The first day the sun didn’t rise, it was business as usual. The trains ran, the offices were open, and we just used a little more electricity than normal. We went to work, fed our fish, and gossiped about the news coverage while waiting for the bus. Over dinner the television told us what a strange event this was and how many records it had broken.
The second day the sun didn’t rise, we thought it odd. Our gossip spread to the cubicles and the break room and we listened to the radio, curious and nonplussed. It was weird, we told our coworkers and our friends and the people we met on the bus. It was definitely very weird.
The fifth day the sun didn’t rise, we complained. Extra lights were brought in and the power companies grew worried. The television said that California had adopted a mandatory rolling business schedule in which workdays were completed in shifts to reduce power usage. There was talk of rationing and of national disasters.
The tenth day the sun didn’t rise, we were panicked. We went to our doctors, our psychiatrists, our personal trainers, begging for help. The pharmaceutical companies had to keep their factories open twenty-four hours a day to produce enough Prozac.
The thirteenth day the sun didn’t rise, a national emergency was declared. We heard that it was the same everywhere, that no country had been spared. Our crops failed and our businesses closed. Thousands of us were dead from exposure or suicide. Our leaders gave speech after speech and our scientists despaired.
On the eighteenth day the sun didn’t rise, we locked ourselves in our homes and apartments. We looted closed stores and fought over food. Our water stopped running and we pissed in the streets.
On the thirty-seventh day the sun didn’t rise, neither did we.