nerves somewhat. He reminds himself that she’s been a member of the Big Team for a long time now, someone seeing colors that aren’t there wouldn’t make this list of strangest things she’s encountered.

“All of the time. For as long as I can remember, anyway. Definitely before my powers showed up. The only time I can think of not having it was in the Dataverse. I guess it doesn’t quite translate into digital form. But other than that, I see basically everything I hear.” In the absence of Gwen’s bass, his own burgundy voice suddenly seems overpowering. He distracts himself by tuning the high E string on his guitar to a sharp hot pink.

“I see.” Gwen nods. “That’s kinda cool.” She stands up and paces slowly around the around, rubbing her hands together. “Say, um… I hope this isn’t too invasive of a question, but…” She stops pacing and turns to Ernest. “Could I, maybe, I was wondering--like… could I use my retrocognition on you to try and, like, experience your synesthesia? Just to see what it’s like. Nothing else!”

“Retrocognition… that’s your power that lets you see into the past, right? I guess that would give you a better idea of what it’s like than me trying to describe it. I’m not always great at finding the words.” He stifles a yawn. With his nervousness fading, fatigue is beginning to creep back in. At the very least this would be a welcome distraction, and it might be interesting to hear Gwen’s thoughts on what he saw. “So do I have to do something? Just sit here and think about a song I’ve heard before?”

“Yeah!” Gwen says, a little excitedly at Ernest’s seeming to be open to the idea. “It’s something that… well, rather than just *seeing* it lets me *experience* the past like the person I’m touching did. I’m wondering if it will let me experience things like you do, with the senses you have, beyond the way I experience the world normally. Maybe if I do it like, slowly enough, then I can basically experience things in almost-your-present. Like a slight delay.”

She moves closer to Ernest and gestures at the couch in the room. “We can sit down and make ourselves comfortable? Put on some music, whatever your preference?”

“Alright, sure.” Ernest pulls out his phone, connecting it to the sound system in the music room. After scrolling through a few albums, he brings up the song that Gwen had been singing before. If this does work, she might as well have the chance to see what one of her own band’s songs looks like to him.

He takes a seat on the couch and closes his eyes – a risky endeavor given how tired he is, but he wants to give Gwen the clearest possible view of his synesthesia. Against the darkness of the inside of his eyelids, each shape stands out clearly, wriggling and pulsing in time with the beat. “Give it a try now?”

His own voice interrupts the spectacle, sending a maroon thread spiraling through the center of it all, but soon Rescue’s silver-hued tones reassert themselves as the main feature over a backdrop of royal blue drumbeats and caramel guitar.

Gwen sits down next to Ernest and leans back into the couch. When she feels comfortable and the tunes of her band’s music waft clearly through the air, she gives a little smile at the closed-eyed boy. “Alright.” She takes a hold of Ernest’s hand and breathes in.

She closes her eyes and activates the retrocognition.

It comes as a shock to her at first, as the usual fast-paced visions of long ago come, but she shakes them off, deliberately trying to slow down and come closer to the present. She ignores what she finds as she flashes through Ernest’s past and comes closer to the present. She sees herself coming into the music room and the vision wavers as the out-of-body experience starts to feel a bit too real, but then she hears it. And sees it.

Her own forest green voice. The hot pink of Ernest’s guitar. The deep rose red of her bass.

She hits the wall of the present past which she cannot go, as the experiences are generated and flow to her in real time. The silver of Rescue’s voice surrounds her.

“Wow,” she says, back in the music room.

Ernest expects to feel something as Gwen uses her retrocognition, maybe like the rush of energy that courses through his limbs whenever he calls up a storm. But he only feels the light pressure of her hand on his as the song continues to play.

When Gwen speaks, he assumes she can see the green inkblot that blooms in the corner of his vision as a result. The song reaches its drum solo and merigold fireworks erupt in time to each hit.

“So, what do you think?” His synesthesia seems to amplify the nervous waver in his voice, appearing as a flickering violet disk.

“It’s beautiful,” she replies, then giggles. “That made a funny shape. This is honestly unlike anything I’ve experienced before. There is a bit of a tingle in my head like it’s trying to make sense of a new… sense? It’s… not an unwelcome sensation. It’s different, but not so different that it’s alien. It’s like a new way to see things that I didn’t know of before, like how someone who doesn’t know the word for something about themselves learns what to call it and suddenly they can do so much more about it and understand themselves.”

Gwen smiles and looks at Ernest. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”

Ernest keeps his eyes closed, not wanting to overwhelm Gwen with the combined visuals of the room and his synesthesia at the same time, but he can hear the smile in her voice. Nearly see it in the chestnut flecks that trail after the line traced out by her words. The tension that he’s built up trying to fight the pull of sleep all day starts to drain away, replaced by a calm stillness. “Thanks for asking to see it. I’ve told people about my synesthesia before, but I could never let them see it for themselves. It’s kind of nice to be able to prove to someone that it’s not just – well, it is just in my head, but prove that I’m not just making it up, you know?”

He goes quiet for the rest of the song, letting the streaks the instruments wind through each other unobscured. After the final drum smash hits with a burst of neon yellow, an idea hits him. “I want to try something out, I haven’t been able to show this to someone before.” He lifts the hand that Gwen is holding and transfers it to his shoulder, still without opening his eyes. As he feels out the right spot on the guitar, he asks, “Ready for this? It might look a little weird. Like, weirder than the rest of this.”

Gwen giggles a little, remembering the other times she saw such colours appearing within her vision being a very different experience. This is just pretty and strangely soothing. “You’re very welcome, friend. Anytime.” She scrunches her nose a little looking at Ernest and his closed eyes. “So… it’s gonna get even weirder? Damn, Weatherboy Welles, what surprises do you have in store?” She gently squeezes his shoulder. “Whatever you want to show, I’m ready for it. Weird it up, fam.”

“Alright, you asked for it,” Ernest says with a grin. His fingers begin flying up and down the neck of the guitar as he plays a rapid series of broken arpeggios. The notes themselves aren’t much to listen to, without a melodic line and a staggering rhythm. But to Ernest’s eyes, and Gwen as she watches through his, the sounds trace out the silhouette of butterfly wings. The bright colors only last the briefest of moments, gone as soon as each note stops vibrating in the air, but the shape hangs on as an afterimage for slightly longer.

Gwen stares with wide eyes at the pattern that is traced through the air. The music sounds odd to hear, at the pace Ernest is going, without any accompanying other instruments, but the visions that it creates are, by contrast, gorgeous. She realizes too late that her mouth hangs open. She reaches out with a hand to touch the butterfly pattern appearing before them. They fade out with the last of the music as she touches it. “This is prettier than anything I ever saw with Casper,” she mumbles. She looks sad for a moment, then her big grin returns. “That looked kind of like your Dataverse form, right? Very cool! No wonder you’re such a pretty butterfly yourself, Welles.”

Ernest finally opens his eyes, just in time to see Gwen’s awed expression before sadness overtakes it. She looks like she’d rather not dwell on it, and he’s been trying to avoid tragic topics himself, so he doesn’t comment on it. “Yeah, I guess it does! I’ve kind of wondered where those forms come from, if they’re part of us somehow or just random pieces from the Dataverse? I wouldn’t mind being able to fly that easily in the real world. And your jet packs were pretty cool too.” He yawns, the exhilaration of their experiment starting to wear off. “I think I might need to catch up on some sleep in one of the extra rooms. But thanks for hanging out, Gwen.”

“Yeah, maybe they are. For all we know we exist on multiple planes of reality at the same time. Or maybe we have some control over those forms…” Gwen ponders it for a moment. “Maybe one day you will have jet pack wings yourself!” She gently punches Ernest’s shoulder. “But alright, sleepy boy. It was nice to hang out and catch up. You be good, okay? A big star like you has to take care of himself not to burn out too fast.”

She gets up and walks to the doorway. She takes one last look back around the room and all the instruments. She gives Ernest a smile and a thumbs up. “Sweet dreams, Weatherboy. Catch you in the future.” And then she’s gone.