Lost gray

His cloths were the same, but he appeared out of place. He blended in with the people who once had him in a cage, exploiting his differences. They acknowledged him as Gray. Some days he appeared in charge of his life and other days he felt helpless. Gray longed for the day he would be reunited with his home and people who looked like him.

For years Gray held on to the memories of home since crash-landing on planet Earth. With every piece of freedom he received, the image of home grew faint. When he looked in the mirror, he didn’t recognize home anymore. Every time a piece of himself seeped through his mask, his attention diverted, swept away from the truth.

His mother told him many stories of a land that existed, filled with mental diseases called Earth. A thirst that could never be satisfied ran through the veins of people there like blood. There breathed greed, power, vanity, currency, and jealously. She never told him where the cure for these diseases rested. She only said, “If one day you find yourself on this land and become infected by their diseases, lose yourself. Only then will you have the strength to use the cure when you find it.”

They gave him diseases every day and told Gray it contained medicine. His body rejected them at first but many years took its toll. Before Gray realized it, he had the diseases.

One day while looking in the mirror, Gray discovered something familiar underneath the mask. He decided not to take his medicine. The more he stopped taking the medicine, Gray started to recognize his true reflection. He burned the mask. The cure for these diseases stared back at him. He studied himself and fell in love. He noticed traces of his home when he looked in the mirror again.

Gray then looked around his home on Earth. They had him fooled, for Gray remained still in that cage. Using the bars from his cage, Gray built the skeleton of a ship. He used the technology they used to enslave themselves as the engine. He used the material used for cloths and bed-sheets to keep everything in place, and he used their medicine to fuel it.

They called Gray all types of names as he prepared for flight, but he believed he should follow what was best for him when they called him crazy. They offered him more of their medicine, but now he’d become aware. He started his freedom vessel determined to make it home.

It lifted, it soared, and they screamed and roared.

The last words they heard Gray say, before he disappeared in the clouds of the night and the brightness of the moonlight, were,

“Keep your diseases! You’re the only species I know that loves being sick. Maybe you need to go home.”

Then he vanished with his words raining down on the people of earth. Many tried to follow, but many remained lost in their ignorance...