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In one second, the white, hard ground under his feet changed to something darker and softer. As he looked forwards, Circle realised that he... couldn't see. Not because there was nothing there, but because there was too much there.
So many colours assaulted his eyes at once, it felt like his brain was malfunctioning. Circle stopped running, shocked beyond belief. His mouth fell agape, his eyes were wide as he stood in place, trying to take it in.
This wasn't black. This wasn't white. These colours were something in between, which usually meant gray, but... He'd never seen so many shades of gray. It felt like he was seeing something he wasn't supposed to, like his mind had suddenly achieved a level of understanding it had never been meant to reach.
His eyes actually hurt from looking at it. He had to gaze down and close them.
Shaken, he decided to listen to the surroundings instead. Thankfully, he couldn't hear the other circles running after him anymore. However, he heard another wildly unfamiliar thing.
There were voices. Not just one. Many.
Circle opened his eyes out of surprise, and immediately regretted it as he got blinded again. He squeezed them shut, put his hands over them and cut himself off from the visual input, focusing on the sound once more.
Most audible was a lower, monotone voice, all-present and booming in the space around him.
Then there were others, quieter ones, coming from somewhere else. Circle could hear some higher, some lower, some more melodic, some energetic, and some clearly angry.
His head was spinning. Why were there so many of them? Who did these all belong to?!
For the entirety of his life, he'd only known one voice. Everyone spoke the voice, there were no variations of the voice, and it didn't belong to anyone. It was just a channel of information, its qualities as meaningless as his own body in a crowd of clones. That was a simple reality, one he could understand.
But this? He didn't understand any of this. He didn't know where he was, how he ended up here, or what were those voices planning to do with him. Everything seemed so alien, strange, terrifying, as if he had just ascended to a higher dimension. Circle pressed his fingers hard, trying to keep himself from freaking out.
The monotone voice kept on talking, and eventually Circle found it in himself to listen to the words.
"I am your host, Airy, and welcome to this competition, called ONE."
Competition. That seemed like the only familiar thing so far, but it wasn't a pleasant association either. After all, it was Host Circle who loved the competitions. They were his favourite form of activity to lead. Circle reckoned that the guy had some sort of grand plan for it, but he had never paid much attention to what it could be. Similarly, until his mole had appeared, he'd never thought about the challenges themselves... and how they simply didn't make sense. No, before that, as long as he could explore the world, it didn't matter to him in what form he did it. Host Circle might've as well given them new stuff without all that competing, but if doing it that way made him happy, then Circle didn't mind.
Unfortunately, he did mind now. In the end, the contest had almost got him deleted from existence. Circle was sure there was nothing good about contests now.
"Hey, man, you good?" he heard a voice, clean and on a softer side, near him.
Circle slowly spread his fingers enough to peek out. The world was still blinding, so he squinted his eyes.
There was a person standing there, or at least, he assumed it was a person - a rectangular shape, mostly black (or something close to it, he noticed) with a transparent top, which was close to gray, and with white reflecting on its surface.
These were all colours that Circle knew. That was a little reassuring. There were also other colours there, hidden inside the transparent top of the person's body, but they were a minority. Circle could gaze at them with more ease than when he tried to look at the ground or the sky.
"Yeah," he replied. "I'm just- not really used to..." everything "...this."
"I think none of us are," the person said. "This is all pretty surreal. But I haven't seen anyone else cover their eyes after getting here. Are your eyes okay?"
Circle blinked. Everything besides the black rectangle still felt like a blur whenever he tried to look at it. "There's just too many colours... I'm not used to so many." That was a really gentle way to put it, but he didn't know how else to explain. Up until now, his own world with the monochromatic colour palette was the only thing he knew, and it was something obvious to him.
"Ohhh," the black rectangle said, "I think I know what you're talking about. I'm sometimes blinded by light after not having my eyes out for long." Circle had no idea what that meant, but he decided not to interrupt. "And it's often dark in the compartment I'm kept at, so when the airline crew comes to open it, the light quite literally floods me. It might be similar to that."
"So what should I do?" Circle asked, shutting his eyes for a moment to let them rest.
"Maybe try looking at shadows first. They're darker and not as vibrant. Then your sight will get used to the things that cast them."
"Okay... Okay. I'll try." He massaged his eyes with his hands. "Thanks."
"Yeah, sure," the soft voice replied. Circle heard footsteps, and he realised something, so he hastily opened his eyes before the person left.
"Hey, do you..." he hesitated. "Do you have a name?"
The black rectangle turned around and smiled brightly. "I do! My name's Airline Food. It's, well, not the best one there is, but... it's something, hah."
"Hey, I think it's a cool name," Circle complimented. And he meant it. He'd never heard such a name, let alone knew what an 'airline' was. It sounded so foreign.
"Thanks! And yours is Circle, right? I heard the host name you." Airline Food said, then turned away to go. "See you around, then."
○ ○ ○
Circle could hear that the other voices started gathering, but for now, he paid no mind to them. His eyes were fixed on the ground underneath him - on the circular, dark shape that touched his feet and moved in synchronisation with his body.
This must be his shadow, he concluded. It looked... far more real than any other thing he'd seen here. There was something about it that felt undoubtedly more familiar than the rest of the world around him.
Circle tried to reach his hand to the shadow, and as he did it, a quiet, sharp exhale escaped him. His hand... It moved in three dimensions now. That jumpscared him a little.
That was the thing about the shadow too, he realised at the same time. His shadow was two-dimensional: of course it felt more natural to him, a flat shape, than... than... Wait. Did his whole being become...?
He put his hands on his body, tracing them over himself. He watched his shadow do the same thing, but what he could feel with his palms felt vastly different - because, unlike his shadow, he wasn't a flat shape anymore. His body stretched in a whole new dimension now. Circle... didn't know how to feel about that yet.
So instead, he focused back on the shadow. He needed to train his eyes. After he'd get used to it, he wanted to see how the other voices, the other people, looked. Something inside him sparked with curiosity, and he could feel the aura of fear lift up from him.
A new world. A whole new set of possibilities. So many things to explore, things he couldn't have even imagined in his past life. Circle smiled excitedly at the thought, and something in his chest fluttered anxiously as he couldn't wait. The moment his body finally adjusted, he could start his journey.
Screw the other circles, screw the Host. They were going to be stuck there forever, until they all reintegrated with the void, while he got something better. Infinitely better.
Circle closed his eyes and let out a breath. He felt ready.
Opening his eyes, he decided to start from the ground, then move onto the sky. He slipped his gaze off his shadow, moving it to the space around it. Circle instinctively squinted at the vibrant colour, but he persisted in his challenge.
Blinking and occassionally rubbing his eyes, he looked around and spotted small triangles springing up from the ground. He could discern at least four shades of the colour: two belonging to the flat ground, and two to the small triangles. Fascination enveloped his mind. This was a different colour from those he had seen in his life. He didn't know its name, but it was beautiful. After having gazed at it for a few minutes, it seemed quite peaceful, too.
He slowly moved his eyes upwards. In the distance, he could see some other structures, their colour darker than that of the ground. And then, there was the sky. Its colour seemed like a transition between the ground's hue and the grays he knew. It was so new to his senses, so strange, but so, so pretty.
Circle felt something humid form in the corners of his eyes, and he reached out to wipe it off, surprised. Looking down on the liquid on his fingers, he found that he didn't know what to do with it, so he just shook it off.
The feeling of awe overtook him as he sat down, his eyes glued to the sight. He wished he had more words to describe it, because if there existed so many colours, surely they had names, past the limited vocabulary of close to gray, close to black.
If only there was someone who could teach him these names. Maybe the other three-dimensional people could?
After admiring the sky for a long while, Circle tried moving his gaze to the bright shape high above... but maybe his eyes weren't ready enough for that, because the source of light still seemed to burn through them mercilessly. He looked away, biting his lip in frustration. Maybe he'd get used to that part later.
Circle heard footsteps, and he turned his head in the direction they were coming from.
He expected to see Airline Food, but the person approaching him was someone different. It was a slice of bread, her body a gentle warm colour, with a splash of the ground's hue on the side. Circle felt himself smile. This person was so pretty.
"Hey, do you wanna be on a team?" she asked, her voice a calm, stable melody.
○ ○ ○
"Wait, so... You've never seen any colours?"
"Nope," he said. "None except white, black and gray. That's why I want to learn the names of others." He let his gaze slip to the surroundings again. He still couldn't believe his eyes for the beauty he was seeing.
"Okay, well, sure. I can tell you that." Moldy shrugged. "The grass is green. All of these shades down here are green - although, obviously, they're many different shades of it."
Grass. Green. Easy to remember.
"The trees are dark green. It can depend on the tree type, though." She bent over and squinted. "Those are... the ugliest trees I've ever seen, to be honest."
"Really?" Circle's smile dropped. "I think they look nice... They're so complicated in structure."
She looked at him weirdly. "Real trees are much more complicated. And way prettier than whatever this sucker has set up for us."
It surprised him how condescending she sounded when referring to Airy. Maybe she also didn't like gameshow hosts. He wondered what had happened in her own story to cause that.
And also...
"Real trees?" he questioned. "Are these not real?"
They looked far more real than any nearest equivalent in his world. Which... wait. He'd seen one before. But where? He couldn't remember right now.
"No, obviously these are not," she scoffed. "They're too geometrical, too digital. Real trees are... natural. You know."
Circle made a confused face at her. Moldy sighed.
"Whatever. They're dark green, since that's what you wanted to know," she said, then pointed upwards. "And the sky is blue, usually, though this one is... more cyan. Or celadon, I guess," she mused.
"Woah," he gasped quietly. These names sounded so cool. "And what colour are you?"
Moldy looked down on herself. "Uh. Brown, I'd say."
Brown... with a splash of green, he noted to himself.
"Where are you from, by the way?" Moldy asked him. "I can't imagine living in a place with no colour. Must be horrible."
"Oh, I can tell you about my world, though... I don't think it's very interesting."
"Go ahead," she encouraged. "Airy seems to have forgotten about us for now. We have a minute."
○ ○ ○
His team was awesome. Even though Circle had initially been opposed to the idea of teams, as he hadn't even wanted to compete, the people he ended up with exceeded all of his expectations. They were nothing like the clones in his world. Here, each person had a vibrant personality, quirks, speech pattern, tone of voice, body, humour, opinions. All of it quickly aroused his curiosity, which only grew the more he got acquainted with them.
Moldy was, of course, the most interesting. Circle quickly learned that, and not only through conversations, but also because the other two - Subway Seat and Whippy Creamy - looked at her with awe, similar to how he did towards everyone.
But these two 'hidden objects', as they liked to call themselves, were also intriguing to Circle. They seemed to have a very profound knowledge of their own bodies. Akin to how he could stretch his limbs, they could completely retract them, and do that together with their face: hiding themselves, retreating to the interior of their body. In their original world, they had spent a lot of time cut off from their senses and instead purely inside.
"What's it like to stay hidden all day?" Circle asked them.
"It's peaceful. It's our natural state," answered Subway Seat. "When we're hidden, we mostly perceive the world through touch, because it's that way that humans interact with us. It's kinda like being asleep and tenderly held by someone bigger than you," he added. "At least so I've heard. About being held, I mean."
Circle hadn't been held by anyone either, and he briefly wondered what it was like.
"I've heard many stories from passengers," continued Subway. "The underground train was a nice place to live in, I didn't complain. Though here it's way more interesting, of course."
Circle then thought, with rising fondness, that he could relate to that, and that they weren't so different. Something warm formed between them, making him smile at the feeling.
Later on, he learned that it was called friendship.
"What about you?" he turned to Whippy Creamy. "Do you feel the same?"
"About how this world is better? Duh!" he huffed. "It's WAY better, dude. My lifespan was meant to be much shorter than Subway's, and the places I've been in weren't that much fun. I mean. Boxes and fridges. Not much to see there, huh?"
Circle frowned with sympathy. "Were you unhappy?"
"Well, the high point of my life hadn't come yet," Whippy Creamy replied enigmatically.
Circle raised a brow, then moved his gaze over to Subway Seat, looking for answers. The darker object nudged the cream container.
"Tell him what that is."
"Oh. Right. Well, you see... We're made for being objects, right? Not just biologically: we're items, specifically meant to be used by humans. So, whenever someone uses us as intended, we feel satisfaction."
"Mine, for example, comes from holding the passengers on their way through the city," chimed in Subway Seat.
"Exactly." Whippy Creamy pointed fingers at him. "And when it comes to me? I'm a short-lived object. My whole purpose is to deliver cream to a customer. The high point of my life would be when someone opened me and used the nutrition I can give." Melancholy appeared in his eyes, and he sighed. "It would be the end of me, too."
"You mean... you'd die?" Circle gawked at him.
"Yeah. But I'd die feeling satisfied." Whippy Creamy looked over to Subway Seat. "Someone could call this poetic, no?"
"Certainly," he said, "though it still feels sad, even to me."
"Nah, don't pity me," Whippy Creamy said, a bit embarrassed. "I'm fine, guys. I'm glad I was given the opportunity to be here. For a lil bit, I can experience life differently. With my limbs and stuff. And after the competition, if Airy places me back where I was at, I'll still have the chance to fulfill my natural purpose."
Circle had thought about Whippy's words a few times since then. About fulfilling your biological goal, getting a high, then dying. He came to the conclusion that it seemed eerily similar to what he himself had nearly been subjected to. After all, the circles' whole purpose was to compete and follow the Host's orders. When the ringmaster decided it was their time to go, they went.
Circle wondered, did the others feel content with being eliminated? Did they experience a high right before dying? Were they satisfied before being reintegrated with the void?
Was something wrong with him, if all he could feel in that moment was fear?
He hadn't told anybody about those thoughts, though. He preferred not to focus on them. Much like Whippy Creamy had said, now they had different opportunities, and they were somewhere they could live fully. And Circle would be lying if he said he didn't take that in handfuls. His past life shouldn't mean anything to him, or at least that's what he tried to shift his mentality into.
○ ○ ○
Moldy had told him about life on Earth.
Her life was the fullest out of them all. Circle, Subway and Whippy often gathered around her just to listen to her stories, even if most of the time she didn't want to talk.
But when he had spent more time with her, she opened up to Circle, just a little.
She omitted the parts about her personal life, her relationships and history, and focused on how living was in general. How waking up to work felt, her daily routine, the places she'd been in; Circle listened with awe as she described the details.
Earth was full of life, even more than the Plane. There were trees, larger than ten objects stacked on top of each other, with their branches entangling and rising towards the sun. The grass was moving, its blades swaying gently or lashed by the wind. There were little creatures living in the trees and in the grass. There were structures built from wood and metal, by others like Moldy, and they could stretch so high up into the sky that sometimes you couldn't even see their top. There were places where the objects met up to talk, play, eat, watch stories on a screen.
It seemed as impossible to Circle as this world had once been. But if he put his mind into it, he could just barely graze upon that faraway realm - envision the sights, hear the sounds... and venture there, if only in his imagination.
Heaven had come, in the shape of the colourful world around him and the forms in his mind.
○ ○ ○
Circle ended up staying in the competition for far longer than he had expected, but it was still not enough.
Airy had gone on a hiatus, making everyone think he was gone for good. Everyone came to the conclusion that they were destined to live on the Plane without the show... and live there for eternity. And oh, how badly Circle wished that would've been true.
Instead, the host had come back - and after a few challenges, each of which had set a growing alarm in Circle, he was deemed up for elimination.
Time was running too fast, and he couldn't process what exactly got him here. Where did he make a mistake, how did he lose the contest, and why, oh why was he doomed to be cut off from every person he'd connected with, from all of the safe and beautiful world around him?
But the moment came, and everything was suddenly ripped away.
Much like he'd been blinded by the Plane's colours before, his eyes now burned from the white.