The Impossible Color
Paul held his breath as he watched the final micromirror move into the right place with movements more precise than an expert jeweler. They'd had many of these late nights in the optics lab but this seemed like the pinnacle of all their hard work.
Dr. Canales sat over a neuro-visual interface. Her brow was furrowed as she slowly maneuvered the mirror. Enzo was sitting next to her watching with anticipation.
"We've got a periodicity of 0.7 picoseconds," Enzo announced, trying to keep his voice steady. "M-cone isolation is holding at a high level."
Paul smiled. Tonight would finally be the night. Their plan had a certain simplicity to it: their laser was calibrated to precisely stimulate only the M-cone cells in their retinas, medium-wavelength sensitive. They'd bypass the usual overlapping of photoreceptors that gave one a large range of colors. If they succeeded, they could perceive a new color that could never exist in a natural environment.
"Our subject is ready," Sandra murmured.
Their subject was a simulated retina and cortical response which was built using an AI-powered digital twin to mirror a normal human brain. On her display, she saw the digital neurons spiking to respond with particular colors.
As the laser power ramped up, she read off what the digital twin detected.
"Green.... greenish.... teal... wait, here it is. Unknown color."
"That's it! We've done it!" Enzo exclaimed.
The data on their diagnostic overlay confirmed they had a distinctive activation pattern that matched no previously known color.
"It's Satori Blue, just as we predicted. An entirely unprecedented blue, an enlightened blue," Paul said with reverence.
Sandra, usually the stoic of the group, stepped back and placed a hand over her mouth.
"It's more powerful than I thought," Enzo said, voicing what the others felt. "This was just a scientific endeavor, for a while, but now I feel something more. It's like we've just begun to explore a more vibrant world."
Unfortunately, the university's dean did not share their elation.
"We can get the lawyers looped in for a meeting tomorrow to discuss patents," the dean droned on after they shared their results. "There has to be some way we can commercialize this, or at least pick up a few grants. Maybe a display technology? Or a therapeutic tool? Industry? I'm sure we'll have plenty of ideas to explore once the legal stuff is settled."
"Dean," Paul raised his voice. "With all due respect, this isn't just some kind of new screen technology. It's..."
"Satori Blue is a whole new feeling," Enzo continued. "It's art."
"It activates unique pathways in the brain, like a new type of abstract painting. To reduce it to a commercial product... it'd be like marketing human experience," Sandra explained.
After their meeting, the three researchers returned to the lab with an unspoken melancholy. They were proud of what they'd built. They felt something deeper they couldn't explain.
"Want a coffee?" Paul asked.
"Not sure it'll help," Enzo shrugged. "I just don't feel like this lawyer meeting is a good idea."
"I wish I could explain it... I'm usually so good with words. But I just can't meet those lawyers tomorrow. We can't hand our research off," Sandra noted.
"We don't need lawyers. We need freedom," Enzo agreed.
"Freedom to pursue this as art, not business."
"So we leave?"
"Autonomy," Sandra nodded. "To explore Satori Blue without being expected to profit."
"You're suggesting a resignation?" Paul returned with a tray of steaming mugs. "What about the equipment? We can't just take all of this with us."
"No, we can't take the physical items, but we can take away our knowledge," Paul conceded. "We know the blueprints. We build our own. Smaller. More focused."
Weeks later, they pooled their savings together and turned in their resignation letters. With their meager sum, they managed to rent a spacious yet dilapidated old city loft in the industrial neighborhood. The place had exposed brick and a thick layer of dust, a far cry from the pristine labs where they had just been working. There was a lot of opportunity here,but it required a lot of hands on work.
Little-by-little, they rebuilt their lab and instruments from secondhand auction sites and some strategic begging. The new instruments were designed for expressive manipulation. Instead of the high-powered laser that was state-of-the-art, they got a weak one that was just enough to give them nuance in its output. Enzo prototyped with new projector tools while Sandra did more work on how the brain processed this unique wavelength.
These attempts had more failures than successes. The technology often glitched or throw out problems that led to days of debugging. Still, they had moved beyond the role of scientists to something greater. They were artists now, trying to design their masterpiece.
Months blurred as they ran through a constant cycle of experimentation and refinement. Their city loft had transformed into a high-tech lab while still keeping its scrappiness. Wires snaked around the floor and up the walls. Custom projectors hung from the ceiling and pointed at mirrors located on all sides of the space.
Paul discovered by manipulating the laser power, they could go further than just a solid beam. Pulsating in different patterns led to the person to see flashes of illusions from the output. They could see through the flickering a ghostly image of the ocean, or of the sky, or something else that was on their mind.
Sandra helped using an off-the-shelf EEG scanner where they could refine the pulse modulation and frequency to draw out the highest neural response.
The night of their first exhibition felt electric. They had sent out invitations to the best artists and critics in the city to collect their thoughts. The invites were simple, inviting them to "a new way of seeing" without actually explaining what it was they would see. That seemed to be enough to entice a long line out the door.
Guests stepped up in small groups into a dimly lit space in a corner of the loft. Each placed a headset over their head, with the projectors calibrated to the individual retinas. Enzo manned the controls, carefully monitoring the biofeedback loops and adjusting the projection. Then, the Blue began.
Gasps ripped through the audience and their faces contorted in a variety of emotions: bewilderment, delight, and even wonder. Enzo could hear someone weeping silently. Others reached their hands out, moving slowly towards an intangible light in front of them.
As the next guests moved into the makeshift room to try out this exhibit, the three scientists-cum-artists looked at each other. They had taken a massive risk in leaving behind the familiar to pursue this strange frontier. But watching the reactions of the public seemed to validate their gamble. With a little bit of ingenuity, they had illuminated the depths of human perception.
You’d think for all the innovation across the world, there’d be more colors every so often. Turns out it is still possible to create colors that have never existed before.