“We are in a world where you have to pay for sunlight. This is when you think capitalism can’t get any worse,” Tom said.
I looked at him and his SunMaster tanning bulbs. We left the store and looked at the artificial atmosphere above us, simulating dark grey clouds. The sky looked like a giant flat TV, but it was just another hot September day in England – nothing special.
“You don’t handle it well, do you?” I said to Tom. “Think of the Scandinavians.”
“Yes, I feel for them!”
“Their suicide rates are shocking.”
“Nothing new there,” he said.
I wished Tom cared more. There should be something that we could do. The government took the sun from us seven years ago, requesting a fee to see her. And only a year ago, they’d suspended the rental until further notice. Apparently, they were experimenting.
Tom and I went to his place to play some video games. It made us forget about the outside.
When staring at the clouds, I couldn’t really tell where the sun was. Being a winter person, I had no problem with daylight on cloudy days. My skin had always absorbed the sunlight well. People like Tom were overreacting. They would swallow numerous vitamin D pills every day to avoid any deficiencies.
“Do you realise that they want the suicide rates to go up here too?” I said.
“What good is humanity anyway?”
Tom didn’t understand, and he never would. He was a smart kid, an engineer-to-be and happy enough to live under these circumstances. The panic of others made him go with the flow.
“My uncle is making big money at his funeral home…” he said.
“I assume that cremation is a must these days.”
“Yeah.”
There were many cemeteries in town, and the government planned to either get rid of them or build on them. We’d already survived the purge period, but the greedy government would always have more in store to wipe out the poor. The number of homeless people had gone down, but nobody would ever mention where the homeless went.
The resistance group was active last night. I’d seen some of them wearing Guy Fawkes masks. People referred to them as “What’s left of Anonymous.” Since they fed the poor, they weren’t criminals in my eyes. They did light up illegal fireworks in an attempt to destroy the screen. The police caught two of them, but the newspaper would never broadcast any news on who was behind the masks. No one knew what happened to them after the arrest.
We found Tom’s mum on the sunbed. His little sister, Lily, was watching an old animal documentary on the discovery channel. As soon as the African sun rose on the screen, she approached the TV and touched it. She had never been in the sun. Before the suspension, the price to see the sun went up to £100 per minute. Tom’s parents had long stopped paying for the sun. We all complained about how the train fare went up every year, but nothing would ever compare to this.
“Thomas? Is that you?” his mum said from under the sunbed.
“Yeah. Jamie’s here, too.”
His mum shouted hello. Lily jumped up, running towards me. “Jamie!”
She always insisted on me holding her up when we greeted each other. Sometimes I wonder if she loved me more than her own brother. Before Tom and I entered his room, his mum came after us. Her tan looks terrible, as if she had overdone a roast by twenty minutes.
“Did you get my bulbs, hun?”
He passed them to her.
“Cheers, darling,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek, then she took Lily from me.
“It’s your turn, sweetheart,” she said to Lily, who pouted at her mum. I wouldn’t be surprised if she found her own mum ugly.
“I don’t want to. I can’t move in there!”
“It’s only for two minutes. You want to look tanned and pretty for grandma later, don’t you?”
“Yes, but in the real sun.”
After sunset, you would often see the real sky. It’s at night-time when everything felt more natural. And when it wasn’t cloudy, they would sometimes let you see the moon, the stars, Orion’s belt. But there had been no sign of stars in weeks.
However, I spot the moon on my way home. It appeared to be red but not in the style of an eclipse. Something looked different. For an early autumn night, it felt unpleasantly warm, too.
“The sun is dying,” a voice said.
A bloke in a hoodie stood next to me. He was half a head smaller than me—his long blonde hair covered under his hood.
“What?” I said.
Then, I noticed a few more people around us. A couple of them were leaning against a pole; another one was playing coin toss. They were all wearing Guy Fawkes masks.
“What’s the value of money if there is no more sun?” he said and looked at me.
The dim street lamps threw a mysterious light on him. His eyes were grey-blue.
“What do you mean, what’s wrong with the sun?”
“You heard him,” a female voice said. I turned and saw a frowning girl holding a Fawkes mask in her hand.
“Oi, guys! Nightwatch!” one of the masked boys said.
The next thing I knew, they started running. I had no reason to run with them, but I did. We ran three blocks down the street, away from the approaching sirens.
“This way,” Blondie said, and we turned left into a dead-end street with the others. One was going crazy, shouting and bending the rear mirrors of expensive cars that we passed.
“Stop it, Mitch, you fucking idiot!” a girl said.
“What does it matter?” Mitch said.
It was too dark to see where we were, but judging by the rows of townhouses, we were in a quiet residential area. We gathered behind a bush, where Blondie pointed his LED light on the ground. One of the boys lifted a maintenance hole cover. I watched one climb down after the other. The girl looked at me briefly before she disappeared into the hole. Blondie was next in line but pointed the light at my body and said,
“What are you waiting for, Jamie?”
I didn’t know why I ended up going with them. They knew my name, no big deal. Yet, it had felt natural to me to trust them with my life. I didn’t even know them.
.
.
.
by P-chan (c) 2017
-Short story collection excerpt – coming in 2025-
Inspired by Neuromancer’s opening sentence.
For S.D.
