Colour for sale

In a dystopian future, colour will be sold... and fought over. It will become a new commodity. It will be exchanged on the black market, and sold for incredible sums of money that only the super-rich can afford.

Like fine wine, cuisine and art... colour will rule them all.

Imagine a world without colour. The only 'free' colours (determined by the state) will be black, white and grey (of which there will only be 3 shades). You will look up to the sky and see grey no.1. The sun is white. Our skies have been polluted beyond repair, which has left a colourless and unnatural tint to our landscape.

The only vibrant light that is available is artificial. So with that has come a cost. Therefore, inevitably... colour has suffered because no one agrees on how it can be 'fairly' used and distributed. So over time, colour has become a product.

You have to buy it to enjoy it.

You wake up in the morning, under your grey no.2 bed sheet. You go downstairs to have a black coffee (at least that's the same). You prepare yourself some cornflakes, again in grey no.2. You go for the orange juice... but it's a pale shade of grey. You've lost your appetite again.

Depression is at an all time high, with suicide rates escalating every day. People it seems, cannot live without colour. It can boost your mood and immune system. It can make you happy or sad. You go to the supermarket to buy a pallet of strawberries (in grey no.3). Everything is black, white or a shade of grey... and you are going crazy.

Advertising is your only escape. You will watch your television, waiting for an advert to come on for 'yellow', where the advertisers will flash up an image of yellow for 2 seconds “this canvas of yellow, yours for just £2,999 per month...”

Then it's gone.

For a moment you wonder what it would be like to live in a world with colour. You imagine how vibrant and exciting it must be. You close your eyes and remember the yellow. You hang onto that memory for just a moment...

...before it fades away to a pale shade of grey.