Our world is a dull gray. Everything is gray.
An old man in a black suit overlooks the gray world. He shakes his head, sits down, and starts looking at gray things on his desk. The man makes sure no one is around, as he pulls open his bottom drawer, in an equally gray and colorless office. In the drawer is a picture of himself and a happy family in the jungle. His leathery, dark brown skin not far-off from the color of the frame.
“It’s my fault the world is so gray, and it haunts me,” the man begins to reminisce.

Many decades ago, the world was much brighter, and I found myself searching for my own wealth, fortune, and meaning. I traveled everywhere, through deserts, cities, and jungles. One day I found a man named Yiuwing, and my life would change forever.
I almost mistook him for an animal until I saw his dark hair and smile when I caught up with him.
“Do you live here?” I asked him almost out of breath.
“Yes, let me show you my home.”
Yiuwing and his family lived modestly in the forest. He didn’t live on the ground, no, he lived on the branch of a gigantic tree in the canopy. I was amazed at the girth of this tree, it was as tall as a skyscraper and just as wide.
Surprisingly enough his home was relatively modern looking. He called out to his family, and his beautiful wife and two kids appeared and welcomed me with tremendous hospitality. This still bothers me to this day.
They had the amenities of a normal family, but what set them apart, was what I found when he asked me in for dinner.
As we all sat at the table, Yiuwing brought out a large goop of pink…something. I did not refuse it, but I was pretty terrified. I looked at everyone else at the table, but they looked so eager to eat it that surely it must have been good to eat?
But then, Yiuwing prayed, grabbed the pink goop, tore small pieces off, and gave a piece to each of us. Right before our eyes it turned into a gorgeous meal. I thought I was high or dreaming.
I took a bite and it was exactly what I thought it looked like. Being the curious type I was, I asked him how he made this? How it did this? What even is this stuff? And in his typical fashion, Yiuwing smiled and motioned for me to follow him. We traversed a short way from his home in the trees until he showed me a hole in one of the branches. He called it a “Leyline” from the tree of life.
This tree had served him and his family for decades he said, and was one of, if not the last one left. Seemingly out of nothing it created this goop, and I knew instantly I had found what would make my fortune.
I asked Yiuwing and his family if I could take some with me. Their fate was sealed.
Over the years I would go back to Yiuwing’s hundreds of times. Always trading him things that he could never use to eat, things that he may have been able to use, but nothing that could ever sustain him or his family. In the process, I was selling this revolutionary material to anyone and everyone.
“Your imagination, is literally the limit,” I told prospective businessmen.
And as time went on, he could give me less and less of the life goop, until one day I returned to Yiuwing’s for the final time.
As I entered that particular part of the forest, I noticed the color of the trees continually had started to gray. By the time I got to what I thought was Yiuwing’s tree, the tree was still just as tall and thick, but was withering and dying.
I raced up the ladder to Yiuwing’s home, where I was faced with a decrepit-looking abode with withered gray vines overtaking the house. I saw someone had carved words into the ground near the hole of life.
It simply said, “No More.”
Fearing I was too late, I ran inside the house to see Yiuwing laying against a door, barely breathing, his family, strewn out in various areas of the house, all dead. Yiuwing looked at me and said, “Ah, my friend, you’ve returned one more time.”
Yiuwing had become frail and weak, but he still smiled, and told me that it had stopped providing.
He looked like he hadn’t eaten in a long time, was very somber, but happy that I showed up. It didn’t hit me initially, but we had found a way to synthetically copy the goop for just about everything. Though it was never quite perfect and never was as pink.
Horrified, I tried to give Yiuwing some of the synthetic life force to eat, he refused.
“Yiuwing, you have to come with me! We’ll get you medical help and food!”
He smiled and refused again, “No my friend, my family is gone, my time is coming soon, this is what I deserve for giving away our family’s life source, I deserve this.”
“Remember my friend…it all returns to nothing.”
At that moment Yiuwing passed away, his eyes closing for the last time, and his body finally turning to gray.