The peace of First Hope was profound, but not perfect. A second, subtler wave of the Echo began to surface. This wasn't the violent physical rejection of reality, but a deep, psychological melancholy. Some of the awakened, particularly the elderly who had lived the longest in the simulation, found themselves listless, staring at the gray sky with a hollow longing for the vibrant, if false, sunsets of Neo-Arcadia. They called it the "Gray Sorrow."
Lena, now leading community integration efforts, saw it as the final battle for their souls. "We fought for the right to feel real pain," she told Elias, watching a group of listless elders. "But how do we fight a sorrow for a lie?"
Elias, in his archive, had an idea. He didn't try to overwrite their sadness with forced optimism. Instead, he created a new program: "Comparative Memory." He guided them to access a genuine, difficult memory from the real past—a personal loss, a struggle—and hold it in their mind alongside a cherished, perfect memory from the simulation.
"The simulated memory is a beautiful painting," he explained to one woman. "The real memory is a scar. One is perfect but static. The other is flawed, but it's a part of you. It's proof you lived, you loved, and you survived." It was a painful process, but by acknowledging the beauty of the lie while affirming the value of their real, scarred selves, the Gray Sorrow began to lose its power. The final ghost of the simulation was being exorcised not by forgetting, but by integrating.