At the Twilight of Mankind

Part 3 - Chapter 1: (3/4) Introducing the Main Characters

THE BOY AND THE SUN

** Chicago (USA), 2074**

The group of teenagers burst out laughing, stamping their feet and clapping their hands, standing around Jeremy like around a campfire. They're not making fun of him this time, no. They're congratulating him for their victory thanks to him, Jeremy, the blind child of the ancestor people. The sixteen- or seventeen-year-old teenager smiles stupidly, too focused on the hubbub that his peers are making to let himself go too. Young teenagers like him usually hardly get any attention, let alone attention of that kind. Jeremy is unique and fearless. He lost his fear with his eyesight when he was a child because he has always wanted it that way. At this moment when he is being acclaimed by his peers, the world finally sees him through his own eyes.

Soon, Jeremy gets overwhelmed by the joyful cacophony. He feels dizzy from the noise of the group of teenagers and the heat coming from their young bodies. He feels them close to him, very close. Their body heat burns just like the heat of the sun...

** Chicago (USA), 2063 **

A four- or five-year-old boy is watching curiously at his mother clinging onto her phone as she tossed and turned while listening intently to the person on the other end of the device. She was anxious, the small child could tell, just by looking at his mother. She didn't like what she was being told, but she had to bear it and keep listening. The little boy's gaze swept around the room, looking for something more entertaining than watching his mother. The glass door! His mother always forbade him to go anywhere near it "because of the sun". The sun! The marvel in primary colours, far above in the sky that brought so much joy and mystery to his drawings. At school, he had learnt that without the sun there could be no life or colour on Earth. Yet, adults feared it so much. 

The boy kept his gaze fixed on his mother waiting for the moment when she would turn her back so that he could reach out to the glass door; the sun. Lost in her conversation, the woman turned her back to the glass door and her son for a few seconds. The little boy seized the opportunity to move slowly towards the light outside. To his surprise, the glass door wasn't locked. Like everywhere else those days, at school, in the shops, his mother always kept all the doors and windows locked, but not that day.

The sun! 

In an instant, an intoxicating warmth surrounded him. First, pleasant like his hot chocolate in the morning, then very quickly burning, unbearable. The little boy felt like a club falling on his head and a supernatural force pushing him onto the ground. His body, weighed down by an intolerable pain, suddenly collapsed as a dark veil covered his face. He knew he had to scream at that moment otherwise the sun would gulp him all down. However, no sound came out of his mouth as he tried to move his lips.

"Jeremy!" His mother's voice cried out before he passed out.

** Chicago (USA), 2074 **

"Thanks! Thank you! Thank you!" Jeremy screams, pushing his way with his hand and his cane through the small group of teenagers. Finally, he can breathe. Jeremy smiles. His life is a revenge, one possibility among so many like his doctor often told him.

** Chicago (USA), 2065 **

"Ms. Ridley, you should be proud of your boy," the dark-skinned man dressed in a white scrub said. In his left hand, he held a syringe while in the other hand he held the skinny little arm of the seven-year-old boy sitting in front of him.