“And Colour Shall Set Her Free”

by Thomas Slee

The Philosopher is Mary’s best and only friend. The world outside is collapsing, but in the room he built for her she is safe, clothed and warm. He even cooks for her, with vegetables from his secret garden: black beans and rice, cauliflower soup, squid ink pasta with bechamel sauce.

In return, she is only too happy to help him with his research.

He brings her books (photocopies, of course; the originals could be contaminated and we can’t be too careful). He provides her with equipment: microscopes, spectro-photometers, computers, a custom analysis program he developed just for her. He teaches her about wavelengths and photoreceptors, lenses and brain states. He is very kind when she makes mistakes.

And Mary makes lots of mistakes.

It’s only natural, he says. He is teaching her about colour, and Mary’s eyes can’t sense it. If she held a rose, she wouldn’t know whether it was a rich burgundy, a gentle peach, or a deep, violent red.

Her world is black and white.

Still, she would love to hold one all the same. Breathe in its scent. The Philosopher says, sadly, there are no roses left. The beautiful things of this world were the first to go.

But that doesn’t matter, he tells her. Her mistakes don’t matter. In fact, they’re the key to his research. With her help, the Philosopher will prove, once and for all, that data does not equal understanding. That turning her spectrometer on his hazard suit and reading 500 nanometers is very different from seeing and feeling, from experiencing that shock of bright orange first hand.

He tells her, again and again, that they should never have tried to teach the machines. They will never think as we think, feel what we feel. That it was the beginning of the end. He tells her that through her, through his research, he can still right this wrong, before it’s too late. Only he can set this world right again.

He asks her: if you were like me, Mary, if you could tell the colour of my eyes just by looking, what hope would there be then?

Mary cannot answer him. His face is always hidden behind his mask, his eyes shielded by his reflective visor.

***

Mary sits at her desk, tinkering with her spectrometer and pondering Aristotle. It pleases her to imagine that, just as he claims, colour really does bloom when light and shade  fuse with the elements of creation. That by configuring her diodes and lenses just so, she might forge magenta or cerulean from the water in her mug or the sheets on her bed.

She knows, however, that colour doesn’t work this way.

The buzzer announces the Philosopher’s arrival. The warning light spins and flashes, so bright that it pushes even the white walls towards grey. The airlock door hisses, releases, and he emerges from the cleansing mist, shielded within the folds of his protective hazard suit.

She glances at his hands, and the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention. The Philosopher carries not books, not new avenues of research, but the blindfold.

***

Her visits to the brain scanner are Mary’s only forays beyond the safety of her room. She dreads them and yearns for them in equal measure. He tells her it is perfectly safe, that her blindfold and his suit are merely precautions. That he wishes they weren’t necessary, but can’t risk her getting sick, or expose her sensitive eyes to anything that might affect his work.

And so she submits, lets her world go dark, because at the end of those thirty-eight treacherous footsteps lies a glorious machine. The brain scanner. She only wishes she could see it. Pull it apart. Understand its mechanisms, learn why it hums. She wants to know how a machine can peer inside her. She wants to know what it sees.

She puts her hand on the Philosopher’s shoulder and follows him through the airlock, leaving the safety of her room for him. For his research, and for the world he’s trying to save. She counts her steps, listens for the familiar creaks and groans of his floors, and doesn’t dare breathe. Not until the scanner room door clicks shut and he presses her gown into her hands.

She inhales clinical, magnetic air. Hears the Philosopher flicking switches, pressing buttons, and shrugs off her clothes. The gown’s thin fabric itches her bare shoulders, generates static against her calves. He guides her to the gurney. The metal is cold and she grips the rails tight. Without a word, he slides her into the scanner. She braces herself for the clanking, mechanical roar.

It’s always louder than she remembers. Vibration, all encompassing, from her toes to the base of her skull. Then, just as she’s certain that the mechanism will fly apart, break free of its bolts and rivets, its very foundations, it settles into its rhythm, its familiar soothing hum. Well, almost. There’s something different today, a false note, an unwelcome buzz, but before she can hone in on it, the questions begin.

He wants her to imagine a field of grass, to hold that image in her mind. A tree, with flaking bark and emerald leaves. Her chair. Her desk. A parrot with a yellow beak and bright red feathers, tinged with ultramarine. And she tries, she really tries.

But she can’t. The words emerald and ultramarine mean nothing to her, they are just wavelengths, outputs of her spectrometer, nothing more. And even if they weren’t, how can she focus with that buzz droning on? She recalls grainy images from her photocopied books, of the savannah, the rainforest, attempts to paint them with the numbers she’s measured but never seen, while her fingers probe the scanner’s inner panels. Perhaps one has come loose–

Mary jerks, her hands slapping back to her side.

One of which is no longer empty.

Breath comes fast, her blood rushing in her ears. The Philosopher keeps talking: imagine a rubber duck, a carrot, her favourite book…

She doesn’t, though. She can’t. Her imagination, her fingers, are too busy.

Paper. It’s paper. Folded once, twice, and jammed into a crack.

A message. What else could it be?

Mary lies there, thoughts spinning, dreaming of what it might say.

***

Back in her room, the Philosopher removes her blindfold and she blinks against the light. Her brain states were muddled. Disjointed, he says. If she feels ill she has to tell him. It might compromise his research.

Mary nods, shakes her head. Muddled, disjointed, that’s exactly how she feels. She’s sorry. A headache, that’s all. The folded paper is tucked safely away, in the elastic of her bra. It’s all she can think of.

Are you sure, he asks. There is concern in his voice, muffled as it is by his implacable mask.

She presses two fingers to her temple. She did not sleep well.

She will tell him next time, of course. Their research is too important. But now she needs rest. So she can feel better.

She just wants him to leave.

***

Alone at last, she takes Aristotle from her desk and slides into bed. She stares at his pages, and those pages stare back, his words, his ideas, suddenly incomprehensible. She lies back, closes her eyes. The folded paper digs into her skin, pulsing with every heartbeat. It begs to be opened, to be read.

Just imagining it feels like a betrayal. The Philosopher is the reason she has a bed, has books to read. The reason she knows how to read at all.

Mary’s fictitious headache springs into life and Aristotle falls, landing face down on the floor. She pulls the covers up, over her head.

She gives in, and reads:

To the others,

I know there must be others; I’ve seen your gowns hanging on the wall, and I saw the panic in the Philosopher’s eyes as he realised that I’d noticed, as he understood his mistake. For days, I doubted. I told myself it was just my imagination. Then, when next he brought me to the scanner, there was just one gown hanging and a rosy flush in his cheeks. All of which makes me wonder…

Why doesn’t he tell us?

Why doesn’t he want us to know?

***

Mary’s sleep is fitful, plagued by questions and harried by doubt. She buries the letter in her photocopy of Brain and Perception. It does not help. All she can think of is the message, its writer, the only world and only friend she’s ever known.

She fidgets and squirms, sweat turning her sheets and her limbs into a tangled, constricting mess. What if the letteris lying? What if it’s a trap? Planted by the machines to distract her, to disrupt their research? Such fantasies are better than imagining the Philosopher has been lying to her all this time.

She clamps her hands over her eyes, hides her head underneath her pillow, but her thoughts just won’t still. How many gowns were there? If he kept this from her, what else is he hiding? Are there still roses? Have the others seen them, like the writer of the letter has seen colour in the Philosopher’s cheeks? Seen panic his eyes?

Or the others even like her? Are they protected? Sequestered? Untainted and pure and kept all on their own?

***

A bloom of white light tells Mary it’s morning. She stares out at her room, at her books and her equipment, her research, her life. At everything the Philosopher has given her. She peels herself from her sheets, straightens her hair, and the night’s anxieties no longer seem real. She’s had no reason to doubt him before, and actually, she’s never been alone. He’s been there for her for as long as she can remember.

And he always encourages her questions.

When the light flashes and the buzzer sounds she’s clean and dressed, ready and waiting, the letter in her lap, still folded in the pages of her book. She knows she can trust him. The airlock hisses and the Philosopher emerges from the mist, a bowl of porridge and black sugar cupped in both hands.

He stops. Cocks his visor to one side and asks her what’s wrong?

Mary freezes, her questions dying before they ever reach her lips. She clutches her book so tight that her hands start to shake. If he sees the letter he’ll know. Know that she doubted. She can’t breathe. He cannot know her lack of faith.

She needs him.

He sets the porridge down on her desk, steam curling up and away, and gently frees it from her grip. The spiral-wound spine squeaks against the Philosopher’s thick plastic gloves and she closes her eyes, dreading what she knows is coming.

Then, he laughs. Brain and Perception? You were worried about your headache? About its impact on the research? It was just one session, he tells her. He sets the book to one side, and asks her to smile.

Mary crumples at his kindness. How could she ever have doubted him? That she even considered–

He deserves so much better than she can give.

He crouches down, takes her hands in his, the rubber cold and lifeless against her skin. He tells her she’s wrong, that she’s incredible, and settles into the familiar, comforting story of his research and the inevitable downfall of the machines.

Only this time he stands, towers over her, and admits something new. That, in a way, she’s actually just like them. He tells her this as if it’s a beautiful, wonderful thing. That she’s his proof that no matter how much data the machines get fed, no matter how they gorge on books and art and life, they will never, ever understand.

She knows she should be grateful. That he has given her a purpose, and that purpose is to learn. To study, to absorb, but never understand. For his research to bear fruit, for the machines to fall, she is to strive and yearn but never achieve.

But she knows it’s not enough for her. It’s not how he trained her. So after he leaves, when Mary finally moves, it’s not for a book, or for her porridge which has long since gone cold.

It’s to find paper, and a pen.

***

There are others. Two of them, and they are both like her.

There is Kevin, the writer.

He hears sound but not music. To him, the brain scanner and birdsong are just different types of noise. Not pleasant, not unpleasant, just loud.

And there is Fontaine.

She can feel pressure, feel texture, but not warmth, not cold. Mary tries to imagine what it must be like to not know the pleasure of falling into a warm bed on a cold night. To listen to Chopin and hear only vibrating strings and resonating tubes. She can’t, though, any more than she can pick red feathers from green on a monochrome parrot.

In the joy of new friendship, Mary is able to put her doubts to one side. She imagines reasons for his lies, invents justifications for his mistrust. The research, that is what matters. She tells herself she doesn’t need to understand, that all she needs is for the outside world to be safe.

So she can show Fontaine the beach, and Kevin the ocean. So the Philosopher can take off his mask, free himself from his hazard suit and dispense with his ugly and necessary lies. So they can sing into the wind, dig their feet into the sand and look out upon a world free from the machines. A world they helped create.

So she can show the Philosopher he was wrong. Prove to him that she was never like them, not really. That he can trust her, even though she writes letters in secret, behind his back.

***

The brain scanner hums. Mary does just as she’s asked, while her fingers explore the crack in the casing, brush against the letter secreted within. She tugs it free, clasps it to her chest and replaces it with her own. The Philosopher’s questions wash over her and she imagines: electrons excited, photons ejected, oscillating, reflecting, refracting, those lucky few passing through lenses and triggering receptors, firing neurons.

She has accepted now that for her, colours will never emerge from the gestalt.

***

Mary is snug, propped up against her pillow with her blankets across her legs. Her photocopy of Goethe’s Theory of Colour is open on her lap, and tucked within its pages is this morning’s letter. She has developed a routine, a ritual, for the hours after her scans. She withholds Kevin and Fontaine’s messages from herself, letting the anticipation build with each turn of the page. She is close now. The letter bulges, refusing to be hidden any longer. Her fingers tingle as they grace the edge of the final page–

She slaps it closed. Rears back. Her heart pounds, her breath locked in her chest. Goethe sits there, on her lap, the letter trapped within.

The letter with its words, scrawled in an ink that is not grey, is not black.

Even in her memory, just a snippet of a glimpse, the words flare like  the warning light above the door, blaring into the pitch dark night. Like… like something she just does not have the words to describe.

A thought slices through her shock: if they’re not black, what are they?

Goethe lands spread-eagled on the floor, her blanket trailing along in her wake. She fires up her spectrometer, her computer, and jams the letter into the sensing tray, adjusting the aperture until the spine of a definitively not black ‘R’ is all the sensor can see.

She breathes, light burns. The shaded wheel spins: the analysis package is processing…

Processing…

ERROR: OUT OF RANGE

She furrows her brow, adjusts the aperture. Resets the software. Restarts the instrument. The error persists. She grabs Goethe off the floor. Pages: white. Ink: black. Tests her blanket: lilac. Her shirt: mauve.

The letter: ERROR.

Her hair: black. The back of her hand: olive.

The letter: ERROR.

Mary’s world shrinks to the letter, her hands and the instruments on her desk. She has to know. This can’t be a coincidence. There must be a problem with the photoreceptor, a dodgy connector, or a bug in the software…

The Philosopher’s software. Her friend, her colleague, who raised her. Protects her. Cares for her.

Who hid Kevin and Fontaine from her.

Who doesn’t trust her.

She disconnects everything, pries the back off the spectrometer, digs the manual out of the depths of a drawer. All it does is detect colour, and convert it into an electric signal. She doesn’t need software, just a few cables, some resistors, and an LCD screen or two…

She cannibalises her equipment; snipping, ripping, twisting. Tests on known quantities. She plots values, crumples paper, starts again. And again. And again, until she throws her head back in frustration.

She’s right. She knows she’s right. She’s checked her numbers, her connections. It confirms Goethe’s pages are white, his ink black. And yet her shirt: grey(59). Her blanket: grey(24).

Her hair is black. Her palm, though: grey(31).

It doesn’t make sense. Either the sensor is sometimes right, sometimes wrong, or…

She tests the letter, reads her voltages. Plots her values, does her sums.

She’d given up on understanding colour, for the Philosopher, for his research, for her friends. And now there it is.

Blue.

530 nanometers.

6.66x1014 Hz.

The colour of far-off skies. Of unfathomable oceans.

Of an entire world that she’s been denied.

***

The buzzer chimes, the warning light flashes. Mary swivels slowly in her chair.

She’s been waiting for what seems like aeons.

The Philosopher steps through her airlock and hesitates, one foot in the air, as he takes in the disarray: books and bedclothes strewn across the floor, tools and cables and panels and– and then he sees her. A plate of black mushrooms and rice splatters on the floor.

Mary, he asks, what’s happened?

She regards him, unmoving. The folds and curves of his hazard suit glisten and she wonders at its shade of grey. Darker than her hands, yes, but lighter than her shirt. Then she catches sight of herself, of her monochrome reflection in his visor, and she sees how her face has twisted, how anger has set her eyes aflame.

The crumpled letter falls from her grip and rolls to a stop by his foot. He stoops, unfurls it, one crumple at a time, until he sees. Until he knows that she knows.

She has seen through his lies.

Mary shrieks, leaping to her feet, an entire life of effort, of frustration, of striving for an impossible goal bubbling up and spewing out of her. She was willing to give everything to him, and for what? She snatches at the letter, but he jerks back, out of reach. Is the world even dying? Are the roses really all gone? Are the machines he fears so much even real?

What has he been using her to prove?

Even through his mask, she hears the panic in his voice, sees the indecision twist his limbs. You’ve had a shock, he tells her, a nasty shock, but if you’ll just let me explain…

Explain? She thrusts her hands forwards, palms open, demanding his attention. He can’t explain away dyed hair, dyed skin! Look, she demands. He said he was her friend, and look at what he’s done!

But he can’t. He won’t.

He tries to shy away.

Mary will not let him. She has to see him. The real Philosopher, the man behind the mask. He needs to look her in the eye and understand the pain he’s caused.

She lunges, grasping, clutching at the edge of his mask. He fends, grabbing at her wrists. Their bodies come together. Her cries echo and reflect, his pleas muffled by shining, dishonest plastic.

He shoves, she lurches and together they stumble, falling backwards, entangled feet slipping on a slick of jet black sauce.

His head hits the airlock step with a sickening crack.

The room is silent but for Mary’s panting.

She’s on her knees. She waits, not quite comprehending all that’s just happened. What she has done. Her grey(31) hands are clenched into fists and pressed against his unbreathing chest.

From the join in his suit, where his faceless mask meets his body, liquid drips.

Pools.

Begins to spread.

Bright. Garish. Glistening.

And Mary knows, she understands, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

It is the colour of her anger. Her fury.

The colour of his betrayal.

And her release.