What does light look like to those who have lived their whole life in the darkness?

What does real, true color mean, to those who cannot even imagine it?

Real color. Real light.

How can a worker know that all that surrounds them is but a faded memory, a mockery of what they have lost?

It is but an idea, preserved through the Long Dark, as all else faded.

Food. Drink. Fun. Levels. Life…

A multitude of a billion choices available at one's fingertips.

All gone. All forgotten.

Light and color, and an Infinite Nexus of plenty for the blessed, the faithful Children of the Crystal. An Infinite Nexus they would never see, smell, touch or enjoy.

From Long Dark to Waiting Dark, and finally, one day, to the Eternal Everlasting Light of the Crystal to which all souls return, to be one with the Almighty from which all come from.

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But if all come from the Crystal, and to the Crystal they return, where was the choice in their sin?

With what right were the many born blessed and the few born guilty? With what right are they shackled with the sins of their ancestors? People whose names and sins have long, long ago been forgotten?

The man, who should have been a boy, floated in light.

The body was easily repaired and soothed, and it quickly forgot the trauma it had been subjected to.

The mind was much less so easily fixed.

And to touch the soul was not permitted.

In truth, there was very little It could do for him.

Or the countless, countless others now floating in the light.

Gains were heavily monitored, and every attribute and skill granted had to be earned and justified.

Some more than others. And of those, there was a tiny, tiny subset that always drew the heaviest of scrutiny…

But such was It’s need.

And such was Nar’s request.

********

Nar came to with the feeling of a far-off sadness.

The memory of it formed a lump in his throat. A tightening of his heart.

But that memory faded as Nar fully came to.

For a long while, he stared at the dimly lit ceiling above him.

Along the wall, at regular intervals, squares of light, aimed upwards, provided a soft, very gentle, yellow light.

In the gloom, in the cozy warm, he could hear the others.

Soft breaths, a touch of a snore. They all slept. Safe.

Safe.

It was the first time in a very long while that Nar had felt like that.

Not yet.

His eyelids grew heavy again, as heavy as his immobilized body, and Nar drifted off once more.