Daniel darted his eyes around, trying to soak up the last of his current vision. It's hard to try to remember something when you don't know what you'll miss yet, he thought. The excitement was palpable. Despite the orderly and contained way the children held themselves, twitches of anticipation slipped through. They were the select few. He had read old texts that included color as a descriptor, but it didn't have much impact. How could the word "blue" mean anything if he hadn't seen it? All he knew was that's what the sky was. 

The line was long; it seemed even longer with the spacing between each child. It was customary in polite adult life not to stand close, but this was a social rule children usually didn't follow; the distance was from unfamiliarity. No one knew each other. Kids were randomly chosen from across the country. Out of the few chosen, even fewer showed up. Parents were wary of letting their kids be altered permanently and seeing the world differently than themselves. The news played on that fear, peddling stories of children being blinded by the operation. Or worse yet, driven insane by the overload of color. 

Daniel's parents were not concerned with these things. His dad always sighed at these talking points and muttered, "No, it's the adults that can't handle the color change. That's why they do on the still-developing minds of children," and then would shut off the TV. As for the blindness, Daniel had no second thoughts about it. If he ended up blind, so be it. He had somewhat romanticized the idea. One of his favorite books that he had come across in researching color was A Wrinkle In Time, and it featured an alien named Aunt Beast who was blind and, when explained sight by one of the children, felt no envy; she only commented on how limiting it sounded. To judge something without knowing it. So, in Daniels's mind, the worst that could happen was that he would have to experience the world like her in earnest. He wondered how Aunt Beast would feel about expanding one's sight. Not that it would stop him from going through it, but nonetheless, he wondered.

Before he knew it, he had reached the front of the line. His vision was now void of the girl's ponytail he had been staring at for the past few hours. Instead, he now was looking at a large glass and steel door. There was no handle on the outside. It was only to be swung open from the inside. And in just a few moments, it did just that.

A woman looked down at a clipboard and back up at him. 

"Daniel Polka?"

Daniel nodded, and she moved to the side and gestured him in. It was a long hallway, stinking of disinfectant. Usually, Daniel would plug his nose in disgust, but now, it welcomed confirmation that the facility was clean.

As the woman guided him down the hall, she gave a memorized speech about what would happen to him. He paid no attention, as he had already read up on it at his parents' request. His mother's voice reverberated in his head instead of the nurse's spiel.

"Honey, we want it to be your choice, but an educated one." 

Finally, they arrived at his room, where the operation would occur. He lay down on the table and waited for the doctor to come. The woman, on strict instruction to not leave him alone, stood in the corner. Like the hallway, the room was empty except for medical equipment and a poster listing all the different colors that Daniel only recognized by name. He could not wait until he knew beyond that.

A syringe was slipped into his arm in no time, and he experienced what he hoped to be the last grey look of his eyelids. 

He launched awake and opened his eyes without ceremony, the same way he did every morning. He screamed. The doctor slumped in the corner and jumped.

 "Oh great! You're awake!" they said.

Daniel had no response.

"Being speechless is perfectly normal. Let's walk you through the colors, and then I'll send you on your way to see it all!"

After a quick lesson on the colors, they briskly walked him down the rest of the hallway to a door. There were many other kids to service.

As he walked out into the sun, he saw white; he was well acquainted with this one. But he heard his parents calling his name and followed that. In their arms, his eyes began to readjust- psychedelic saturation emerged from the known textures of his parents. He wept as he exclaimed:

"Mom, you have blue eyes!"