a line at all. It was rather, an absence of line. A space. Empty. Lacking solidity. He put his face to the line — it was much like a crack in one of his drinking mugs — and tried to see what he could see. Of course, he could see nothing. There were no lights glowing on the other side of the crack.
The doorway hadn’t been used in years.
Nick Johnson watched in disbelief. Mr. Blue had actually noticed the door. Didn’t look like he knew what to make of it, exactly, but just the fact that…
He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Is something wrong?” came a soothing voice slightly over and above his left ear. He could feel the humidity of breath on his neck. He tried to keep from visibly cringing, and turned around nonchalantly.
“No. Nothing’s wrong, sir. Nothing at all.”
“Nothing wrong at home? The wife? The kids?”
He almost told him he didn’t have any wife, any kids, but decided not to push his luck. “No, sir. Nothing at all.”
The man paused, his chin lifting into the air as if filled with helium, then settling at a place just above his Adam’s apple. “All right then,” he said. “Okay.” He turned and walked to his large cubicle at the end of the hall, his eyes still on Nick Johnson even as he shut the door…
“Won’t you be my friend?”
The ColorMaster waited for the light on the video camera to click off. He got up from his chair and walked to his dressing room. Although a handful of Controllers passed him, ones he had never seen before, none of them asked him for his autograph. Nobody ever asked him for his autograph. Not since the Great Separation.
His dressing room was plain. Ordinary. No bundles of roses. No notes written in flowery script left by young nymphos asking to be his friend. He looked in the mirror at his pale white skin, saw a zit forming on the end of his nose, popped it, relishing the release of pressure, the release of the milky white ooze that smacked against the mirror’s surface without a sound. One of the few remaining pleasures in the world, he thought. The satisfying eruption of a ripe pimple.
He worked ten hours a day, six days a week, with Sundays off. Three hour long episodes a day were filmed. The remaining seven hours a day were spent going over the thin scripts, talking to the guests, reapplying make-up, talking with the director about the blocking. Et cetera…
He was tired of it.
Of course, the changing of his skin color every five minutes was done by special effects. He would not have known it was done, except he had happened to stop by the director’s office for a raise one day, when what on earth should be playing on the video monitor, but his show, the show, the only show legally produced.
He was seen by millions every day, hour after hour, yet he hadn’t been asked for his autograph in years.
He looked at his five o’clock shadow, rubbed his chin, pulled the razor from his dresser drawer, looked at the inviting blade, wondering….
Mr. Blue sat in a comfortable armchair watching Mrs. Blue getting it on with Mr. Lime and Mrs. Indigo. His head bowed to his lower neck and his eyes narrowed. He pressed his hand into the fold of his lap out of reflex, but felt nothing stir. He stood up and went to the vend-machine, ordering up a large cheese pizza. It was in his hands within five minutes, and although he felt a slight rumbling in his stomach, he looked at the pizza as if it were made of excrement. He tossed it in the waste slot.
He ordered a chocolate-caramel-mocha malt. It appeared with whipped cream and a glistening red cherry, things he also loved, but hadn’t ordered. The malt ended up in the waste slot, too, and Mr. Blue trudged to his room, wondering if he had some virus. He pressed the button labeled ‘HAPPY’ three times, and three different colored pills plopped happily out, accompanied by passages of his favorite music. He swallowed them without water. They tasted bitter and left a bile-like aftertaste in the back of his throat. He grimaced, waiting for the happiness to overwhelm him.
Nick Johnson read the memo that had been placed on his desk in a crimson envelope. He frowned, the words like the third strike of the ninth inning of those long forgotten baseball games. The words like the days just before the Great Separation. The words a foreboding. A directive hinting at the shape of the future. Hinting at the tint, at the hue of the future.
The words — “Prepare for Directive Thirty-Nine” — taking on the same color as the envelope in which they arrived.
As he read the words over and over, the firm hand of the director clamped onto his shoulder like the grasp of ice on a long, potholed dirt-black road.
The director’s eyes said to Nick Johnson — “Into my office. Now.”
A hand clasped firmly on Mr. Blue’s shoulder as he ran his fingers gingerly along that strange crack in the multi-colored wall of the cafeteria. He turned and looked into the flush face of Mrs. Blue. One of her hands was busy between her legs, the other sliding from his shoulder down to his chest, to his belly, to the place between his legs….
“Hey, mister,” Mrs. Blue said seductively. “How about we go back to our room and take out the good ol’ cat-o-nine.” Her voice was hungry. Erotic. Moist.
Yet Mr. Blue gently pushed her hand away. “Not right now,” he said.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“Nothing.” Mr. Blue knew that if he told her what was wrong, something bad might happen, although he didn’t quite know what that might be. Bad was a foreign word. Nothing ‘bad’ ever happened to anyone here, ever, but there was the word. The word existed. BAD. Usually used playfully in the many sex games, but now the word had a different meaning — bad — a meaning he associated with the feeling in his gut, in his heart, in his brain.
Badddddddd……
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said again, feigning a smile. To prove it, he placed a hand between her thighs until her eyes rolled to the back of her head and her lips parted into a prolonged “Aaaaaaahhhhhhh………”
The ColorMaster had never really been all that interested in color. The program’s colors were all inserted after the actual recording had been done, the original disc it was put on being itself black and white until digitally manipulated.
Never had been interested in color until he saw the color red flow from his wrists like air currents into the running water of the sink he held his throbbing hands into. He became suddenly fascinated with it, the color of blood flowing from his wrists in red, blossoming banners. The blood danced in the sterile sink waters. It polluted the ionized, fluoridated water so deliciously, so finally, so — colorfully.
He looked around his room, noticing for the first time the other colors there. Even the dirty, dusty grays began to fascinate him. Even the color of the world fading quickly from his line of vision, the fade itself becoming a color, distinct, clear, haunting, creating a longing, a satisfaction, a finality…
“It seems that there has been a lack of communication between you and I,” the director said to Nick Johnson. The director’s chair was twice the height and width of the chair Nick Johnson sat in.
“A lack of communication?” Nick smiled a perspiration-inducing smile. “What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t matter what I mean. The meaning has always been classified. But what I
“I see,” Nick said.
“Whether you see or not makes no difference to me.” The director’s chin jutted out accusingly. “You are to report to the Melanin Alteration room in ten minutes. Enough time to take a shit and smoke a cigarette.” The director smiled.
