“Beneath the veil of empty sky on the late afternoon of a particularly cold November the seventeenth, a temporary second sun faded away from human view behind the horizon. It had occupied the sky for just a short month, but it proved itself to be a unique distraction from the everyday life of a twenty first century human race. The children waved goodbye from atop their thrones of plastic playground equipment, whilst the parents scratched their heads in bewildered wonder of what exactly caused a second sun to appear above them.
“These people, as well as many others, would ask the same question, “What happened?”. They would only get their answer over the coming months and years.
“An omen.” The word echoed off the cheap walls and dirty glass with a tinny ache.
“Priests called it ‘divine intervention’ where the scientist claimed it an ‘inevitability’. One thing was completely certain, the end of the world was nigh. As humanity looked skywards towards an ever-dimming earth, they too came to this same conclusion. Something was wrong.
“In the end it was the scientists who were proven right. A star, the very same size as the sun, flew by our solar system, a huge gravitational force just close enough to disrupt everything. Soon it wasn’t only the second sun that began fading from view that long time ago, but the original sun too, was suddenly shrinking away at a rapid pace.
“The earth had been flung from its orbit. It had become a rogue planet.
“The years turned into decades and with each, the sun shrank more and more. The biting colds of winter began to bleed into march and April, the warmth of summer became all but comparable to that of a candlelight, until the sun finally retreated behind the shadow of the blackened sky. The same sky that once had stagnant and familiar beacons of light, the stars, now became alien as those lights began to dance across horizon year by year. From then onwards, the sky would never stay the same again.
“Of course, these dances were witnessed by no living creature. Long before sun truly faded, the cold had become too much for mother earth to handle, she as well as all of her creatures perished and froze beneath the increasing layers of sno-“
“EXCUSE ME-“
The room froze, their immersion broken by a sharp voice that trilled behind them. A lanky and stiff looking teacher who went by the name of ‘Witcherton’ to all of her students, heaved a familiar sigh as she reluctantly paused an otherwise uninterrupted, and mandatory, history documentary.
“…You have a question Mr. Torchwood?”
His classmates all turned to face him, some of the children were interested and steeped in curiosity. Others, the ones who knew better, simply rolled their eyes once they realised who the question came from.
Flick Torchwood stood at the back-middle of the class with his eyes staring off into a blank space on the wall in deep recollection. It had only been a second from when he had interrupted the whole class and he had already forgotten his question. Miss Witcherton stared with the same blank expression with which she always stared, when Flick was involved. Her eyebrow slowly shifted, rising over the course of the irritating silence until a faint moan could be heard from Flick, progressively gaining in volume more and more as his brain made the attempt to start again.
“-Uhhhhhhhh.” He hummed, until finally a spark of recollection jolted him upright, “Oh yeah! Uhm, if all of nature died then how come we’re still here…”
Miss Witcherton was unphased by this question, practically expecting it, and in an exhausted breath she began.
“Well Flick if yo-“
“…And animals and stuff,”
She paused for a considerable time. Hoping with all her remaining strength that Flick wouldn’t interrupt her again.
Eventually, she continued, “…Well, Mr Torchwood, if you continued to watch instead of rudely interrupting the class, then you would know, wouldn’t you?”
Flick stood unnerved by her remark, waiting patiently for the first response that resembled any form of direct answer, with all the gracefulness of a blind man on a tightrope.
“I’m going to play the movie again. Okay Mr Torchwood?”
He slowly fell back into his seat, managing to hit every single object on the way down that could make the most noise as physically possible within a school room.
Once silence returned over the class, Miss Witcherton continued the documentary from where it left off prior.
“Luckily due to the ingenuity of the human race at the time, the world’s top scientists banded together years in advance to create habitats for as many lifeforms as science could realistically account for before the second sun banished them away from their only home within space. These habitats were known as, “The Pillars of life”! Now simply known as the Pillars 1-100 that we all live in to this day. Thanks to these brave humans many species managed to escape the harsh reality that was quickly gaining on them, some species were eradicated completely thanks to the endless winter and apparently much of the human race was also lost.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Some speculate that in the current year of 4020 humanity as we know it is just a third of the size it used to be, that means there was almost 7 billion people that may or may not have inhabited earth.”
Miss Witcherton glanced at her watch and counted the seconds by until the bell was supposed to ring, a finger hovering lazily over the power button. Once it did she immediately stopped the movie, switched all the equipment off, and dismissed the class leaving the room towards her usual smoking spot just outside of school boundaries. The children all grabbed their bags by their loose hanging straps and followed her part of the way before separating to go to their respective homes, parks and meetups within the pillar.
All except Flick, who sat at his desk in quiet thought, looking out of the window at the metal streets that he occupied.
He took notice of the sky at that time of day, as he always did when the opportunity presented itself. It glowed above with a tranquil orange that could practically burn itself into someone’s memory, an iridescent skyline anyone would love, but Flick knew better. He could see the seams in the glass dome above the pillar that projected the sunset.
Everyone could, everyone could see the seams in the fake sky but Flick was the only one who truly saw them, as if they were too intrusive to ignore. He knew that just beyond the fake screens there was only an endless night and soon, when the time was right, those screens would turn themselves off to show the reality behind, the reality he craved. He closed his eyes and thought back to his fondest memory of the brilliant scene the night showed, and remembered how the stars glided along the black void as the earth spun further and further away from the original solar system. Sometimes his imagination would puppet them around within his head. Creating epic duels and dramatic love stories filled with conflict just from two stars that would pass by each other, like fireflies hovering over a vacant lake. A warm smile grew from ear to ear as he anticipated the oncoming comfort of the night.
His head suddenly jerked down onto the table, shocking him out of his recollection.
“You ok?” Simon muttered with half care.
He, a fellow student and one of the many who routinely rolled his eyes at Flicks mind numbing questions, stood over his desk with an impatient look.
“You said you’d join us at the park today, dingus.”
Flick was still reeling from being torn out of his happy memory to even question Simon’s use of such a strange word.
“O-oh yeah sorry I was just tired,” Flick yawned
Simon clicked his tongue, “Then hurry up your late already.”
Before the words could register to Flick’s sleep lagged ears, Simon stormed out of the room and headed to the park they frequented. Soon after Flick was following, barely strapping the bag over his shoulder as he fumbled out from the school.
The view of the Pillar at that time of day was nothing short of sheer beauty, each alleyway and secret getaway was illuminated by an orange glow from the simulated afternoon above them. The night lights of the vendors had not yet jarred into life and sat dormant allowing the ambient glow to wash over them, cascading refracted shimmers onto the roads before Flick. The view was even more spectacular from where the school stood as the hill it rested on was isolated from the surrounding noisy streets.
Flick hopped down the disjointed steps from the school’s entrance towards the street, making sure to hit each one in a childlike rhythm. He Landed on the final step before the street with a flourish to an un-impressed Simon, who stood propped up against a wall with his arms folded in short tempered disposition. With an incredibly exaggerated eye roll, somehow even more dramatic than the last one Flick could remember, Simon peeled off of the wall and began walking down the narrow alleys with an instinctual navigation of its maze-like pattern.
Flick followed close behind until they both reached the secret playground that all the kids went to, although today it was curiously empty. As Flick stepped onto the sandy ground that was worn from decades of play, he felt a familiar buzz of excitement coursing through him. Simon felt it too, the sky above them was slowly dimming.
The two of them made a beeline for the giant spherical climbing frame, both understanding that the day was nearing an end and the night sky was about to be revealed. Flick moved with much more ambition than Simon did, weaving between the metal pipes of the climbing equipment before finally seating himself at the peak. Despite frequently dozing off and lazily shuffling through school corridors Flick had all the athleticism of a man possessed, being fully capable of getting anywhere as fast as possible to an almost inhuman degree. Still, it was a level of finesse, skill, and fervour that he would rarely show for anything and yet, when his passions were burning red, it seemed to flow as effortlessly as a creature in its most natural habitat.
This inconsistency within Flicks personality excited Simon to no end, always managing to catch him off guard somehow. His face formed some sort of giddy smile as he hurriedly sat beside him and stared up at the ever-dimming sky with his friend.
Flick’s excitement was at a breaking point, so much so that his being seemed close to bursting with pure energy. Then the sky began to reach its twilight, in which his whole body became completely still, anticipating the awe of oncoming night.
But something was wrong, the orange glow in the sky became suddenly harsh and bright, brighter than its settings could possibly allow. Soon it was clear that the light protruding from the fake projection above them was coming from behind the dome, and not from it.
A giant ball of fire was descending.
As the light grew brighter and brighter so did the ground around them becoming a burning red from the heat of the yellow orb that grew in the sky. The metal that lined the walls and floors seemed to bleed between one another, and the very air itself felt like liquid flame.
Soon enough the light grew big enough to engulf Flicks eyes and it became apparent that the pillar was no more.
