The sky was the color of a dead laptop display, silver-gray and full of rain.
Which is called wearing your influences on your sleeve, and also clues the reader in that you're going to operate in a meta-ironic mode. Or something like that. Which made me think...
The opening line of a Giles story:
The skylight above the library was the color of a palimpsest, scoured to dead illegibility.
Write this story. You may feel free to improve the cadence of this sentence, but please retain its core reference.
