Colours // Poofless AU

Chapter 25

Sooooooo... aye! Sorry for not updating and such. School has been torture recently, so I haven't had time to write. But I am now on Spring Break, so I will try and have some chapters for all of you. Then again, my family and I will be traveling to Canada in the next few days, so maybe I won't update as much as I'd like to.

Also, my birthday was on March fifth, which makes me thirteen! That means that this account has also turned two years old, which is insane. I loved every moment on here, even though I have been inactive for a while because of school. 

Anyway, enjoy and I hope you have a wonderful day! < 3

Dan's POV

"Howell, can you read something for me real quick?" a voice from behind my door asks. I stand up from my chair and walk over to the door, opening it to see Dr. Nucciarone. His face looks as if he just saw a ghost walk straight through my room. I raise an eyebrow at him, concerned as to what is about to come out of his mouth.

He hands me two stacks of papers that are stapled together with three staples. At the top of the first page in bold letters read "The Count". I flip through the various pages to see that there are numerous upon numerous statistics and names of random places around America. I spot one number from Fort Collins, Colorado that is higher than a three hundred percent increase. On what, I can't tell.

I close the stacks and hold it to my chest. "What is this all for?" I question, getting slightly worried.

"We... we may have falsely calculated what we once thought was true." He states this hesitantly, as if any wrong word could cause total mayhem and destruction. It's almost as if there's a bomb ready to explode. He grabs at his lab coat in a tense way. I can just see the stress emitting out of him. 

"Uh, how big of a mistake?" I ask. He just hands me the other packet he had in his hands.

"This one is the original statistics for the amount of Colours in America. We just did the scan in January. The other one is the stats for the cautious scan that we do every year. This one took place in March, but we finally got the papers back today. Everyone in America usually uses the machine from Rainbow Side, which is in Washington State, but this time the council had decided to use the one from Chicago, Illinois. Anyways, the statistics seem to have... skyrocketed. Never before have these been this high.

"This was the first time anyone has used this one. It was created five years ago in two thousand eleven, but it has gotten some upgrades throughout the years. Washington's has been the same for so long. It was created in nineteen eighty-three, so you can imagine the type of tech it has inside. Chicago has so many more items that the other never had, so we have had a wrong count for so long. Please compare the two data stacks and return the results to me as soon as possible. This is a huge deal."

Dr. Nucciarone turns around quickly and walks out, making sure to shut the door on the way out. I stand there in shock. No way we could have been wrong all this time. Could we actually have one million Colours right now? Or three million? Or even more? We have always thought that there were only about two hundred thousand Colours in the whole world. If America has been wrong, could the entire world be wrong too?

I swiftly stroll over to my desk and flick on my lamp. Because it's one of those flexible lamps, I grab it and aim it toward the packets. I glance over to my jar of pencils and pens and snatch one of each. The pencil is so light that I start toying with it in my left hand. With two giant packets, I should just look at the original one from January. Besides, I am used to Rainbow Side's machine's data.

I flip open the first page and skim the page of information. It's the normal count with a few extra leaps in numbers in a few populated areas. But then again, this is just the overview of the extremely old machine. With so many pages left, they could explain more about the increases and drops.