A Melting Planet

To Willy, Irene was like a mystical creature. He’d learned extensively about her in his research, to the point where meeting her in the flesh was surreal. Likewise, Irene had been watching Willy and his friends through Sky Eyes for quite some time, and had developed a warmth for the kids not unlike her relationship with Bertha’s son. As they trudged through the woodlands together, the magic of a hike in nature brought a trance like state of conversation and comfort.

They found respite on a large rock in the shade, drinking water. “So, Willy,” Irene glanced over at the boy with matriarchal concern. “Are you going to tell me why you are separated from Thelma and Viola?”

Willy fiddled with the string on the water canteen, bashful. The whole fight with Thelma felt stupid now.

“Have you ever gotten mad at someone you loved?” Willy asked earnestly. “I’m talking mad mad. Like so mad that you weren’t sure if you ever knew them at all…or as if there’s this really thin line between love and hate and you realized you’d been teetering on it the whole time.”

“Hmm,” Irene nodded slowly. She thought about the red hot anger she felt at her father over a century ago for not telling her he was dying. The memory still ached the crack in her beating chest. The pair looked out at the trees.

“You know Willy,” she said after some silent thought, “I’m a scientist. My brain looks for solutions, for answers, and straightforward, whole explanations. It sees solid colors, and blacks and whites. The grays, and the mixes of pigments, they are just mysteries that urgently need to be solved, to find their one and only solution. And once that answer is found, they will be painted their permanent, solid, never-changing color. An unmistakable hue.

“But I learned something valuable in my nearly two hundred years that science will never explain. Even all these years later, with all the inventions of gadgets and technologies and algorithms, humans on Earth have not even scratched the surface in understanding the human brain. Nobody knows the intricacies of how or why the human brain does what it does. All of our unique thoughts, all of our daydreams, our night-dreams, our decisions, our reactions: they are areas of grays and infinite blends of colors that we may never have rhyme or reason for.”

Willy continued staring out at the trees. Irene glanced at him, then continued.

“This used to irk me beyond measurement!” Irene laughed and shook her head, “in fact, even with my second lease on life here, it still frustrated me right down to the marrow in my bones. I check in on neuroscience research regularly with the Sky Eye. Those dimwits have made practically no progress in one hundred years!”

This made Willy chuckle, breaking his somber stare. “Did you really just call neuroscientists dimwits?”

“Well the lightbulb certainly has gotten brighter since its invention hasn’t it?! And yet, they’ve illuminated practically nothing about how and why humans think what they think and do what they do. And like I said, it made me so mad!

“But one day, about fifty years ago, I was hiking around the outskirts of the city. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was eating lunch on a rock not too dissimilar from this, when the colors began to drip. This was towards the beginning of the melting, so there was still political peace in Zokay, and not a lot was known about the cause or effect of the leaking. And in those early days, it was certainly an unusual spectacle.”

“Tell me about it,” said Willy. “I still have to pinch myself when I see it.”

“I was looking down at my sandwich, and the first splotch fell at my feet. The leaves were dripping color. Oozing glowing reds and oranges. Small puddles were collecting at the ends of spiraling branches, and brown puddles were collecting around the bottoms of trunks in sunny spots. It looked as though the vegetation was neon butter melting under the heat of the sun. Red. A blood red, from the trees above. Then, almost directly on top of it a second later, a blue deeper than a soul fell. It almost instantaneously began to blend with the red to make a beautiful royal purple. Then not but a moment later, a yellow fell upon it, brightening it up while simultaneously tinting it brown. And the drips kept coming, and each time one fell, the color adapted to absorb its latest companion. It was a show of the blending of colors, a beautiful mix on this one small spot below my feet. And it made me think…why do I need answers? Why can’t I take each color as it comes, and be intrigued and entranced by the new color being created right before my eyes?

“I suppose why I’m telling you all this is because it made me realize something about the human brain: that it may well be an ever changing, beautiful blend of color and grey area that we will never be able to define as a solid color, or as black, or white. We so badly want people we love to always make sense to us, but how can they present themselves as an answer when the very nature of the human brain is always posing a question?”

“Huh,” Willy furrowed his brows, digesting Irene’s words. He looked at her, “so you’re saying that I’ll never really know Thelma, because she’s always changing?”

“Well, yes and no… I believe you can either be upset with Thelma for not being a solid color, or you can let her blend and present you with a wonderful ever-changing color show on the rock below your sandwich.”

Willy laughed. “She does keep me on my toes. It’s usually just enough to just be in her presence…I’m constantly enchanted, like you were with those colors.”

Irene smiled, and put her arm around Willy, squeezing his shoulder. “Let’s get moving! When we find her, you can see what color comes next.” Irene knew a thing or two about giving matronly advice. She’d helped raise Bertha’s son. As Willy helped her up, she imagined this was how it would have felt to be a grandmother herself.