A million years in the near future…


Here on Earth we have two suns. Once one sun sets, there is a two hour period of “Grey Time” before the second one rises. In our history modules, it says that back in the days of cars and I-pods, there was only one sun, and after it set they had this thing called “night” in which the sky was completely dark except for the moon. About 500,000 years ago a massive star plowed through the solar system when all of the planets were aligned and came to halt after hitting Jupiter, which was apparently the biggest planet in the system at the time. Scientists named this new sun Nijiteki na Taiyou, which is Japanese for “Secondary Sun”.

With this new sun the Earth developed rapidly because there was more solar energy by which to work. At first though, when Nijiteki na Taiyou came into orbit around the sun, the humans’ biological clock went totally out of whack because most of them couldn’t sleep with the lights on (How crazy is that?). The history modules also said that humans way back then used this thing called “electricity” which is basically the same as lightning to power their homes. Solar energy is inexpensive because once you buy the solar panels all you do is soak up the sun-light. With this new heavenly body, solar energy storage facilities sprung up all over the planet, saving surplus energy to stream into homes in case of emergency like broken solar panels. And eventually, humans even adapted to sleeping in the light.

My name was Sunny. I was named this because I was born when Nijiteki na Taiyou was high in the sky. This is rare because it’s enormous size causes it to move twice as fast as normal, passing over the sky in just six hours, and with the world governments population control hardly any babies are born during this time period.













~ ~ ~

I sat between my mom and dad on the couch, watching the news on the holotellie. On the screen a robot dressed in a smart suit gave news about government and weather and scientific developments, which seemed to come more and more frequently every day. Suddenly, a picture popped up on the right side of the screen of a beautiful space explosion, the words “breaking news” flashing at the bottom of the screen.

“Nijiteki na Taiyou has used up most of it’s supply of helium and hydrogen and will supernova in three months time on May 19th, 4152 P. A.D. (Post Ano Domini). It will impact the continental U.S. at exactly 3 hours Nijiteki Time. (Three hours into Nijiteki na Taiyou’s time in the sky, have way through it’s cycle and directly above in the sky.) It seems by birthday celebration was going to be Armageddon. What a lovely party.



























~ ~ ~

Nearing the end of our three months remaining on the third rock from the sun, everyone seemed keyed up, to put it nicely. (They were so terrified they would probably wet themselves as they counted down the seconds.) Everyone except my friends. They seemed full of jokes. But then again, humor was their way of dealing with everything.

“I want to own a tornado,” Breezy said thoughtfully. “And then I could sic it on people I don’t like.

“I want an F5!” Steel exclaimed. “Then we could wipe out a whole city block at the same time.”

“That’s cool, except what if only one of the people on the block os the one you hate? What then?” I asked.

“I’d make sure they were all gathered in some remote place,” he said casually.

“That’s lovely. Hey Sunny, have you ever like, walked down the street?” Sam asked.

“What kind of insane person would want to do that?” I asked, faking incredulousness.

“I tried walking down the street once, but I had a panic attack.” Steel put his two cents in our discussion.

“You know what I’m gonna do tonight?” I asked.

“What?” they asked in unison.

“I’m going to sit outside around 2, and I’m going to watch the pretty fireworks.”