Dark

Dark

By S. A. Barton

Copyright 2012  S. A. Barton

Smashwords Edition  ISBN: 9781476409092

 Katrina and I were married on the day the sun began to dim.  The ceremony was small but impeccably catered, held on a private beach just north of La Serena on the coast of Chile, on the beach outside the vacation home my father had loved so much before a charter jet crash had claimed him and mother five years ago.  My father had built his millions mostly the hard way, starting from half a dozen run-down Buffalo duplexes his father had left him, and though he pinched a mean penny when it came to maintenance expenses, he would have insisted on a huge and lavish ceremony for the marriage of his only son.  Something lavish and gauche.  My sister Rosemary and I had different tastes, but we were on the same page when it came to one thing: we cared far less than father for showing off our wealth.

My sister made the time to attend, though running the family rental empire demanded an enormous amount of her time.  For my marriage, though, she had flown in for two days, leaving business in the capable hands of her husband Dan.  Despite her physical attendance, I noted sourly, she was barely present, her cell phone glued to her ear half the time, leaving its little belt pouch empty and forlorn with only the two spare battery pouches beside it for company.  She thrived on business, on busy-ness in general, and I hated it—which was why I had asked her to buy out the half of the properties dad left me, and why I was free to spend a month cruising up and down the Pacific waters off the coast of South America.

After the reception—the phone was off her ear and deactivated only for the actual ceremony—she followed me to the docks, where the honeymoon yacht awaited my new wife and I.

“Adam,” she said as she caught up, “you might want to reconsider your plans.  I know it’s your honeymoon, but Dan just called me with the oddest thing.  Look.”  She held out her phone, showing me a story on an international news site.  SOLAR OUTPUT DROPS FIVE PERCENT IN ONE DAY, the headline read.

“Weird,” I said, “but we have jackets and heaters on board.  If there’s a cold snap we’ll be fine.”  She rolled her eyes at me.

“That’s not the point.  God, you are so clueless sometimes.  Look, it’s a completely unanticipated and unexplained phenomenon.  And there’s more: it says scientists can’t get a good look at the Sun’s surface to figure out what’s happening.  It’s blurred.  ‘It’s as if the Sun were behind frosted glass.’  That’s a quote.  It’s a continuing trend, too.  Here in the update, the output drop is up to seven since the original story posted, in only eight hours.”

“So… what, the Sun’s going out?  Isn’t it supposed to explode or something instead of just fading away?”  I supposed I should have been worried; however, not only was science not the slightest interest to me, but what could I possibly do about how much light the Sun made?  Worrying about it would be like an ant worrying whether or not I was bringing a pie to my picnic—not just beyond my control, but beyond my comprehension.

“It’s going out, or something is putting it out.  If it’s natural and it doesn’t stop, it’s the end of everything.  Even if it stopped now, the change would alter the entire world climate, and considerably for the worse.  If it’s not natural, it’s being done by something or someone so powerful it defies description.”

“Well, if the world is going to end, all the more reason to have a good honeymoon.”

“I can’t believe you!” she shouted.  Lowering her voice with obvious effort, she continued, “you’re being flippant but this very well could be the end of the world.”