Transparent Color's
Chapter 17

The music is blaring throughout the theater. The musicians are playing gracefully and singers singing angelically. It is truly a magnificent, yet dreadful, show about two people in love, but in tragedy they both die; one going to a bright shiny place and the other going to a dark gloomy one. The last scene is of them singing to each other from different worlds in hopes to reconnect. This brings strings of tears down my face. When it’s over we all stand to our feet and applaud.

I see the Majestic clapping and smiling at me, I smile back. He leans down and says, “Beautiful isn’t it?”

I look up in to his eyes and I feel no fear this time, “Yes.”

As we get ready to leave, I look to the back of me and I see Jo-Shana sitting two rows behind me. He nods at me, and then I catch his eyes again. My eyes cannot be tricking me this time. I need to know the answer behind that look.

As we exit the theater, the Majestic is approached by a fancy woman he knows, they begin to small talk. Hmm she’s pretty; I wonder what they are talking about. Ugh snap out of it Maggie! I replace this is my chance, so I quickly bend down to fix my shoe and whisper to Toby, “No questions. Ask to ride with him.”

Toby nods and when I stand back up the Majestic is saying his good-byes to the Pretty lady. We start walking to the cars.

“Sir, I would like to ride with you this time, if that’s okay? We can discuss the show.” Toby sounds so sincere. I love it!

The Majestic pauses for a minute, looking at Toby, then smiles and says, “Certainly.”

The car door pops open and they both enter. I enter the second car, followed by Jo-Shana. The car starts to move. I look at the man next to me, but he will not look back. The silence is driving me crazy so I say, “So how long have you been working for the Majestic?”

Still looking straight ahead he says, “Five years.”

“Wow that’s a while. Um… so he seems like a nice guy?” I sit there waiting for a second.

He finally looks at me and says, “Yes, is that a question? Or do you feel differently?”

“Differently? No. I mean I really don’t know him that well, so if you have any input on how I should act, that would be nice.” Give me some kind of response I need, man.

He says back in a lower voice, “Ms. Collins you seem to have a strong enough mind to make that judgement yourself.” His eyes quickly look toward the driver, then back to me.

I know now we are being listened to, so I smile and say thank you. We stay quiet.

In the silence I think about his words and how they remind me of Maliki pointing to his head, telling me to have a strong mind. I’m confused about the situation with Maliki not having any records, but for some reason I still trust him. And because I trust Maliki I feel in an odd way I can trust Jo-Shana as well.

I look out the window and we seem to be going a different way from the Supply Shop. I look at Jo-Shana, “Where are we going?”

Jo-Shana shrugs his shoulders and says he does not know. He then pushes a blue light on the roof and a speaker pops out. He says, “Ms. Collins would like to know where we are headed to?”

The speaker, I’m guessing the driver, replies, “Master Toby would like to see the factories.”

Of course Toby wants to see the factories! I shouldn’t have switched cars. This is just going to waste more time. Time I could be looking at my new home. I look out the window again and I see the most beautiful building. It’s the largest and highest I have ever seen. I turn to Jo-Shana again.

“What building is this?” I replace myself asking with a little smile.

“Ah. It’s a control building…I believe,” He says in an odd way.

“Well it’s quite amazing.” I look back at the building.

“Not everything is as amazing as it seems Ms. Collins,” He says, again reminding me of Maliki. I now want to know what was really in that building.

We arrive at the factory site; there are a total of three large buildings next to each other. Great! I can already tell this is going to take the rest of the day. I hope we don’t miss the Supply Shop again, and we have to stay at his home. I feel myself getting lost there.

The first thing I say when out of the car, “Majestic, will we be done before the Supply Shop closes?”

The Majestic turns to me giving me a little smile. He says, “You do not have to worry about that, I already talked to Mr. Buns and he’s already setting up your new home with supplies at this moment. After we are done here you can arrive to your new home.” As he says this, his strong hand is on my shoulder, sending shock waves down it tingling my fingers. He gives another famous smile, removes his hand and motions for us to follow.

When we enter the first building and proceed to small individual platforms with rails. When I step on to my platform, the rails go up around me and the platform begins to move. The sudden movement causes me to lose my balance, so I grab on to the rail to catch myself from falling back against the bar behind me. The Majestic rides in front, then me, Toby, Jo-Shana and Jeffery last.

We first take a tour of the supply factory; consisting of brightly colored clothes, furniture, and appliances. Mostly general stuff a home needs, nothing too special. The second factory is the food, hygiene products, make-up, and body accessories. The food is in general categories of produce, vegetables, meats, breads, and dairy. The odd thing is each category has two sections. One section looks like perfect food, with no flaws. The second section has all the unperfected foods, some are even molding. You would think that the inedible foods would be thrown out, but instead they are tightly sealed in a crate to be shipped out.

We move pass the food, hygiene, and wildly colored make-up sections, and now we are at the body accessories. Gold, silver, pearls, rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and any other color you can image is placed before me. I am speechless; I never was really a jewelry person until this moment. Oddly I feel drawn to them.

“Can I try some on?” I say with a gasp.

The Majestic laughs, and says, “Well of course, try as much as you want.” He smiles and his blue eyes look beautiful again. The platforms stop and I am able to get off.

I try on rings, necklaces, and bracelets. When I’m all shining, one of the jewelry workers turns a mirror around and all I see is a body full of impeccable jewels. I almost don’t recognize myself. The Majestic comes up behind me and says, “Here try this on.” He places a crown of diamond flowers on top of my head. The flower in the middle has a blue diamond in the center of it.

I bring my hand up to touch it and gasp at its beauty. Then I catch the Majestic’s reflection glaring at me, I start to feel a cold chill going down my spine. I suddenly feel contaminated by the jewelry, and quickly start to take the jewels off and lastly the crown.

“They are very nice indeed, we should move on to the next factory, though. Don’t want to waste too much time on me.” I look at the Majestic and give a little smile to hide the sudden chill I feel.

“Yes let us move on to my favorite factory,” He says with excitement in his voice, and a boyish giddy smile.

I get back on my platform and move to the next building. This one contained: Weapons, gadgets, devices, assimilators, and flying objects. My stomach starts to turn; I already felt some kind of fear back at the other building and now I’m full blown.

“Wow, cool! Look Maggie there’s a sky transporter!” Toby points to the far end of the building, and it was floating in-air.

I have never seen a sky transporter before, only heard of them. They were used back in the days of the Great War. Most of these weapons I have never seen before. The only weapons my old City has is guns and shocking sticks.

I look around and notice the fire and hologram mats Maliki had. Then see the dart shooters, along with tiny marble size bombs, all kinds of guns and knives, tracing devices, little wrist hologram computers, compasses, and my food pills. That was just part of the one half of the building; there is also all kinds of different suits hanging, moving around to be tested. Then we move to the end with the sky transporter and other flying devices.

The platforms stop and I get off it. I walk to Toby and take his hand. He is in a daze. The sky transporter is about as big as three homes back at the old city. It just stood in-air not making a sound.

“Ah. Isn’t she a beauty? She is the first one to be built, there are many more in the building behind this one.” He gives Toby a wink and then says, “Come I want to show you something over here.” He starts walking to the other side of the transporter.

I take in the massive ship one more time and then direct my focus on the Majestic. I squeeze Toby’s hand and follow.

“Here this is one of my favorite creations.” He puts his hand on what looks like a blue motor bike. He starts to laugh; he must be seeing my unimpressed facial expression. He then hops on to the bike, puts his thumb on the blue screen in-between the handle bars. The wheels suddenly disappear up into the bike and it is now floating.

“I call it the Flying Hawk. It’s very beautiful at sight, but when needed to it can attack ferociously.” He says with a grin.

“How so?” Toby asks.

“Here boy, come over next to the bike.” The Majestic motions his hand for Toby to come. I grasp onto his hand and move over with him. The Majestic looks at me for a second then looks at Toby.

“Do you see this screen?” Toby nods, “Well with this screen you control your movement and weapons.” The Majestic turns the bike towards a screen on the wall. He then moves his finger across the screen on the bike, flipping through different weapons. He grins then lightly taps the screen and the front of the bike opens up. He pushes a button on the handle bar and large bullets start flying out.

I grab Toby and we both fall to the ground covering our ears. Once the sound was gone I remove my hands from my ears and look up. He was gone. Still with my knees on the ground I move my head to replace him. Then suddenly bullets are flying at the screen again. I cover my ears, but I can still hear Toby screaming, so I yell as loud as I can, “STOP!”

The bullets stop, and he appears in front of us again.

“My apologies, I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just showing you how it can disappear. My boy, are you okay?” The Majestic gets off his bike and bends down to Toby.

Toby rises up to a sitting position and wipes the tears from his eyes. His face turns red out of embarrassment and says, “Oh, no, I’m fine,” with a fake smile. “That’s pretty cool. How do you make it disappear?” He says changing the subject from him.

The Majestic gives him a nod, and then pats Toby’s back. He stands up and tells Toby to come to the bike. I watch Toby stand up and move to the bike, so I stand up as well.

The Majestic starts fiddling with the blue screen on the bike, a mechanical voice pops in “Overwrite. Please place new identity.”

The Majestic holds out his hand to Toby. Toby hesitates at first, and then gives him his hand. The man places Toby’s thumb on the screen. The voice comes again, “New identity confirmed.”

“What was that for?” Toby asks.

The Majestic picks Toby up and places him on the bike, and then says; “Only one individual can go on a bike, this was my bike, but now it’s yours.” He gives Toby a smile and shakes the top of his head.

“Oh, so I can only use this bike?!” he looks at me, “Sorry Maggie.” He starts to laugh and so does the Majestic. I just give a grin.

The Majestic shows Toby how the bike works and how to go invisible. I watch for a moment, and then the corner of my right eye catches on something else. I turn my head to the right and in the corner I see light coming through between the cracks in the wall. It doesn’t look like light from the outside, but brighter and more yellow. I move towards the wall, but then stop and look back at the Majestic. His full attention is on Toby. I look around, I see Jeffery’s eyes on the Majestic, and then I see Jo-Shana in the back watching me. He doesn’t seem like he will direct the attention to me, and I don’t see anyone else around, so I continue.

I reach the wall, and move my head down to one of the cracks to look through. I peer through, at first all I can see is the yellow light, it circulates and moves away for a moment and I see bodies chained up and hanging on the walls inside that room. I quickly back away from the wall and put my hands over my mouth. I look over at the Majestic to see if he has noticed me over here, but he hasn’t. My heart starts to beat fast, I want to move back to where they are, but my feet feel stuck to the ground.

I then feel a hand on my arm and look, it is Jo-Shana. I relax some, and he says to me, “It’s just a wall Ms. Collins.” When he says this I look back at the wall and the light is gone and there are no cracks. He takes my arm and says, “Come Ms. Collins, let’s go see that flying board over there.”

I nod my head and we move back to the area were the Majestic and Toby are. I try to focus my attention on the flying board to forget what I just saw. I then hear the Majestic, “Well we should be going, it’s getting late and I’m sure you want to get settled in your new home.” He looks into my eyes and then says, “Wouldn’t that make you feel better Ms. Collins?”

Feel better? Did he see me? Can he tell I feel sick to my stomach? All of these questions are going through my mind. I start thinking of reasons why I would at one moment see bodies hanging and the next just a plain wall. I try to justify some kind of conclusion in my head. Why are my eyes playing tricks on me here? I thought I had escaped that the day we left the mysterious land and arrived to the City. Is there still something that wants me? I quickly shake the thoughts out of my head.

“Yes, I am kind of tired,” I say with a slight grin. He nods his head and puts out his hand.

“Shall we then?” I nod back and put my hand in his. I’m not sure if he could feel me shaking or not. He brings me to my platform and helps me up. When everyone is ready the platforms move to exit.

I enter the car, again with Jo-Shana. He doesn’t look at me, so that must mean stay quiet. We ride in silence. We drive pass that large amazing building next to the factories, I saw on the ride there. It looks different though, it doesn’t look as amazing as it once did. It now looks like it has shadows climbing over it. Maybe it’s the lighting, of twilight, or maybe it’s those chained bodies I saw. This City just doesn’t seem as beautiful any more.

Ten minutes pass and we arrive on a street with multiple homes lined down, just inches from each other. The homes are stone and brick built, and they go straight up. There are only five colors used on this street. They go in this pattern; Light yellow, light red, peach, light orange, and last light green.

The car stops in front of a yellow home, and the door opens. I move out of the car, and I am now standing on the side walk looking at my new home. I look down the side walk on each side, there’s nobody in sight, and it’s so quiet. Too quiet.

“Is there a curfew?” I ask the Majestic.

“No curfew. Out of tradition, people go indoors at a respectable time. It’s kind of frowned upon if someone is roaming the streets late in the evening. You understand?” He says with a smile.

Yes I understand, it’s a psychological trick to make you think you have the choice, but in reality you don’t.

I just smile back and say, “Yes.”