Dr. Stephan Pflaum

The towers held a meeting to decide which way was up. Magenta insisted it was already up, but Yellow pointed out that Magenta was clearly leaning left. “Left isn’t a direction,” said Turquoise from somewhere in the middle. “It’s a political stance.” The Architect had designed them to stand side by side, but they preferred … Read more

He arrived in seven cities simultaneously, carrying the same briefcase in different colors. In Munich it was yellow, in Prague purple, in Vienna it had ceased to exist but still held all his notes. The Traveling Lecturer had mastered the art of being fractured—not broken, fractured. There’s a difference. “Today’s topic,” he announced to the … Read more

The Architect kept his unbuilt buildings underwater. Not drawings—the actual structures, made of glass that had learned to breathe. He visited them every Thursday by forgetting how to swim, sinking straight down through the blue until his feet touched the pink floor that wasn’t there. “This one was supposed to be a library,” he said … Read more

On Tuesday, the rectangles declared war on the trapezoids. No one remembers why—something about a yellow stripe that claimed it was actually horizontal when everyone could see it was vertical. The Color Commissioner tried to mediate, but she had been dead for three weeks and her authority was questionable. “I refuse to overlap,” announced a … Read more

The Architect painted his face with arguments. Orange for the vowels he swallowed in 1987, purple for the consonants that refused to leave his throat. When he spoke, the audience heard only the colors bleeding into one another. “Listen,” he said, but the word came out cyan. The auditorium was empty except for seventeen shadows … Read more

The Architect found it on a Tuesday morning, exactly where he hadn’t put it. A balcony had grown inside the building, surrounded by blue walls that insisted they were sky. “Architecturally impossible,” noted the Color Commissioner, though her measuring tape had started laughing halfway through the assessment. The Conductor tapped her baton against the railing. … Read more

The Jester arrived on a Thursday that had been cancelled three weeks prior. He carried his bells in a suitcase because they had complained about being worn. “I’ve come to deliver the punchline,” he announced to the Color Commissioner, who was measuring the temperature of purple. “But no one told a joke,” she replied. “Exactly,” … Read more

The yellow eye had been watching too long. That was the Conductor’s professional opinion, delivered while her baton traced the curve of suspicious architecture. “It blinked last Tuesday,” reported the Color Commissioner, consulting files that had reorganized themselves into magenta. “When it blinked, three walls exchanged positions.” The Architect stood before the keyhole, which had … Read more

The Architect had made a mistake during construction: he had placed seventeen rooms in the space meant for one. They had been trying to separate ever since, but geometry kept losing the paperwork. “This is highly irregular,” the Color Commissioner announced, though her words came out in fragments, each syllable spoken from a different corner … Read more

The Color Commissioner arrived on Tuesday to examine the floor’s rebellion. Someone had filed a complaint: the checkerboard pattern had started to breathe. “Unacceptable,” she noted, though her clipboard had dissolved into magenta three inspections ago. “Floors are contractually obligated to remain flat.” The Conductor stood at the room’s edge, waving her baton at waves … Read more