Modes

Weirdest thing just happened. I’m walking down near Fenway and the world goes sepia. You know what sepia is? It’s like the beginning of that Wizard of Oz movie playing over at the Bijou. Everything is kinda copper-colored. I swear, I’m not making this up, everything around me looks like that. I look up, and up in the sky, it says SEPIA in big backward letters.

Wait, I’m not done.

Next thing I know, everything’s almost normal, but kind of… brighter? Colors are more, I don’t know. Green is more green, blue is way more blue. And it takes me a minute but the writing in the sky, I can see it says HIGH CONTRAST now.

So, I duck into Janice’s bar. It's not called that, she just—never mind, not important. Even in the middle of the afternoon, you can usually find someone at Janice’s. But nobody’s acting like anything’s weird, and I don’t want folks to get the wrong idea about me so I keep my mouth shut about the colors and go back outside.

The colors turn again. And again. And again. Every time, some new words show up in the sky. CINEMA. SPORTS. DYNAMIC. So, I ask a couple people on Lansdowne real low-key if they’re seeing all this. Nope. Nobody.

An’ then it all goes back to normal. Weird, right? I gave myself a pinch just to make sure, but yeah, everything seems okay. Real.

Only now, up in the sky, in giant backward letters, it says SLEEP TIMER and a number’s countin’ down. Fifteen… fourteen… thirteen.

I wonder what that’s about.

What do you mean you can’t see it? It’s right there.

Four… three… two…