The Big Picture

The beginning

The tower cut a black line through the undisrupted white. The column of graphite rose, slowly spiraling and spinning, weaving it’s way through the pearly mist. The contours blossomed all over the page. The faint hiss of the pneumatic door was like a gunshot in Reuben’s head. The sketchbook disappeared into the folds of his coat, just as the Hunter entered the train car. It floated, as if made of cloud, down the aisle, and stopped next to him. Reuben was the only one in the carriage. It was a Hunter-type Robotic Artificially Intelligent Droid, or RAID, designed and operated by the government to control the population. Not that it needed controlling. Ever since the revolution, the destruction, and when the city was rebuilt, the people hadn’t needed anything. Everything was provided for them.  Shelter, clothes, food, entertainment, they were all instantly and eternally available in every home in the city. The people were docile, as if every one of them had been injected with a permanent sedative. They just followed their routines, and wore the same identical clothes, and lived in the same identical houses. People only leaved their houses to do stuff they couldn’t do at home. The black orb hung in the air in front of him. It’s photoreceptor turned to him, an endless pit of hazy amber. “Name” the orb emitted. “Reuben Eddie, 23, 104 North”. This was his address. “Destination” asked the Hunter. “68, 55 West” replied Reuben. Marco’s address. The Hunter floated away through the empty carriage, and disappeared through the door.

Marco

Marco Talbot’s aging face gazed out of the window of his two-bedroom bungalow. Over the tops of the identical houses that surrounded his, he could just make out the towering grey form of the city center. His mind drifted to the future. He imagined a different world, where the city was beautiful and clean, and not shrouded in the permanent smog of pollution. Where the buildings were elegant and different, and people had their own point of view, not just what the government wanted them to think. Most of all, he dreamed of colour. There was no ` in the world. The city was all black and grey. Art, colour, freedom of speech and expression were all forbidden. He tilted his head down to notice the man walking up his lawn. The brown curly hair and green eyes of Reuben Eddie. Marco smiled at the sight of the almost child-like face bobbing up to his front door. He left the window to open the door, but stopped when he saw Reuben emerging through the doorway. “Morning Marco” said the figure in front of him. “ Morning Reuben. I forgot I gave you my code”. Marco strode into the kitchen and turned to haul himself up onto the counter. “Any progress?” he asked. “Yes, the twins are on their way now, and ready to lay the charges at noon” Reuben replied. “Excellent. It’s a damn risky job they’re doing, but they’re doing it for a good cause. It’s going to be pandemonium when it goes up” Marco stood up and led Reuben into the living room. The walls were bare. A grey sofa and a small table were all that occupied the vast room.  There was a thermostat on the wall. Marco twisted the knob to the highest setting. There was a muffled click, and a panel of the wall swung away, as if it had melted into nothing. It was like someone had opened a chest full of jewels. Reuben’s eyes dilated and then adjusted to the bright colours. The plain white wall had revealed a cacophony of greens, reds, yellows and many other colours. “You’ve made more” Reuben pointed out. And Marco had. The last time they had met, Marco’s portfolio consisted of nothing more a few canvases, but now there was a whole multitude of paintings, drawings and pastel sketches, lining all three walls of the small hidden room. “They’re incredible” Reuben gasped in awe. “How many are there?. “Nearly fifty” Marco replied. Reuben remembered the drawing in his pocket. “Oh, and I made some sketches” he said. He showed Marco the building. “It’s good. It’s very good. If we live through all this, and our plan works, it may even be able to exist”, Marco remarked. “We’d better get going, or it’ll never get done”. The pair walked out, closed the door to the concealed artworks, left the house, and headed for the train station.

The Town Hall

Max and Clare trotted down the steps of the town hall and hurried into an alley on the side of the circle. They turned back to look at the building they had just left. It was a large concrete stack, with square windows here and there, much like a taller version of the thousands of simple grey buildings that made up the city. It was not extraordinary, but it was the heart of the government, the corrupt elites who had founded the city purely to make money from the people. Max and Clare had grown to hate the government for years. When they were young, they ran across an old man in the street. He grabbed them violently, and screamed at them about how he had hated his life, and how he was so crazy from living in a boring, repetitive world. A Hunter then appeared, and silenced the man. The twin children then carried on, but the event stayed with them for years, coming back to haunt them. They began to build up a hatred for the government, and the systems that they lived by. Clare especially. She once attacked and destroyed a Hunter, and she had her tongue cut off by the government. Now, they were two of over a hundred people throughout the city who felt this way, and were actively taking part in the destruction of the town hall, which they hoped would start an end to the tyrannous regime.  Two silhouettes appeared at the end of the alley.  “Hello Reuben, hello Marco. It’s all set”, Max said to the approaching figures. “Good”, was the reply of Marco, emerging from the darkness. “Well, let’s do it. If we don’t survive, hopefully our deaths can spark the people to rebel”. The three of them walked up to the town hall and stood on the steps. Max ran out into the circle and stood in front of the town hall, a large, homemade camera over his shoulder. It would stream live the following events to the entire population. The sky was it’s usual smog grey, from the pollution produced by the factories on the borders of the city. The usually empty circle contained a few people, wondering around or sitting on benches. Marco looked around at the grey buildings that lined the circle, to the grey sky, to the grey paving stones and benches. “We have a message we need to send,” he shouted. The people in the circle turned their heads to gaze at him. “I have a dream. We live in a world that is intolerant to colour. The people in this city are so obsessed by what they do and what they think they know to be true, that they never pause to look up and think about other possibilities”. He definitely had everyone in the circle’s attention now. They were staring avidly. “Have any of you ever wondered what’s outside the city walls? Behind your TV screens? Behind this door?” he asked the audience, indicating the town hall behind him. “Well, open your minds!” As he spoke, a huge waterfall of colour cascaded down the face of the town hall. It depicted a utopia, a beautiful environment of light and happiness. “You don’t know what you’re missing!” Marco shouted to the camera. “You are all under the oppression of a government who make their money from your labour, and live by the concept of ruling your minds. You are the mindless slaves of their oppression! Break free!” The doors to the town hall burst open, and a ball of black erupted from within, like an ominous cloud under the gigantic poster of light. The camera could not see the Hunter, as Marco was blocking it from view, but Max gasped when Marco’s knees buckled, and his limp body rolled down the steps, with a bullet in the back of his head. Reuben was the first one to react. He dashed forward and shouted at the Hunter, with a small box in his hand. “If I press this button”, revealing a small button on the remote, “The town hall will explode”. The Hunter was programmed to be smart. It stayed still. Suddenly, all over the circle, people began to stand up. They were taking off their clothes. They peeled off their identical coats and jumpers, but underneath…They all wore brightly coloured shirts. Every one of them was wearing colour. It seemed the whole population was rebelling in a self-organized, peaceful revolt. “How did we not know about this?” Reuben murmured. He half expected them to all fall dead at the hands of the Hunter. But the Hunter, unknown to everyone else, was going through all possible ways out of the situation. The events unfolding in front of it were overloading it’s system. It decided on one solution, as it saw the sudden burst of colour as a huge violation of the law. It sent out an ultra-sonic pulse. Hidden in the town hall, Max and Clare’s bombs went off.

Let there be light

His wrist was cocooned in plaster. Half his face was red, the painfully peeling skin starting to beg to be itched. Reuben’s eyes beamed around the train car, full of passengers. They all looked different, wore different clothes, carried different things, different colours. He strolled out of the car and onto the platform. He stepped into the elevator and whooshed up out of the earth. As he stepped out onto the street, cradling his plastered wrist, he looked up, and gazed at the huge tower of coloured glass, erupting out of the ground in front of him. It had been a hard battle to win. He looked down to see a column of stone in front of his creation, with the names of the fallen inscribed on it. Fallen in the battle for freedom. And now colourful shops, restaurants and bars surrounded the circle. Reuben walked into the entrance hall of the huge tower. He strode up to the elevators to rise up to his penthouse office, and gazed at the plaque that hung over the four doors. It read; “Designed by Reuben Eddie. In honor of Marco Talbot”. And sure enough, the walls of the lobby were covered in beautiful canvases.