My past is mine

In Short

This haunting work of science fiction follows Eddie Tomlinson, a commercial artist who wakes up one day to find that "color" has vanished from the world—not just from his sight, but from dictionaries, literature, and the collective consciousness of humanity. When he encounters a stranger on a train who shares a similar, inexplicable loss of an essential human capability called "povodil," the two men realize their shared past and their current reality are fundamentally altered. It is a profound meditation on how we define truth and the terrifying possibility that our reality is merely a collective, impermanent hallucination.

The Story

The narrative begins with Eddie Tomlinson sitting on a train, consumed by a bleak, resigned despair. He meets a stranger whose face holds a flicker of familiarity, sparking a tentative hope that he is not alone in his affliction. For months, Eddie has lived in a world stripped of color; he recounts to the stranger how, after a rainy night spent watching the film Blood and Sand, he emerged to find the world drained of its vibrancy. The red of a cape, the blue of the sky, and the golden sand of the bullring had all been reduced to shades of grey. Initially, he feared for his sanity, but his confusion turned to existential dread when he realized that the very concept of "color" had been erased from language and reference materials.

Psychiatrists dismissed his experience as a childhood-rooted emotional projection, a "syndrome" they claimed he had outgrown. Eddie, however, remains unconvinced. He shares his story with the stranger, hoping for validation. The stranger listens intently and reveals that he, too, has suffered a catastrophic loss: the disappearance of something called "povodil," a multi-sensory and intellectual quality that once defined his world. He explains that "povodil" was not merely a sensation but a fundamental component of reasoning and perception. Like color, it has vanished from the global lexicon, leaving the world feeling like an alien planet to those who remember it.

The encounter deepens as the two men attempt to identify one another. They realize they were acquaintances at the University of Virginia decades earlier. The stranger, Jerry Conlan, recalls that Eddie was once a brilliant researcher involved in the study of "povodil." The irony is total: Eddie, the man who once pioneered the understanding of this lost concept, now has no memory of it, just as Jerry has no memory of the stage design and lighting work he once performed. The story concludes with a chilling realization. As they discuss their pasts, they discover that they have not only lost their specific, unique senses—color and povodil—but also the very knowledge and vocabulary that once sustained their professional and intellectual identities. They are left as hollowed-out versions of their former selves, adrift in a world that has rewritten its own history to exclude the very things that once gave their lives depth and meaning.

How It Unfolds

The silent grayness Eddie Tomlinson travels through the countryside, mourning the loss of color in his life. He encounters a stranger who seems to carry the same heavy burden of a vanished reality.

The confession Driven by a desperate need for connection, Eddie recounts the night he discovered the world had lost its color. He describes the confusion of searching for the term in a dictionary and finding it entirely absent from the human record.

The shared displacement The stranger reveals his own loss of "povodil," a complex, sensory-based concept that once anchored his world. The two men bond over the isolation of living in a reality that has forgotten the things they still hold in their memories.

The reveal of the past The stranger identifies himself as Jerry Conlan, an old acquaintance from the University of Virginia. He shocks Eddie by describing the research Eddie once conducted on the very concept that has now been erased from his mind.

The final erasure The men attempt to reconstruct their past professional lives, only to find that their former expertise has been completely wiped away. They are left as strangers in a world that has discarded the essential components of their past, leaving them unable to even conceptualize what they have lost.

The People

Eddie Tomlinson is a man defined by a phantom limb of the mind. As a commercial artist, his professional life was built on color; his loss is not just an aesthetic one, but an identity-shattering tragedy. He seeks logic and proof, clinging to the hope that a fellow sufferer will confirm his sanity, yet he ends up paralyzed by the realization that his own past research is now a closed book to him.

Jerry Conlan acts as the mirror to Eddie’s experience. He arrives as a stranger, but through the shared trauma of loss—in his case, the indefinable "povodil"—he becomes the only person who can confirm that the world has indeed shifted. He is more articulate about the nature of his loss, recognizing that it was not just a sensory experience but a way of reasoning. By the end, he is left in a state of quiet bewilderment, stripped of the career and creative passions that once defined his interaction with the world. Both men are tragic figures who possess the "memory" of a richer, more complex reality that the rest of the world has decided never existed.

In Its Own Voice

"Take one tiny memory out of a man's life--and the entire universe may turn topsy turvy."

This opening observation sets the stage for the story’s exploration of how internal perception dictates the stability of the external world.

"It happened a little over six months ago on a rainy spring night."

Eddie marks the exact moment his world transitioned from vibrant reality to a colorless, mechanical existence.

"So you're Jerry Conlan... And what do you do these days? Still stage design and lighting? Or is it something else?"

Eddie asks this, unaware that the very concepts of stage design and lighting have been erased from Jerry's understanding of the world.

What It's Really About

The book explores the fragility of objective truth. It argues that reality is not an immutable constant, but a consensus held together by human language, memory, and perception. When the "vocabulary" of the world changes—when the concepts of color or povodil are simply excised—the world itself changes to match. It asks: if the entire world forgets something, does it still exist? The narrative suggests that identity is tied to the things we perceive; when those perceptions are removed, we are not just losing a sense, but becoming different people entirely. It is a cautionary tale about the instability of the human condition and the terrifying ease with which the foundations of our lives can be swept away.

Why Read It Today

Readers who enjoy mid-century psychological fiction and "what-if" science fiction will find this a fascinating, brief, and unsettling read. It reads with the crisp, efficient pacing of a classic magazine story, packing a heavy existential punch into a very small footprint. The prose is clean and unadorned, reflecting the gray, stripped-down world the protagonist inhabits.

The primary difficulty a modern reader might face is the period-specific dialogue and the slightly dated, psychoanalytic framing of the characters' trauma, which feels very much of its 1954 origin. However, these elements actually serve the story well, grounding the surreal premise in the clinical, slightly detached tone of the post-war era. You will likely feel a lingering sense of unease after closing the book; it forces you to look at the world around you and wonder what, exactly, is holding your own reality in place. It is a perfect choice for anyone who likes stories that start with a small, intimate question and expand into a vast, terrifying realization about the nature of human existence. It stays with you because it targets the one thing we all fear: the idea that our own personal history might be nothing more than a fiction we tell ourselves to stay sane.