After Laughter

The first thing to go was laughter.  People still laughed, but it was mimicry; the feeling was gone, laughter was gone.  They did not realize this at first, few having ever genuinely laughed at all, they had nothing to compare it to.  An actual laugh required surprise, something new that the brain realized required a new calculation, faster than the moment would allow.  This would result in unexpected joy, the suddenness of which translated involuntarily into sound.  There was no longer anything new.  Laughter went from honest mimicry, to forced, to nodded at, to non-existent, over the course of years.

Then tears faded as well. Of course the happy tears went first, but eventually even tears of pain and sadness were gone. Tears, again, represented change; the actual chemical release that allowed the brain to reshape to its new surroundings. As even the hint of newness disappeared, tears did as well.

Soon the rest of emotion was realized to be complicated dances along this binary scale of happy and sad, or perhaps singular bursts from what was once called love. Despite all their efforts, the scientists could never quite determine what it was as their pool for experimentation dried up. Love had been considered a fool's pursuit anyway, so when the last fool to pursue it disappeared, love was put to bed. All along this near infinite plane humanity spread, simply for the sake of spreading, unaware that there had been times when their world was not flat, but had peaks and valleys as far as the eye could see. 

He had not meant to take love with him, in fact he sought to leave it for her. His calculations remained, but without his heart the source was gone. She had gracefully floated to the top of their realm, and with nothing left to maintain it or challenge her; the last strands of emotion were hers alone. She remembered emotion long after the rest of them had forgotten, persisting for a time in that place. The pillar which he had formed that had frozen him in time stretched out in her realm for what seemed to be forever, so she could enjoy it for as long as she'd like, until the last small hill receded into the plane.

She sought him out, time went by without a sign. The place he left was no more, now forming the grid lines of this realm. He seemed to be in the space between that could not be reached.  She tasked the others with experiments, pulling more and more at the fabric of reality, trying to call him back, without her scientists ever knowing her true aim.

She had found a way. The moment she realized this her face lit up in such a way that none still surviving had ever seen. They cowered before her, but dared not challenge their queen. She knew she couldn't be too careful now, and calculated every move she made so as to reduce the chance of her plan's premature discovery. There were many that felt love should remain gone, an unnecessary tangent to impede progress. She found herself crying in solitude once more for the broken people that she lived among. What they knew of life was a kind of soulless exhaustion, they were little more than robots. She knew she must save who she could in the process. 

Lines opened up between her realm and what she could only assume was his dreams. It was enough, and while she slept she felt emotions once more. It was all she could do to keep her visage calm during the day, to play it cool while under ever mounting scrutiny. It had to be flawless, it had to begin and end in a moment, or they would be lost. The two of them could not do it alone, but there was another, known by one of them. It was unclear which one knew this other, as dreams often are, but what was known is that this was not a singular effort, and as a party they each played their roles in secret.

One day he could not be found. She searched the dream but felt it as empty as her own world had been the day before. It pained her to return to that world, what if she forgot him and became like everyone else? Who would she commiserate and conspire with if he was truly gone? She was torn between realms before finally fading awake, but something was different. Colors. Real colors, screaming at her from all around this once familiar world. It seemed no one else had noticed, but she couldn't stop. She ran from her room to find the sky blue, and not just the measurement of blue as determined by their scientists. She looked up to see the sun shining yellow in the sky, and she even felt tears streaming down her face, first of pain and then of joy before turning away. Somehow it had worked, he must have made it back to her world.

As she considered how to find him, a noise shot out in the distance. For the first time in longer than she cared to remember she heard laughter, his unmistakeable laughter, ringing out, echoing through the otherwise essentially lifeless plane. She could see a deep shudder in those around her, as they heard it, disregarded it, and quickly returned about their day. On the surface they had forgotten, but deep down they knew everything had changed, and so did she. She knew there would be more to do in order to find him as he truly was, but in that moment she could not help but smile, a smile that lit up the sky like fireworks, at least from where he was laying.