Out past the Tarsus region, there is a planet with no name (part of a long, ongoing legal battle that began with a copyright claim against the founding company that acquired it). A mere six-hundred thousand people live there, all the descendants of employees of various mining and manufacturing companies who colonised the planet almost a century ago. Due to a stable but unusual weather phenomenon, the planet’s surface receives sunlight only two-to-four times in its six-hundred and seventy-three-day annual cycle. The vast majority of the time, the planet’s surface is in complete darkness and the colonists must rely upon their own, artificial light sources.
Naturally, this has led to the development of a handful of unique cultures, a new religion and a cult or two.
One such cult has it in the firm belief that darkness is a blessing, for it hides the painful truths of life from the unprepared eyes of man. They view the planet as a holy place that shelters the lucky few that inhabit it from the trauma of seeing and being seen. It is malign to perceive and a sin to know. Ignorance is a blessing and blindness is bliss.
For a lot of people, this central idea that binds the cult together is an attractive one. A bold kind of extreme scapegoat for life’s ills and a simple one. It’s a nightmare for the companies that run the planet’s industries. A tenth of their workers refuse to work in light of any kind which, in a mine, is sort of dangerous.
The cult's ideology believes that the default state of the universe is one of abject misery, not intended to be witnessed by human eyes. In its own way, it a rather sweet belief that suggests that humans should take better care of themselves by simply opting out of one of their senses to save themselves from further pain. Still, it doesn’t really justify the forced conversions that have happened of late, which include the ritualistic putting-out of eyes.
So if you ever find yourself out past the Tarsus region on a planet with no name and with no sunlight, bring a pair of sunglasses.
Paddy Dobson
30th November 2020