"Much of our knowledge revolves around ourselves as if we are the most important thing in the universe." - Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems

In our country, they have wiped away identification. They say it is to invoke unity between the population, to achieve a peace that a diverse society could never manage. We all look alike. Somehow, they've managed to create a country with people who have a white, fair complexion, blue eyes, button nose, blonde hair, and are 5'4"-6'1".

I am the outcast. I have green eyes.

My family has tried to hide it. We all had an Education Course to complete at home to make us a proper citizen, and I never was permitted to go to the market or any social event.

"Joan can't make it to so-and-so's wedding, she's terribly sorry she missed it," my mother or father would say, blaming a cold, or an upcoming test. Both of them had blue eyes, cerulean blue eyes. There was a certain color range for blue eyes. You could have light blue, sky blue, cerulean blue, or baby blue but any other shade -- teal, blue-green, blue-gray -- was unacceptable and punishable by execution.

My family risked their lives to save mine. They would cover for me, and meticulously lie in order to protect me. 

They even lied to me.

"Oh, Joan, dear, you have the most wonderful eyes!" my father would say when I was younger, pulling me up in his lap to read a book mandated by the government for all children to read at the age of two.

"I like yours, Papa," I said to him. "They look like outside." Like the color of the skies, where the birds would fly, free from regulations. Where little boys and girls would laugh and whoop, playing games until dark, where fireflies would come out and touch the darkness. Where the rain falls, and lightning strikes. It looked like a faraway place. 

"Outside is dangerous, dear," he would tell me, reminding me of the stories about sailors being pulled under the waves never heard from again. "Little girls like you, boop! They go outside, and they never are seen again." He would laugh and hug me tight, trying to thwart my trembles. "Mother and Papa won't let that happen, darling Joan."

At the age of seventeen, I still have not been outside. I have never felt sunlight warm my skin, or a breeze flitter through my hair.

Opening the curtains when I was in the room was much too dangerous. Houses were scarcely twenty feet away, and each neighborhood had twelve houses in it, containing at least two children.

I had an older brother named Lionel. He had blue eyes, like the rest of my family. Like the rest of the world. He was three years older than me and teased me relentlessly about being able to go outside and kick a ball in the street.

I didn't know what a street was. I didn't even know how to kick a ball. Playing was prohibited inside the house.

"I don't have many breakables," my mother would say, "but I'd like to keep what I have."

The only game I ever played was chess, the game our country advised parents to teach children. I had to be careful though, if I played too well, I might be entered in a championship.

I also had to be careful whenever I went online. My family was always paranoid that an electronic scanner would scan my facial features and send them back to a governmental database for analysis. 

For Christmas, my parents had made a crude blue-tinted contact out of hydrogel. I had to wear the special colored contacts when I used anything that glowed or emitted light. When anyone came over for a holiday or for a meeting, the contacts were in. Not to mention that the relatives were more than surprised to "finally get to meet you, Joan!"

My family, however, never informed me to put in my colored contacts on the day of May 24th. The day of the international search.

The day the government realized I had green eyes.