05-17-23
One day at home, the world around me was all in greyscale. There was no color anywhere at all. Light from the windows was there, but it would not be exactly as bright as it should be. It wasn't dark, but it wasn't as intense as expected. When I looked outside the south window in my living room, the entire neighborhood looked the same. The grass, trees and homes devoid of all their color. Looking up at the sky, I saw it was a light shade of grey. There were no clouds to be seen, as I could see the sun shining its rays across the land. There were also no signs of fauna in the slightest outside. Not even people. No cars driving on the road. Even the plant life seemed dead as they would not move due to the lack of wind. I got the feeling that to step outside our home meant to disappear into oblivion. I got the feeling all the other homes were empty.
I recall my youngest brother and my sister being with me. We were all just trying to get by. We had little to nothing to do. We couldn't leave. It's not that the doors were impossible to move or anything. Rather, we didn't want to disappear. I spent time in the living room looking out the window, or pacing to the kitchen and back, or sitting at our table. My sister was in her room for most of the time, as well as my brother in his. They weren't doing much of anything in their rooms either. Just existing or sleeping to pass the time. Sometimes they came out to eat something heated in the microwave, though eating and drinking were not necessary to exist anymore.
Eventually, my other brother was there. He just appeared suddenly. He told me to go outside, knowing I would disappear if I did. I brought this up and he said I would just be joining everyone else in another place. To tempt me further, he said the way he got here was via a sort of space-time travel that can take you/your soul to any place at any point in all time. I initially refused, as I still didn't want to disappear. At some point he disappeared as suddenly as he appeared. I must have spent an extremely long time at home, just passing the days away day after day. Occasionally someone would show up and tempt me to go outside and disappear again. They sometimes appeared in a flash of light. One day I noticed I hadn't seen my youngest brother or my sister in a very long time, and I knew they had gone outside. At that realization I went outside myself. I'm not sure why, I just did.
Suddenly, I was in some interior space and met with all my family members welcoming me. There was a sense that I no longer existed, yet I could clearly still experience stuff. This was confusing. I was given a small tour of the few rooms the space had. I still had the feeling none of us were alive anymore, not that what existence I clung to back home was exactly living. Then I was shown how spacetime travel worked. I could go anywhere I wanted and was even encouraged. I had to log where I went and what local time I returned, but they weren't strict about it in the slightest. Just a way for others to find interesting places I suppose. I thought about visiting the ancient eras with dinosaurs, or a time on earth in the far distant future when the star Betelgeuse went supernova and bathed the world in its light. I felt excited and noted that was the first emotion I'd felt this entire time ever since the world went black and white. Before I had a chance to actually go through time, though, I woke up.