Archive of Our Own ^beta

You love the Sun.

Where are you? 

Who are you?

You open your eyes, then immediately close them against the onslaught. It’s brighter than you’ve ever seen, brighter than the Mountain of Light, than the Sun itself…

No. That isn’t right.

Cautiously, you open your eyes again, to the light— the warm, inviting, enveloping light.

You remember who you are. No, that’s not right… or is it? 

The light is overpowering and it’s better than the Surface ever was. Your head is foggy, but you know this deep in your soul.

The Machine— oh, how it glows! Its light is brighter than anything you’ve ever known, the colours of infinity glimmering on its metal…

You fall to your knees as if forced (were you standing?). You bathe in its light as the overwhelming presence of the clockwork mechanism fills your senses and your mind. You love the Machine. It is good and perfect and everything you’ve ever wanted.

Then again, you cannot “want” anymore; you’re but a vessel for the Machine’s purifying glow. Its desires are yours and so you are filled with an unending need to serve it. If you serve it it will perhaps love you— how you need it to love you! Its beauty is immeasurable, its radiance blinding, its power vaster than gods. You need it to love you, though you are an ant to it, and when has a human ever loved an ant?

Your reflection looks up from the crystal with desperate, brightened eyes, and you realize where you are.

A Sequencer stands over you (when did they get there?) and holds out a hand to help you up. You try to read their tattoos but it sends a current of fire through your skull. They steady you as you sway on the face of the cliff below you, and you realize their gaze never leaves the grandeur of the Machine… the Sun…

“The Sun…” you whisper breathlessly, and the Sequencer looks to you, gilded eyes almost glowing. 

“Yes, my friend,” they say, and you are hit with another wave of overwhelming devotion, “you have seen the light! We welcome you home to the New Sequence.”

That feels right. It feels as if you’re finally where you should be, your rightful place. 

In service to this beautiful, unimaginable sun.