Episode 115: Colorless

Everyone aboard the mothership was excited about seeing Olo. In his anticipation, Flash fell asleep, and woke to a dream. He found himself in a desolate world. A dry, colorless world, lit with pure white light. The air was hot and dry, the landscape was coated with gray dust.

He walked, leaving crisp boot prints in the fine powder that blanketed everything. It softened the edges of anything that may lay buried. There was no wind, yet he trudged between dunes.

The sky was dazzling white. No cloud broke the blinding dome of sky.

Flash walked on, reminding himself that this was simply a dream. He was curious, but also longed to awaken again in the soft light of his ship.

On and on he walked, first up a hill and then across a muffled plateau.

He looked back at his path, which fell away behind him. Only his footprints broke the monotony of gray dust. It was so fine he couldn’t call it sand. This place reminded Flash of something he could not quite place. Perhaps the emptiness recalled his visit to Ino with Peck. There was something more.

He walked on. He walked onward and upward, and eventually found himself on a precipice where he finally caught a glimpse of color in this grayscale world.

Something in the valley before him glowed. A serpentine shape lay against the bland hollow, and on the other side of it, burned a rainbow of light.

Flash forgot about the heat, forgot his thirst and the weariness of his legs.

He raced toward the color.

The harsh light of this world pierced a low, winding wall of colored stones.

When he reached the other side of it, Flash Meridian found himself immersed in a three dimensional world of transparent light.

He followed the wall until he came to a dip in the terrain. Here, the light flooded through a deep section of exposed wall, projecting, in great detail, an image of Buffy, the queen of Olo, looking down at him as he stared, bewildered, up at her.

These were the ruins of the Ololian castle.

As he realized this, he woke in the mothership. He asked the table of elements for a glass of water.

Flash was relieved to know that it had only been a dream. Still, if Olo were to die like Ino did, and become a barren wasteland, the castle walls would continue working. That is, they would preserve Olo’s history in holograms for future explorers or archaeologists to discover. Their function was not dependent upon any technology. They didn’t need an operator, or even an audience in order to beam their message to eternity.

He thought again of Ino, and of Earth as it once was.