Doomsday Diary: The Great Loss

Colour was the first thing to go. No one knew how or why; an uneasy rumble across the world that hinted at the storm to come. Patients from Singapore to St Lucia complaining that everything looked drab and dull, washed out like a pre-technicolour movie. An increase in accidents occurred as drivers couldn’t see green or red, engineers couldn’t identify warning lights. A whole society built on universal colours for safety suddenly sucked out of Oz and left blinking in a world gone grey.

It was only the beginning.

With the inevitability of an avalanche, The Great Loss affected every person on the planet in the space of a year. Society collapsed and re-formed around four societies: Fades lost the ability to see colour, Hushed could hear nothing above a whisper, Teeth lost the ability to taste anything sweet and Noses could not smell decay were they stood blindfolded in a room full of rotting corpses.

Everyone suffered at least one sense deficiency without exception, spread relatively evenly throughout the population. It caused a societal shift unlike anything in living memory, and the world lived under the constant shadow of that final frontier, the fifth sense: touch. What would happen when humanity lost its ability to feel the warmth of an embrace?

Peggy

For some the change happened overnight, an acute loss with no time to prepare for when one might see their last blue sky or taste their favourite cake. For Peggy it was gradual, like watching rain dilute the once bright pigment from a street painter’s chalk. She knew that when the colour disappeared from the rubies nestled in her heart-shaped locket she’d forever be one of the Faded. As far as sense deficiencies went, she thought she’d gotten lucky. Sure, the dresses that set off her eyes and the jewellery that complemented her skin tone wouldn’t be as important, but she could still live a relatively normal life. Shouting bye to her housemate she strolled to the market, her mind full of the video application she’d submitted the previous evening to the only school for singing left in the country. So lucky, she thought, heading for the clothes section and seeing a Hushed boy wandering through the aisle looking lost. Announcements over the tannoy speakers weren’t much help to him anymore. Shaking her head in sympathy she turned to the clothes, and froze. It had happened.

Felix

Felix watched the customer service man’s mouth move with intense concentration, frustrated that the man hadn’t seen the small badge that marked him as Hushed, and too embarrassed to ask him to start again in a whisper. That grey badge in the old signal that teachers used to silence children, finger over mouth, occasioned more pity than he could usually stomach, but on shopping day it was all but impossible to function without it. Until he became Hushed, before the world became quiet, he had never realised how much people talked past each other. The very way he used to mumble noncommittally to his Mother’s queries and toss replies over his shoulder as he ran out of the door was now his biggest handicap. Realising the man had stopped speaking he smiled and walked away, gritting his teeth twenty minutes later wandering through what appeared to be the women’s clothing section and wondering why they couldn’t just put signs up instead of still using the tannoy speaker system. Seeing a girl with long, golden rose-kissed hair down the aisle he braced for embarrassment and went to ask for help, again.

Lydia

Noses had the best deal out of the Great Loss, they said. No chance to smell decay anymore, lucky you, they said. Work the smelliest, foulest jobs and not even gag like the old days! We must all do our bit for the new society, they said. Lydia fumed, storming down the stairs from the career office to the market, wielding her basket like a weapon as she strode to the food aisle. The unbearable irony of her situation came crashing home every shopping day when Lydia - former sommelier and current sewage worker - stopped at the discount food section and could be taking home sour milk, rotting eggs and who knew what else because her lucky situation meant she couldn’t afford anything else and could no longer tell the off from the merely awful. It’s those damn Fades, she thought, shoving things into her basket. Had they not come out on top after the Unrest and decided to redraw the lines of society with them at the top, she could still be living her old life. So what if nearly half the world couldn’t identify wine from water anymore! Brushing angry tears from her cheeks, she turned and saw a young man waving to her from the end of the aisle supporting a girl who was pale with shock, her eyes darting around like a trapped animal. Just what I need, she thought, someone else to remind her how far she’d fallen. Glancing at the exit longingly, she stalked towards the odd pair.

Em

Em eyed his creations on their presentation stands with a small smile, ignoring the mournful ache in his chest. It was enough, he told himself forcefully. It was enough that he still had his dream job, still could make the perfect tiers and swirls, still could work with buttercream and syrup, tease perfection from icing, know the mysteries of caramel and coconut. It was enough to be around them. The fact he could no longer taste any of it didn’t matter. It didn’t. After the Unrest, he hadn’t left the house in weeks, convinced that he would never be able to make anything without the ability to check the taste. He’d had nightmares of ending up in an office job with no access to a kitchen at all. Who would hire a pastry chef who couldn’t quality check his own work? Thanks to a particularly broad-minded mentor from his culinary school he had found himself smuggled into an out of the way market bakery and told in no uncertain terms to work it out. And against all the noise and propaganda from the New Society telling people to move on to their new designations, he had. The language of texture, colour and aroma were not lost to him at least. But that ache in his chest would not go away. Sighing, he looked up and started to find the strangest group of people stood in front of his counter: a Nose - no one could mistake those grey overalls and muddy complexion - and a pale Hushed boy with a worried frown supported between them a beautiful girl garbed in the type of tailored clothes that marked her as Faded. Wondering what on earth could have brought these three together when cross-society interactions were severely frowned upon, he drew breath to whisper.

Four

Lydia barked a command that cut Em off before he’d started the ritual greeting, hurrying them through the employee door into a small, beige breakroom with just enough space for a wobbly table and four stools. After settling Peggy on a chair gently, Felix turned to the others and spoke in a low, rich voice: “I am Hushed, and I am Lost.”

Em, cautiously eyeing the Faded girl, looked up in surprise at his smooth voice, but replied softly: “I am Teeth and I am Lost.”

They both looked to Lydia who banged her basket onto the table before glaring back at them, arms crossed. “My name is Lydia and I don’t give a damn about your-“

“It’s all grey.”

They all turned to Peggy who was looking around the room in surprise, as if seeing the people around her for the first time. “I am Faded, and I am Lost as of…ten minutes ago?” She picked up a heart-shaped locket encrusted with rubies, looking for a scarlet twinkle that was forever lost to her sight.

"Are you alright?” Felix asked quietly in that caramel voice. “That must have been quite a shock.” Peggy’s eyes widened at his voice and darted to the badge on his chest.

“How do you have a voice so…like that?” Peggy asked, blushing but no less demanding. “All Hushed have weak, reedy voices which is why they can’t do any public speaking roles.”

Lydia snorted loudly from the wall she leaned against, striding to the table and slumping onto the last stool.

“And that, boys, is why no one wants to be friends with a Faded. Believe anything the New Society tells them, they will. What I want to know is how in the five senses a Teeth got a job as a pastry chef?”

Em shifted uncomfortably in his chair, eyeing the door to the market floor as if ready to make a break for it. “I was in culinary school before the Loss.” He shrugged self-consciously. “I guess I was good enough before that I can get by undercover now.” Darting a worried glance at Peggy he shifted again. “You won’t…uh, tell anyone will you? I’ll give you a week’s worth of Emerald cakes if you promise not to tell anyone.”

“Emerald cakes!” Peggy exclaimed loudly. “But they’re the best in the entire county! You make them?! How?”

Em hunched his shoulders as Peggy continued to pepper him with questions.

“What I’d like to know” said Felix quietly, stopping Peggy’s flow point blank as he, of course, couldn’t hear it. “Is how the winner of the world sommelier awards three years running ends up as a sewage worker.”

For the first time since he’d hailed her over to help support Peggy, Lydia’s scowl disappeared in pure shock, followed such an expression of pain and loss that Felix hurriedly continued.

“My family run…ran…a wine trading stall before the Unrest.” He explained, “I worked the stall, bargaining with wholesalers for the best reviewed wines. Not a day went by without your name coming up. I even heard you speak once, it was beautiful.” He handled each word so carefully, like a gift given with both hands, that there seemed to be a hollowness in the air once he’d stopped speaking.

Looking thoroughly stunned, Peggy started to speak in a normal voice then, glancing at Felix, whispered instead. “It seems I might have, um, missed a few things being near-Faded. This seems like a chance to change that.” She paused, then raised her chin with a defiant expression and said:

“I’m Peggy.”

The pastry chef who couldn’t taste looked at her for a long moment before sitting up straight:

“I’m Emerald - Em for short.”

The Hushed boy with the remarkable voice smiled slightly:

“I’m Felix.”

They all looked to the Nose slouched on her stool, shaking her head and laughing quietly:

“Ah well, what’s a few more broken rules. I’m Lydia Mosshaven and it’s a pleasure to meet you all.”