You’re snacking on In Different Color, a fairy tale.
See The Menu for more treats.
Mr. Grey followed the trajectory of an overweight gentleman who, finding himself reeled like a fish by a spiral set of escalator stairs wound round a gearwork pillar, leapt suddenly into open space.
The gentleman plummeted. He landed on the rosepetal, felt-topped autowalk a few strides from Mr. Grey. The man landed dexterously on his feet, but the moving floor gave him no chance to enter its rhythm. The gears and axles of the long conveyor floor carried the felt away underneath the man. The man stumbled. He fell backwards onto the moving floor. A manilla-enclosed visa application flew out of his grasp. He clawed desperately, but the envelope fluttered out of his reach on the room’s hot air. It passed Mr. Grey, and nearly soared into the wilderness of churning escalators, descelators, and treadmills which rolled and whirred through the Visa Department of the Regional Justice Center.
Fortunately for the overweight man, Mr. Grey’s muscles maintained a tight, orderly state in that office. Mr. Grey felt comfortable and in his element. He deftly speared a binder hole on the envelope with the sharpened tip of his quill. He tucked the gentleman’s flighty visa safely next to his own under an acute shoulder-corner.
Mr. Grey took measured, gliding strides backwards on the moving belt. His footsteps drummed softly on the padded felt, perfectly syncopated with each click of the conveyor’s gears. At the same time, the belt carried the fallen man toward Mr. Grey. Mr. Grey stopped when they came together. He offered a stiff right hand and helped the stunned gentleman rise.
The man brushed a freeloading lint strand off the shoulder of his goose down robe. He shook Mr. Grey’s hand warmly. Mr. Grey handed the man his visa. Besides the robe, the gentleman wore on his face a watery eyed expression, a mix of gratitude, pain, and general out-of-his-element flusteredness. In a voice as wet as his eyes, the man said, “Fortune bless you, sir!” He sucked back some of the breath which his jump and fall had stolen. “Took the wrong branch at the last station, don’t you know… Thought I’d catch the right one if I jumped.”
Mr. Grey stumbled over the first words of a reply, then said, “Nothing to feel badly about. Everyone takes a wrong escalator now and then.”
“Could they make these directions any more confusing?”
“The visa tockworks do take some getting used to.”
The man grumbled and swept his sweaty arms wide. “How’s a fella supposed to know if he needs to go up a level, or drop down one, or if a route’ll take him right back to where he’s already been?” Mr. Grey glanced at their surroundings.
All about them, was motion; a twisting complex of gears, escalators, descelators, autowalks, spinning pillars, spinning wall tickers, spinning roundabout terminal tables, tollbooths and clerkbooths, signs with U-turn and corkscrew and zigzag directions; every tockwork organ driven by the beating thrum of a great tockwork heart, which echoed in the ticks and tocks and clicks of its subsystems; all of this underlet by an enormous furnace of flush-faced coals, rumbling beneath the writhing conveyor mass.
Mr. Grey didn’t find the Tockwork Crags complicated. Mr. Grey did recognize, however, the advantage in being intimately familiar with the crags’ thoroughfares and byways. He said, “You’ll get the hang of it after a few rounds.”
The man stepped back a pace, while the floor beneath rolled forth. “A few rounds? How do you mean?”
“It’s common for visa applicants to spend several cycles on the various branches. It takes time to hit every clerkbooth and receive every signature needed for visa processing.”
“Several cycles?!”
“There’s no need to be discouraged. It’s quite normal, if I understand correctly. I’m from a different department, so it’s hard for me to speak with absolute certainty. There’s complexities to the different signature routes. As I said, it’s easy to misstep on a conveyor.”
“But several cycles… whhhhyyyyy?” The man moaned the question. He looked distressingly at his parchments, then back at Mr. Grey.
Mr. Grey noticed he wasn’t making an impression. He also noticed their conveyor fast approaching the next terminal table. He twitched his shoulders in a shrug. “It beats standing in line. Wouldn’t you say?”
Mr. Grey turned back to the approaching interchange, but the man suddenly rushed him. A clammy fist closed around Mr. Grey’s starched collar. Mr. Grey jumped at the unexpected touch. In a begging tone the man said, “You work here? You said you did!”
“Not in this department…”
“How long’s it open?”
“There’s nothing to worry about, sir. The tickers have a few spins yet before close,” said Mr. Grey. He nodded at one of the spinning wall tickers.
The man wiped a palm across his forehead as he glanced at the ticker. He suddenly squeezed past Mr. Grey, nearly knocking the stiff man into the roaring furnace far below. The man rushed with the moving conveyor, but looked back and said, “Sorry. No time. A million stamps to go!”
Mr. Grey watched the man charge along the conveyor. The moving floor propelled him at an absurd velocity. He hit the turntable running, hastily paid a shiny pebble at the tollbooth, then took the nearest descending corkscrew. Mr. Grey, having glimpsed the man's incomplete visa, saw that the man took the wrong branch. Mr. Grey tried calling after him, but the gearwork rhythm and the roar of the furnace drowned out all sounds at a distance. In any case, the man had by then dropped too far down. Mr. Grey returned to his own stiff, steady business. He did feel, internally, pity for the lost gentleman. That fellow would never get his visa approval in time.
Mr. Grey, on the other hand, came prepared. He required but one stamp more to complete his own visa. He knew where to get it. He knew how to get there.
When Mr. Grey stepped from the conveyor to the terminal table, he did so in a way perfectly opposite of the overweight man. Mr. Grey did not ‘go through the process’; he conquered the tockwork Crags, of the Visa Application Department, of the Starharbor Regional Justice Center. Mr. Grey entered with graceful and confident strides into the machinery jazz, less like an organic applicant than a new addition to the machinery. Mr. Grey danced through the whisking terminals, and rolling floors, and up-down stairways wrapped in rosebush felt. He moved with superfluous grace. Past walls of toothy gears, perpetually grinding their teeth in metal fury, Mr. Grey floated like a specter. Beneath the ticktock time keepers, the clickclack pencil pusher passed. All the while, his heart pumped blood in exact tempo with the looming, ink-handed, pale-faced metronomes. A dozen times did Mr. Grey pass by tollbooth collectors on their spinning terminal tables, and drop his shiny pebble into their collection bin, and pass onward to his correct branch. The toll tenders gave no more mind to this great mechanical traverser than they did to the gearworks roiling all around them, only looking up moments later, and wondering what that strange grey pole on the track had been.
Thus Mr. Grey; like oil, like a ghost, like one small piece of the greater machine. Thus Mr. Grey; dancing and gliding and clicking through the branches of the tockwork Crags. Ahead of him, another terminal spun. Many branches flowed into and away from it. Mr. Grey let the floor carry him forward, standing perfectly still, arms at his sides, with the manilla application nestled professionally in one, dry hand. Other passengers were arriving at the terminal at the same time as Mr. Grey. But they were of no consequence, not to this veteran navigator. Mr. Grey would drift past these passengers, as he’d drifted past many before, in the busy Tockwork Crags.
The conveyor reached the terminal. Mr. Grey disembarked. He wove through the traffic of other citizens. He saw his destination. All this - a tremendous operation for the ordinary man or woman - he made look easy. A master in the craft. Mr. Grey prepared his next, easy, masterful step.
A jovial greeting from behind brought a stutter to the motion, and the first misstep to Mr. Grey’s rhythm. “Gracious! Had I not visited the lensmaker just a day ago, and had said maker not confirmed my vision to be entirely perfect, I would disbelieve my eyes. To think! That I come upon my truest friend; Mr. Grey. If that worthy sir grants me the courtesy of his friendship?”
There strode Lord Neon Silveste. He wore the same superfine wool robe of moonlight grass blades. He gently and lazily parted the crowds as he came up to Mr. Grey. He placed his cold, smooth hand against Mr. Grey’s cold, dry one, and shook heartily. Neon Silveste created a broad, elaborate expression of joy at seeing Mr. Grey. He concluded by adding, “Good Mr. Grey. How do you do?”
Mr. Grey shook the hand, not warmly, but with civil, up-down motions. “Lord Silveste. What an unexpected-”
“None of that ‘Lord’ titlery between us old cronies.” Mr. Grey sighed deeply, threw up his hands, and writhed like a man possessed - all internally of course - at another informal address. “Just Neon, if you’ll do me the favor. But look here, this is my branch. Come. Let’s ride together.”
Neon Silveste pulled Mr. Grey into an exiting branch of catwalk. It was the right branch for Neon Silveste. It was the wrong one for Mr. Grey, and the first true misstep in his pathing. They moved onto the same conveyor, at the exact same instant.
A thing to ponder; which of those two, in that moment, showed greater grace? Neon Silveste had stepped onto the correct branch in the tockworks. True, he’d never spent time in that ticking, clicking, gearful environment. But Neon still showed confidence in the dialogue with Mr. Grey, and that cofidence extended to his disinterested strut. Mr. Grey, on the other hand, had entered the wrong branch for the first time in his dance, and the social situation put him off balance. Mr. Grey held a single advantage; he knew the Tockwork Crags. So, which of these movers on the branch - graceful in their different ways - took that single step with greater deportment?
There existed no real contest. Mr. Grey showed himself the unchallenged lord on the field of the disembarking step.
When Neon Silveste stepped onto the platform, he did it like a child staying within the lines of a paint-by-numbers, who shows the picture to the first person he sees for approval. He stepped like any man with a firm feeling for his body might step onto uncertain footing; with slight hesitation to start, but a quick finding of balance, and a firm finish.
But Mr. Grey… Mr. Grey stepped onto the platform like a master painter, making a single brush stroke with a dye he’d not intended, and - shrugging unconcernedly - going on to incorporate the new pigment into the picture; not just without sign of error, but as an improvised improvement to the art. Mr. Grey moved onto this new conveyor like a tiny water drop in a subterranean cave, where the drop plummets from the toothed ceiling, lands smoothly on the speartip of a stalagmite below, and slides smoothly down its surface to join a puddle on the floor. Indeed, Mr. Grey moved without even the ripple the droplet makes in the puddle. Mr. Grey was master of this court, sliding along like a frictionless statue of polished marble. In moving gracefully through the tockwork Crags, Mr. Grey knew no equal. Not in any Justice Center employee, and definitely not in Neon Silveste.
The pair took standing positions on the flowerpetal felt track of the slow moving conveyor. The next terminal lay somewhere ahead, unseen beyond a thick forest of corkscrew pillars. Neon Silveste turned to Mr. Grey. He pulled a visa application from within the grassy folds of his robe, and waved it around in a brandishing way. “It is dismally confusing, all this roundabout. Wouldn’t you say?”
Mr. Grey shuffled his own visa. It was the most sympathy he could express with a thought he didn’t at all agree with. He said, “To take the wolf’s side of the case; perhaps the complexity of the process matches the importance of the privilege.”
“You don’t mind if I fill some of this out while we ride?” Neon opened the visa and flipped to the first page. Mr. Grey saw he hadn’t filled a single field on the form.
“I do not.”
“Much obliged. Blast and bother! You wouldn’t have a pencil?”
Mr. Grey thought the question absurd. He pulled the pencil from behind his ear, gave it to Neon, and replaced it with an exact twin from his pocket.
For a few tocks, Neon scribbled confused markings on different sections of the visa. He jumped from the top to the bottom of the parchment, and leapt back and forth between pages at random. This performance included an expression unmistakably meant for bafflement and confusion. Mr. Grey glanced at his own application once without need, glanced at his pocket ticker once without need, and waited stiffly. His heart still kept its time by the ticking of the huge timekeepers spinning on the gearwork pillars.
The clicking and ticking and tocking began to sound loud in Mr. Grey’s ears. He said, “I thought I’d ask: how’d that party of yours turn out?”
“What’s that?” said Neon Silveste. He looked up suddenly as though he’d not been paying attention. “I’m sorry, dear fellow. This document’s got me nettled...”
“Apologies, I didn’t wish to interrupt. I just wondered if that party of lords and guests turned out better than you expected? You said you thought it’d be dull company.”
“We traded some stories. Say, you must be in the same boat as me?” Neon motioned at the visa tucked sharply at Mr. Grey’s side.
“That’s true. We’re both applying for visas.”
“You don’t look so worried,” said Neon. He put on a convincing weak smile. Then he suddenly replaced the smile with a wide eyed expression of remembrance, which most people would say looked unquestionably genuine. “But wait a ticket… Didn’t you say you worked in this maze?”
“I’m not sure I said so. But it is true. Not in this particular department, you understand.”
“Reallytruly? I was sure I heard you say it. Or perhaps it’s your style which made me guess? No matter. Well, that does explain how, in all this rumblesome mess, you keep so cool,” He gestured at Mr. Grey’s stoic posture for emphasis.
“It’s easier for employees. My visa is approved as part of work vacation.” Mr. Grey spoke in an apologetic way. He felt pressure to justify his job-given opportunity.
“Ha! I’m guessing they don’t even flag you king’s men. All you do is ask to take the marble train out for a day, and they wave you through the moats.” Neon elbowed Mr. Grey in the ribs and gave him a conspiratorial wink.
“I think the bouncers thoroughly check all visas. Nevertheless, I do have mine nearly complete.”
“Do you think… Gah, what am I saying? I won’t impress upon my friends.” Neon Silveste put on a show of glancing back at his own visa and disturbing the smoothness of his shiny skin with a wrinkled brow.
“It’s no trouble, I’m sure.”
“I only thought… if you’re not occupied… You’d have a peek or two at my parchments? And see if you can fill one of the fields which I don’t quite understand?”
Neon Silveste held his visa towards Mr. Grey with a weak attempt at reluctance. Mr. Grey took the visa. He skimmed the pages. The few fields which Neon had scribbled in were scribbled wrong. Mr. Grey began by crossing out everything and initialing each of the corrections.
The two of them arrived at the next spinning terminal. Neon Silveste picked their next branch - a rising corkscrew escalator - at random. Mr. Grey followed. They passed through station after station and along branch after branch in this way. Mr. Grey asked Neon questions while filling out the form. Neon picked whichever path looked most interesting to travel. He gave Mr. Grey nonchalant answers, and filling up the rest of the dialogue with quotes, poems, and anecdotes from his existence.
The tickers rolled on. Neon glanced at the ivory faces and ebony hands of the tockwork guts more often the longer they traveled. Finally he stopped abruptly in the middle of a particularly formative experience in his existence. He asked, “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt. I wonder, however, how many tocks have we got before they toss us rowdies to the curb?”
Mr. Grey wasn’t interrupted. He hadn’t been speaking. His ears and thoughts attended Neon’s voice, while his quill scraped answers into Neon’s form automatically. His mind ran both processes with ease. He checked the time of his pocket ticker. “There’s a few moments left before closing.”
“I hope I’m not keeping you from polishing off your own parchments,” said Neon as he did that exact thing.
“It’s no trouble. I’ve got just one stamp left.”
“You’ll scrawl my visa from Empty to Approved AND file yours? All before closing?”
“I can return tomorrow to finish mine.” Mr. Grey’s unemotive tone aided him in this moment. It let him answer the second part of Neon’s question, while passing over the first with guile.
Neon looked at him with wonder, shown in a half-dropped jaw; an expression genuine not just for everyone else, but for Neon himself. “You’d slow yourself down? Just to help?”
“You said we were friends, Lord Silveste. It seems the friendly thing.”
Wonder lingered in Neon’s eyes, but he shook it from his mouth. He laughed, slapped a knee, and said, “Mr. Grey! You are a satisfying sort.”
“Thank you, sir. I should tell you…”
“You’ve got to fix your expectations though,” said Neon, adopting a tone both lecturing and laconic.
The two of them jumped from an escalator, to a terminal, to a new autowalk branch, in a few brief gearwork clicks. They kept pace with each other, and moved gracefully between conveyors. Mr. Grey said, “My expectations?”
“Not about this visa affair. I don’t presume to give you a talking-to in that sphere. Not for every novelty spoon in the Harbor!”
“So which of my expectations require fixing?”
“The ones on… You know. Adventuring. And meeting fresh faces, for instance.”
Mr. Grey looked up and stared mattely at the glowing lord. “I’ll be finalizing some parchmentwork while I’m out of the office. I’ll catch up with some clients who… might have missed a field or two when they filed. Doubtless, I’ll meet some new faces while I’m away.”
“There you go. Good man! Stick to the business side of vacation.” Neon laughed once more and stamped a foot on the felt.
“It’s not all business… some leisure’s inevitable in this moat crossing venture.”
“I believe it! I could spin you more than one tale. More than a dozen…”
“Have you left Starharbor before?” Mr. Grey asked politely, though he knew the answer.
Neon put on his best aloof face. “Not precisely. My experience is in the way of people. Do you take my meaning?”
“Well… there you’re likely right.” Mr. Grey hesitated in his words.
“What I’m rolling at, my boy, is that you need tempering. When it comes to the class of people you aim to hang around. Do you understand? It’s your flaw. I tell you as a friend. And believe me, fraternity distinction’s my game. What with all these parties, and lords, and ladies.”
The spinning tickers on every gearwork thrummed a sudden warning. The Visa Department of the Starharbor Regional Justice Center approached its closing time. The blushing furnace under-lighting every corkscrew and conveyor dimmed as it began to cool. Neither light nor shadow, however, had much say in Mr. Grey’s appearance, and Neon Silveste carried his own glamor everywhere he strutted. The two remained within each other’s sight. Mr. Grey returned his eyes to Neon’s application. He said, in a quiet voice, “My Lord, I hope you don’t feel obliged to mingle with a pencil pusher like me. I’m sure…”
Neon slapped Mr. Grey’s shoulder. “Nonsense, dear boy. I’m not talking about our relationship. Bother that! How to put it…” Then, with a well-executed widening of his eyes - as though the wanted example had struck him at just that moment - Neon said, “Take Honeydew, for instance.”
Mr. Grey stopped writing again. “Honeydew?”
Neon scribbled in the air, indicating Mr. Grey should keep going on the visa. Mr. Grey obliged. The young lord said, “Now, I’m sure you two looked like the grandest pair I ever set eyes on. Steering that swan so elegantly. Nevertheless, I got the impression at our party that Honeydew… Well it seems like you and she thrive in different social climates.”
“I take your point,” said Mr. Grey. He stopped writing.
“Don’t take it hard, dear boy. I’m only sparing you later pain. As a friend.”
“I understand, your lordship. There are no hard feelings.”
“You reassure me,” said Neon. After a tock he added, “I shouldn’t keep distracting you with all these sidebars. When you’re so diligently fixing my jam.”
Mr. Grey folded Neon’s visa within its manilla wrapping, and held it stiffly out to him. He said, “There’s no distraction. This is as final as I can make it. Your visa is ready for processing.”
Neon took the folder eagerly. He leafed the pages, skimming Mr. Grey’s tidy blocks of writing. “Wonderful work, my boy,” He glanced at the nearest wall ticker. “Not a tock too soon either. Which branch should I take to get this approved, by-the-by?” He set his eyes on the terminal toward which they rolled, and glanced between the exit conveyors leading up, and down, and away.
“You can take the first escalator on the tockwise spin from our entry,” Neon began a patronizing thanks without looking at Mr. Grey, but Mr. Grey went on, “Your application won’t get approved, your lordship.”
Neon turned sharply. He wore a look of alarm, but quickly replaced it with the easy, jocular one. “Not approved eh? What’s the rub, dear boy? Need I dash for a different department? Collect another autograph?”
Mr. Grey shook his head in a steady back-and-forth rhythm. “No. You see on page thirty-seven? The one I marked, right here. These checkboxes are for the different circumstances justifying Odormoat passage. When you and I went down the list a short while ago, you didn’t match any circumstances. You didn’t check any boxes, your lordship.”
Neon frowned at the short row of unchecked boxes. He turned to Mr. Grey with the conspiratorial face from a few moments ago. “Ah, well that does explain it. Don’t suppose you could be my reference? Add your name and give me a pass? As a friend, dear Mr. Grey. And rest assured, I’d berate myself until I found a way of recompense.”
Mr. Grey shrugged. “I could undersign as a friend of your lordship, but it won’t do any good. Only the signature of an authorized visa approver gets you approved. A pencil pusher’s name - even a senior pencil pusher’s - is pointless on a visa.”
Neon fidgeted, and his voice rang with uneven chords. “That’s not fair! Why’s it so confoundedly difficult? Why do some people get a pass, and others get leashed to the play they were born? I’m stifled - abused! - by all these barbarous, tedious, immoral paper-chains. I only ask for the smallest break, is that so much? I labor day after day to get away from oppressive Starharbor.”
Mr. Grey had heard this same speech from many smarting clients in his working existence. He used his usual middle-of-the-road answer. The Odormoats were made for the citizens’ safety. And besides, Mr. Grey didn’t make the decisions.
Neon’s tone turned accusatory. “So which of those special boxes checked you through, my good fellow?”
“One of the conditions is ‘government employment’, as you no doubt saw.” Mr. Grey opened his visa to page thirty-seven, and showed Neon the single, orderly check scratched inside the box.
Neon reached instinctively for Mr. Grey’s visa, but caught himself. He put on a not-quite-perfect smile, and said bitterly, “Congratulations then. Sounds like a rousing adventure.”
Mr. Grey said, “I hope there’s no hard feelings, your lordship. Between us friends. You put it best yourself. We should, ‘fix our expectations.’”
Neon Silveste’s face broke. Hostility flushed his cheeks and slanted his eyes. He gradually brought his features back under control, and replaced his anger with a contemptuous, fake smile.
The two entered the next spinning terminal. Neon said, “Good luck with your vacation. I suppose I shan’t keep you anymore.” As the tickers, and the tockworks, and the conveyors of all shapes, sizes, and directions wound down around them, and the monstrous dragon engine far below growled lower and lower, Mr. Grey and Neon Silveste separated. Mr. Grey stepped toward an escalator which would lead to his last-needed stamp. Neon stepped toward an exit branch.
Neon looked back as he left. With a final sneer, he said, “You know, I think I’ll host another one of those parties Honeydew enjoys so much.”
You’ve just dined on In Different Color, a fairy tale.
Still hungry? See The Menu.