Our Darkest Hour

After a colourful evening of champagne and loud talking, we awoke with the feeling of betrayal: Though the sun was expected to rise over the city of New York as it did every morning, it simply did not. Alarm clocks were checked and rechecked, spouses were woken up and forced outside in pajamas, and some of us even called our offices to announce, “No, I will not be coming in today because the sun has not yet risen.” And though we very much agreed the sun should rise, the benevolent night hung on and our sun remained obstinate.

The official call to the Southern and Western coastlines was made at five-thirty. They, of course, took the call as a joke. But when our weather bureaus and government offices called the West and Southern Coasts again at 8:00 a.m. to see if, perhaps, the sun may have risen there and just skipped the East Coast by chance, they were far more cooperative. And so by 9:00 a.m. the entire country was aware the sun had not come up, and would probably not be coming up at all.
“The exact time of the sun’s disappearance is unknown,” the Times later reports, “probably because we have no sun-watching committee in place, and had never had a need for such an institution. NASA -perhaps the only similar commission- is unfailingly without comment.”

As if by stroke of good fortune, the president had woken early on this morning to a degree of general hubbub, and, after studying the sky and speaking with his aides, called a panel of meteorologists, astronomers, physicists, and for some unknown reason, generals into a private meeting. As the panel sat quietly, not quite wanting to make that first move that turns science into an embarrassing world of paranormal happenstance, the most obvious topic of discussion, “Where is the sun?” was finally raised by the president himself. A murmur went around the room.
The first to speak was a prominent person on the defence committee. “This is a nuclear fallout from a failed shipment of warheads to Cuba.”
Here the scientists, nearly in unison and with mutual agreement, said that this was impossible, and that even after Hiroshima, the entire country didn’t see one second of darkness during the day.
After these last words were spoken –“darkness during the day,” the scientists, as if stricken by a sudden revelation, exclaimed that what we were experiencing was very obviously a solar eclipse, and that, because of some phenomenon that a certain Dr. Jarsky attempted to explain called, Miss-Gravicentrics, the moon was rooted in its place. Here other physicists put in that they may have heard of Miss-Gravicentrics, and that it’s entirely possible that climate change could have affected an unforeseen curvature in the earth’s rotation, forcing the moon to follow on an unpredicted course over the night, and thus, by force of deterrent magnetism, locked itself in place with an alignment between our point of view and the sun itself. During this oration, one of the physicists left the room and brought back several magnets and a metal sphere, and showed clearly on the table for everyone to see, how, when the magnets are positioned correctly, it can hold the sphere in place. This man nearly received a standing ovation, but was interrupted by a rather astute astronomer by the name of Flimage. The astronomer went on to point out that, aside from the theory being totally ridiculous, they had received no calls from NASA about a sudden and abrupt rotation of the moon. Here the room once again returned to its former state of tired confusion. The president finally suggested a call to NASA and was surprised to learn no one had thought of it earlier. With an air of fresh relief, NASA was called at once.
“No, we have no idea…absolutely no idea Mr. President, sir…” Checking himself, the head of NASA operations remembered a State of the Union address where the president coined the term, “Cannot is off the table,” and corrected himself. “We are expediting search expeditions,” was the first thing that came to his head.
“Search expeditions?” the president hopelessly muttered into the receiver.
“…Yes sir.”
“For the sun?”
“That is…uh…that’s correct.”
At this moment a PR representative –a noiseless, birdlike woman who is often seen energetically orbiting around the president, hurried into the room and told him an emergency meeting with the press has been called to address the issue, as, already, most of the citizens of our dark nation were already quite awake and tiredly rioting in the streets.

“I know most of you know by now that the sun is somehow missing,” the president began, weighing out each word, knowing very well that this address would be heard, referenced, and commented on by families, TV, textbooks, and academics for years to come. “We have never woken to a morning without the sun, therefore have no protocol in place. However, our experts are working feverishly at this very moment to locate the sun. Many theories have been brought up, most notably, the existence of dark matter in our universe. Our agencies, and some rather unanimously, agree the sun will resurface. After all, according to our analysts, the moon, our weather patterns, the temperature, and our satellites are behaving normally. If the sun simply blinked out of existence, this would not be so. We believe what we’re looking at is a nuclear reaction on the sun’s surface causing it to cloud over. After all, it is still somehow warm outside. In any case, there are many working theories. But I’d like to assure you, do not panic. Go to your respective jobs as usual. We’d like to show the rest of the world, when they wake up to a sunless planet, we can stay in control. So, citizens of America, on our darkest hour, I ask you to carry on normally, so that we maintain stability, and the happiness that is our right. Cannot is off the table. Thank you.”
Here the press, which were very obviously selected by a special committee to ask pleasant questions, were chosen one by one. The questions were generally about what sports teams were to do or whether this was going to affect various body cream markets and so on. Each question was expedited quickly and ended with positive results. By the end of the press conference, a great deal of the nation had accepted the loss of the sun as a temporary fact to be reckoned with.
Shortly after the conference, at roughly 11:00 a.m., the president again met with the committee. A unanimous decision was made to establish a meeting with the U.N. and involve the rest of the world in a dialogue on the issue. Here the president remarked he’d like to call the major powers separately and iron out the confusion they are probably already having as foreign journalism sweeps through the respective countries.

China informed the committee that they were already aware the sun hadn’t come up in America and many other parts of the globe, due to their esteemed astronomers working nightshifts in the joint space-station, Sirius. The sun, according to the astronauts, had suddenly disappeared. Key figures in China’s glorious space program told the astronauts that they were mistaken, and had an elevated case of space-tremors, which is rumored to affect a sense of reality. When Chinese astronomers at ground zero learned there was indeed no sun in the sky above America, Canada, the UK, parts of Europe, and a great deal of the pacific, the People’s Republic of China’s Great Bureau of Intelligence was contacted immediately. And so they had known, quite possibly before our president had even woken up. When asked what China planned to do about a morning without a sun, the great Chinese leader interrupted our president and told him he was mistaken, that although the sun did not rise in our area of the western world, it would indeed rise in China, and China would never see a morning without the sun. The conversation promptly ended.
Russia was more cordial. They informed the president they were well aware of the missing sun in our sky, as it went missing in theirs around 1:00 p.m. (sunrise, EST) and believed they had a protocol for such an event, but cannot find it. The protocol is rumoured to have existed during Yosef Stalin’s campaign. He had apparently examined every possibility for defeat, and a sudden and abrupt missing sun, making Russian winters even colder for troops already tired and hungry, was among the possibilities on this list. Now if they could only find the protocol. Russia would call America back if they can find anything.
Japan had already begun construction on a massive robotic sun which would, according to the prime-minister, be able to illuminate a small percentage of the planet. The sun would have a rotational axis and be able to swivel like a light post, it would also have a dim-switch controlled here on earth for posterity. The robotic sun, already coined, “Mr. Illuminato,” would need to be launched into space using several shuttles –an operation beyond complexity in its nature. The minister explained the original plans for the robotic sun called for solar-charging, and after realizing this didn’t make much sense, the project was overhauled. Japan would get back to America on this.
It was already obvious to the countries of Southeast Asia that America had ruined the sun. Burma, in particular (and the rest of the countries just kind of following in suit), was absolutely certain on this point.
Germany and Scandinavia were creating an innovative project called, Astriothermic Gravinatrics. The German president went on about the project in great detail, but tired, having not slept at all, he soon asked leave of the conversation.
France was much with the same sentiment as Burma, and yet declined to speak about it.
Israel faulted the Palestinians for the missing sun.
Palestine faulted the Israelis for the missing sun.
Most of the countries in the Middle East were also with the same opinion as Burma, only differing with the theory that the sun would somehow come back if America were totally wiped out.
The UK had dispatched journalists to China to see if, perhaps, the sun would indeed rise there as the Chinese government insists on it.
Mexico, in a joint operation with several South American countries, hoped, much like Japan, to build an illumination device and place it above the earth’s atmosphere. Not nearly as sophisticated as Japan’s model, and made of elements that would prove unstable leaving the earth’s atmosphere –like wood for instance, the incomplete structure will probably remain incomplete.
Several countries in Central America, with the help of Cuba, were working on thwarting the Mexican Mr. Illuminato project, coined, Senior Dias.
The sun will apparently also be rising over North Korea.
Both Africa and Egypt, upon learning the sun is missing in the western sky and those parts of Africa normally lit at 5:30 a.m. EST, celebrated in the streets, hoping also that the sun, normally blazing hot, would cease to rise over their countries for an extended period of time.
Canada figured that whatever America does to fix the problem is probably fine.
Australia was ordering tanning beds from South Korea.

We didn’t need the sun. We never needed the sun. And if the sun wants nothing to do with us, we don’t want anything to do with it. This sentiment began to spread in the early afternoon of our first day, and, bored with the ceaseless scientific dialogue fleeting across the crowded television sets, our citizens began to change the channel, making, according to the newly appointed Alaskan Federation of Sunless Psychological Reorientation, a leap of acceptance.
“Our people [Alaskan’s] never needed the sun. We can deal with sunless days. And being oriented to a state of sunless psychology, we are better equipped to tackle this problem. These guy’s in D.C., folks, they’re going to crack soon. They’re reliant on the sun, like a baby yearning for breast milk.” Here the man made a puckered baby face to the laughter and applause of an eager audience. “Do we want people like that in office? In light of all this, the A.F.S.P.R. moves to relocate the country’s capital and operations to Fairbanks, Alaska, and the powers therein.”
This oration was spoken loudly by the head of the newly appointed federation, which, according to sources in the Times, was assembled in Alaska between 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. that afternoon, and is rumoured to be largely made up of drug-addicts and members of gun rights groups who had happened to be, by chance, meandering near city hall during the signup.
On the set of the shabbily constructed mockup of the oval office, was a table on which sat several vitamin d lightbulbs, an energy drink containing electrolytes, and a cult 44. magnum python revolver. The man went on to say that these were the tools for success in a sunless world, and life without the sun was not the end of life.

Although the sentiment that we might as well just move on was present amongst many of our citizens, there was still, amongst the very ardent, an understanding that the sun should still be discovered, or, if the situation provokes it, turned on. To this end, our country’s leading public specialists were brought in by a special government committee, appropriately named, The Illuminists.
They sat in a brightly lit room with computers at a large round desk. On the wall were several projector screens. The camera was fixed in place. One of the men, a biologist, was explaining the importance of sunlamps.
“…Oxygen is extremely necessary on our planet,” he went on, “positioned outdoors in large-scale community gardens, sunlamps can provide the necessary false light to grow edible foods…”
Behind the set, off camera, a special, more secretive meeting was happening. Not even the president was among them. On this panel sat the heads of the defence committee, NASA, and various energy groups. The newly formed association, made mostly of wealthy corporate committees, was very deliberately entitled, “P.O.L.I.T.E.” or, Progressive Oil Liberation in Terrorist Environments. The panel lumbered in their seats heavily, each of them in suits with hands crossed, or pouring a glass of water or juice brought in pitchers by the caterers. They spoke with gravity, each of them, in turns, weighing out the costs of, what they called, a “grand-scale endeavor.”
“…According to our sources,” spoke one of the brilliant data analysts shuffling around the men handing out spec. sheets, “without sunlight we’re looking at a total meltdown of resources. Oxygen is a gradual problem. We believe our densest forests have several weeks before a massive ecological collapse. During this time we’ll have sped production of sunlamps, and can provide the necessary light to create an atmosphere of stability. The same goes with warehousing livestock. Our problem lies here; where are we going to get the energy to fuel the increase of power?”
“And the demand?” asked Halbertson, a heavyset financial advisor on the committee.
“The demand is total,” answered Goldman, a defence advisor.
“If we invest in these three areas,” the original analyst said, still passing out papers, “we will be sure we’re on the ground floor for what would prove to be a viable leverage over our consumers.”
The print-sheet he handed out showed an animation of a confused consumer shoveling money into a pyramid. The pyramid was made of three boxes, and in them were three words: Air, Light, Food. Above the pyramid, in a circle symbolizing Ra, was instead the word, Energy.
One of the men on the committee had a map of the world spread out, and on it there was a red circle drawn around the Middle East.

By 4:00 p.m. E.S.T., several journalists for the BBC were en route to China via high-speed, private aircraft (China was no longer accepting incoming flights otherwise). The windows in the aircraft were locked shut and the cabin lights were on. The journalists were eagerly expecting the Chinese sunrise. The time in the UK was roughly 9:00 p.m. It was at exactly 9:35 a.m. in the U.K. when, out of nowhere and with no warning, the sun simply was no longer above the British skies. This puts the time of the sun’s disappearance, according to the BBC but with a disagreement from the Times, at 4:35 a.m. in New York. The disagreement lies precisely in the account of a family living in Queens who later reported to the Times that they had woken at 4:45 a.m. and saw the beginning of an average NY sunrise. Many other reports also confirmed there was sunlight above NY as late as 5:50 a.m. (although these reports were muddled –most of the witnesses apparently confirmed intoxicated by operators at the 911 center).
When the journalists arrived in the Beijing airport at 5:45 p.m. our time, or roughly 5:45 a.m. Chinese Standard Time, they were promptly shuttled into the facility via a windowless terminal gate and received in a large, flowery reception centre with ingenious gilded statues and gorgeous handmade furniture. At this point they were told by a very well dressed government official, that indeed the sun had risen over China, and yet, because of an “urgent inconvenience,” the journalists could not be allowed to see it.
It could be said that outside this room there was a commotion happening. China, as anyone could have guessed, had received a number of foreign visitors over the preceding many years. Travelers come and go, and, unless in the case of a large protest or political overturn, could come and go freely. Not on this day. No one inside the country was allowed to make calls outside. Foreign websites and international email were closed to the public. Within several hours China had become a self-contained domestic affair. If a case arose where a certain family needed to fly outside the country, they were told that the air traffic control systems were temporarily shut down, and to wait. If a person were to drive down south of Yunan to the Laos border they would be stopped and told that the country they were looking to visit had also been temporarily shut down, and also to wait. So the people waited. And the crowd outside any number of the many Chinese airports was overwhelming.
The journalists, having not been outside, were expedited back to the UK. On arrival, a great time later, they reported the Chinese authority had convinced them of the sunrise, although they never saw it.

“Forty-two thousand six-hundred and sixty-eight suicides in America alone since dark-dawn,” the Times reported at 9:00 p.m. EST. “One-hundred and seventy-three thousand murders. Nine million reported robberies…” the list went on and on. The reporter now had a trust amongst America’s citizens. He had coined the terms in the early afternoon, “The Incident on New Year’s Day,” or, more appropriately, “Year Zero.” “Time,” he said, “has to be managed differently now.” Anyone that was still interested listened eagerly. “Our world has sunk into a deep decline,” he went on, “and only our friends at the committee [P.O.L.I.T.E.] can dig us out.”
By this hour P.O.L.I.T.E. had already integrated a strategy of demand manufacturing –or D.M. as they put it- into every area of our media. Their commercials, made within several hours of their 12:00 p.m. meeting, were broadcasting between news segments on every channel. The commercial featured a cartoon of tired citizens walking in the dark, illuminated only by candlelight. They looked within the throes of visible starvation, and they were sick, many of them carrying children. Suddenly lights flare up everywhere, and by each light post there are mountains of food. Now they are happy and thanking the “Committee of Sustenance” [P.O.L.I.T.E] for the nourishment.
P.O.L.I.T.E. was already acquiring massive quantities of the military infrastructure. Our government had contracted it out to them in exchange for a controlling stock in the goods and resources that, in the span of only three hours, they had already bought up. Factories producing sunlamps, magnum revolvers, and energy drinks were already in full swing, and it was outside one of these very factories that the committee now sat patiently around a large wooden table right on the tarmac. The wind was picking up, and everywhere around them there was movement. Massive trucks had been brought in and military Humvee’s were shuttling around ammunition at alarming speeds. Underneath the light of a helicopter, the final arrangements were made. The Middle East, save Israel, was to be erased in its entirety, in its place; oil wells.

The president slept badly. He had dreams of himself on a large stage surrounded by armored men in black body suits. There were floodlights on everywhere, and he was dictating something into a microphone. He wore a banner around his arm that read, P.O.L.I.T.E. He was talking in short bursts, hammering his knuckles down wildly on the podium. The people were screaming and running, every one of them, thousands of them. They weren’t Americans. He was shouting in some foreign language they understood. He raises his hands to the sky and the bullets rain down. He can feel the wind from helicopters on his head and neck. With each wave of the hand, more bullets come down. It’s dark despite the lights now.
He woke at 3:00 a.m. to a phone call brought in by his secretary. He was sleeping in his suit on a hardback chair in the oval office.
“Thank God, what have you come up with?” The president answered the phone with an air of feverish relief. It was the Russian president on the other line, and the secretary had already informed our president that the protocol had been found.
“…News not so good, I believe,” the husky, thickly accented voice replied, an intimation leaking in through the receiver making the president somehow even more impatient.
“What is it?”
“The protocol makes for gun and bullet.”
“What?”
“In box that reads, ‘Missing Sun,’ just gun and bullet.”
The president rubbed his forehead, sighing in resignation, knowing soon he’d have his hand on a red phone, and that soon he might be using the phone to make a call, the most important and horrible call in world history.
“…All Stalin’s plans are gun and bullet…” the Russian president went on.

The people of NY waited through the night in expectation. Some had fallen asleep, others were on rooftops, some were rioting in the parts of the city that weren’t already charred and burning, and many others were together in Time’s Square. They had brought in actors for the affair. One of them, famous for his crime drama series, 36 Hours, stood on a podium reading haikus about the sun. The time was 3:30 a.m., and the entire world was deep within the planet’s first ever collective witching hour. There was a light on the stage attached to a phone connected to a satellite line tied with an ethereal tether to a U.S. Embassy in the U.K. The Ambassador was expected to call the moment he saw a sudden and abrupt light in the sky. The ring of the phone was supposed to trigger the dropping of the very same ball they used for New Year’s Eve the previous evening. If the sun was going to disappear for a day, our citizens wanted a party if it decided to come back.
The expectation of a rising sun over New York was an arbitrary affair. It was almost outrageous to think that if the sun’s light had somehow ceased to be at a random moment in time, it would appear again at exactly a full rotation of its orbiting planet later. But the people of New York were no longer concerned with science. For nearly twenty-three hours they had heard nothing but scientific reason and had gotten nowhere. The sun had not been shining all day, never mind the facts; the crowd, and much of America too, had passed over into the realm of metaphysics.
Christian groups all day had crowded the streets, hollering about the apocalypse, testifying to the horrors of mankind. Whatever the occurrence was, be it a black hole vortex between the sun and the earth, sucking up light but somehow not heat (which was, at this time, the predominate theory) or punishment for being the awful race that we were, it couldn’t hurt to believe a little that, in this next very hour, the sun would rise in New York, blink into existence in Europe, light the shores of the Atlantic, and stay apparently exactly where it is in China and North Korea.
People were on the streets all over the country, and much the same in parts of Europe too, tearing a hole straight through the fabric of an endless night. They stole TV’s, lamps, and children. There were people who called themselves vampires who paraded through the night hopping around the lampposts, and biting others when the mood should strike them. The police were especially asked to shoot these ones should they be caught terrorizing the open streets.
Some groups tramped through the shopping centres carrying crosses on their shoulders and telling the world to repent. These same people were also given a great deal of TV time throughout our dark day. They were hysterical, telling us that, somewhere along the line, we had lost our way, and that the light must again be shone on our path. They were so vehement about this “light” and the obvious metaphor of our circumstance, that many of them had blinded themselves, arguing that a true Christian needs only the light of god. Needless to say, these types gained a great deal of political and social influence.
The A.F.S.P.R., after a short gunfight in Anchorage, officially gained control of the Alaskan state. By 3:00 a.m. they had successfully succeeded from the state union, illegalised birth control, and participated in at least thirteen known book burnings.

The president sat with one hand tied to a red phone in the pentagon. He was very much awake and alert. One hour had gone by since the conversation with the Russian President. He was alone in the room –P.O.L.I.T.E. had suggested he get his thoughts together. He was instructed to call them –now already en route to a general location over the Middle East, if the sun hadn’t risen over New York by 5:35 a.m.; exactly twenty-four hours since its abrupt disappearance. It should be said here that the president’s thoughts were mixed.

The city was burning, and yet there were many of us gathered in the light of the blaze, holding hands and intently watching that light on the stage. The poet’s voice had taken a backseat to the affair, and he rambled on as if totally unaware any of us had stopped listening.
“…Blazing, blazing into our hearts, you who blaze our heartfelt path, you who have lit the shores of our blazing…” At this time the citizens of our city were getting anxious. A murmur went around the crowd. No one really knew what time the sun usually rose on January second.
“…You who are so bright, warming our whimsical fancies to our heavenly content…”
By 4:55 a.m., people began to get desperate. Already there was wailing and moaning in the crowd. Others remarked that perhaps we weren’t seeing the light because of the smoke, and some others said that last year the sun’s light didn’t reach our city until close to 6:00 a.m. Impatient, our citizens began to turn their frustrations on the actor, who, lost in his thirty-page poem, read louder.
A cabbage was thrown, then a shoe, and finally there was a barrage of objects being hurled at the stage. Many missed and hit several of the actors nervously in line to read their respective poems. Panic had struck Time’s Square. And right when the hysterics had culminated into a thick, irreproachable frenzy, a hush went around the audience. The light on the stage began to blink. The phone rang over the loud speaker.
“Hello?” the actor answered anxiously, already covered in a thick layer of garbage.
A pause. The crowd now wavered in anticipation.
“Hello?” the voice said.
“Yes, Ambassador?!” the actor lit up.
Our people were feverish with expectation.
“Is Juan there?”
“Who?”
“Sorry, I think I have the wrong number.”
At this point, the New Year’s Ball –which was now connected to the phone line, dropped suddenly, and fireworks of all kinds shot from the stage together with music from the loud speakers. Confusion reverberated through the audience; they were promised festivities when the sun began to rise, and although there was a great deal of commotion, the sun had still not yet risen.
The actor hung up in resignation, expecting another onslaught of garbage from the uneasy crowd.

It was 5:10 a.m. and the president sat over a cup of coffee, drinking with his free hand, and hovering over the light of the red phone with his other. After a few moments the phone rang. It was a field officer for P.O.L.I.T.E. The president was confused –he thought he was instructed to call P.O.L.I.T.E. at 5:35 a.m., and here they were calling him.
“We already did it,” the man said, cutting in and out with the chopping sound of helicopter blades. The president could hear laughter in the background. “Time bombs,” the excited field officer let on. “We just parachuted them in and got the hell out of there.”
The president was entirely shaken, and, trying to contain himself, asked, “How long ago did you… ‘do it’.”
“Oh we dropped them in around four-thirty or so.”
The president held his head in his hands, and for a brief moment his mind went blank.
“…And the Middle East is…gone?”
“Oh yeah. We’re up here with the Israeli military,” the man hollered, “…they’re really impressed with how neatly it all played out.”
The president hung up the phone and buried his head into his arms as he sat over the table. He tried picturing the faces of the lives he destroyed but couldn’t; all that was there was a clouded entanglement of floating people in white sand.
He called his secretary and asked her to organize a live nationwide address. He was feverish with anxiety, and, getting up, having to steady himself a little, he noiselessly walked out of the room.

For several weeks the people of our city crowded together in Time’s Square early every morning in anticipation of the evermore improbable sunrise. We held candles and sang together, and hopelessly begged the sun to come back. The sun did not come back. The benevolent sun had left us (or we had left it –which, incidentally, is the predominate phrase in reference to the event).
It should be said here that for the people of our planet not quite all hope for an illuminated world was lost: After all the very many solutions proposed by the illuminists, the A.F.S.P.R., Japan, and Scandinavia, it was Mexico’s that, for a brief moment in history, bore fruit. On December 28th of that very year, after so many attempted sabotage campaigns by Cuba and agents of Central America, Senior Dias was successfully launched. It maintained light -only mostly along the equator and hardly enough to maintain more than a twenty-mile strip across the globe- for exactly eight months. It wasn’t until the technicians aboard the orbiting sun, dubbed illuminauts, received a shipment of bad livestock that the project was put to a final halt. (An international day of mourning for these illuminauts, who had apparently died attempting to push the livestock off Senior Dias, has since been held yearly.)

And so the sun was gone, forever, it would seem, and as the years went on, it was marked as yet another scattered remnant of the great mass of history carrying us from the very beginning to the present. As things moved along a course for the history books, we eventually grew tired of the entire affair and accepted our fate of a sunless world. We are living a ceaseless New Year’s Eve, like a record that skips and is never righted.