Today's #flashfiction #AnotherPerception

“Failure is not an option!”

Schoolhouse Rock* #quote

       Looks like CJ will be coming over tomorrow, hopefully no dinosaurs will go on a rampage. We keep returning them to the park when we catch them, but that place has the worst security.

Another Perception

        It took until high school for me to understand it. Mostly because my art teacher took such interest in my condition. It gave my art such “an incredibly unique yet still perfectly normal style to it”. I guess that's the consequence when I don't see colors like colors. At least that's what the doctors and scientists tell me.

       “Reggie, The Boy With and Without Color,” is what some article in a paper called it. The writer must of thought they were witty. My condition is that my eyes take in colors from the environment just like a normal person, but my brain interprets it all differently. Our colors are...different. Or maybe I'm not even seeing colors. According to the doctors my brain isn't getting color signals like other people so when you get green I get something else. Is it a different color? Like are they flip-flopped where you get red where I get green or something? Or am I getting something completely beyond what a color is to you and what a color is to me?

     The scientists ask about my condition, write papers about me, and I don't mind. Except when they get angry at me for not being able to answer some of their questions they want to use for their papers. They want me to describe what my “blue” is like. It's blue. That's it. How could I “define” blue?

One scientist differed and my art teacher brought him in to view my work, not ask me questions. She asked me if she could show him, just in case I was nervous about a stranger seeing my art. I said yes. Because of my unique condition I've had many strangers request interviews or things like that. But it surprised me that he didn't want to ask questions but look at my art.

The next day the scientist visited at the end of class again.

       “I think I figured you out Reggie. At least a little. Your art, like everyone else, looks normal that you draw and paint the same things we do. But I see that you find different colors aesthetically pleasing next to each other that other people naturally wouldn't. This is very consistent. I think that you have a different set of complementary colors in your mind and that how colors relate differ to you. I bet you always thought the chart of complementary colors didn't look right at all.”

I responded, “Yes.” It was quite startling.

       “Just do some more art Reggie. You seem to like it. And at the end of this year if you and your parents don't mind I'd like to look more at your art. The fact that you have a different interpretation of sense signals has always been wondrous, and who knows where that scientific road will lead us.”

       Years and years later more and more was discovered about me, I was scanned more vigorously, and more advanced scanning techniques let them replicate my nerves in simulation. The understanding of senses went to help into so many sciences, I didn't see to many discoveries, but when I saw them making that specialized camera and hooking up to a robot for space exploration I knew that even after I died amazing things would be happening because of me. Though on my deathbed I still wondered what green was really supposed to be like.