The Midnight Sun

Everyone remembers the first day of the midnight sun. It was hard to ignore at the end of Daylight Saving Time. When people woke up on Sunday morning, they thought that things were just the way they should be (other nations which had no DST went on as usual). This is what they expected. It was normal. It brought back the sun.

That damn sun…

Like you, I never knew what I had until I got it all the time. That first week still sticks in my craw. We all thought that it was amusing to have the sun out all day. Schools shortened their schedules so students could enjoy the trend; hospitals and clinics brought out patients into their yards – even roofs – to let them have some “light therapy” (actually read that in some chat forum online); whole families were eating and celebrating together with their neighbours and even some strangers who were also confused by the new world we were in. Well, still in, I should say.

We all thought that it was such a great deal.

And here we are.

Y’know, after a week of this stupid phenomenon, I started to read more about Scandinavia and how they dealt with this.

Yeah, I read about it. Saw that movie – Insomnia – all about some detective trying to live in a place with permanent sunlight. Even wrote emails to the governments of Sweden, Norway and one friend I had in Denmark about how they did it (that last one was the only one who wrote back, thank Christ). And that was how I learned about the midnight sun.

Still have not read much about it online. At least we still got the computers working, for now. But why didn’t anyone say a damn thing about it…except my friend.

Yeah, it’s important.

Y’see, if you live above the Arctic Circle, or below the Antarctic one, you have the sun just dancing slowly around the horizon without setting. Scientists talk now about how this is just a fluke of nature and how nothing about this is actually normal.

No kidding? It isn’t normal?

Please…

After the first set of riots, I think people figured out that this was not the new normal. I saw some of those same families rip each other up with complaints and fights about their working day, their time at school, or how they just could not get a decent night’s sleep. They really did give up on all those “light therapy” sessions pretty quickly, didn’t they? Hospitals almost turned into closed off vaults. Same with schools (always looked like prisons to me, anyway). And then, like dominoes, it just grew and grew.

Maybe I should adjust things in here…

No, don’t worry. These screens will hold.

Okay, okay, not all of us are suffering. I will admit that it is amazing to me to have so much business in the middle of this and that I was able to set us up like this. From one small business to all these…

No, don’t worry. Like I said, these screens are pretty strong. They won’t be bothering us here.

And we were pretty lucky, weren’t we?

When they started to warn us about going out for too long, I knew that things had changed. We did not really like to go out too much, did we? We were not the type of people who really liked the sun.

That probably saved us.

There were so many problems with protecting yourself from the sun and then we had to reset all of the screens on some of the buildings we served our clients in. Only good thing was that I had more business than ever. You know about that, right? Did I tell you about when they got in touch with me?

Yup, the government; or people who said that they were with the government.

At first, that was a great situation for all of us. I could keep on the staff that I had and hire more. A lot of the competition knew that we were all in the same boat and things were a little bit easier for us. Huge government subsidies can do that sort of thing. 

Yeah, I’m getting to that…

You already know about the rioting and the looting that took place, but I don’t think I told you about all of it.

When you were at school, they told you to stay indoors while it was all happening. But there was something else that I did not say.

Your mother…she…

You know that she is not dead, right? But you never found out what really happened to her.

She left and did not come back for a very long time. We already had our problems and she was not happy before all this went down. And then, she just left…

And then I watched the news.

She was right there, giving a speech and telling the crowd things that they were already going to do. And then, it started.

They tore every store down that they could find, especially in the local malls where there were several drug stores and shops with gear to protect them from the sun.

No one thought about UV rays, sunburns or even skin cancer when we first had this happen. It took a long time before we really knew that this was going to be our new normal. And I can understand the hoarding and the demand for more than just a bunch of screens on windows.  

Worst of it was the last message she put out there.

“Don’t let them make money from the midnight sun,” she screamed.

Did you know about that one?

I tried to protect you as much as I could, and I hoped that this would just blow over when they got their stuff from a mall. But that did not end there.

Why’d she say my name like that?

I can understand that you want to hit back at an ex- and then hurt them, but she went too far with this.

I still got you kid and I will not let anyone touch you in all of this. That’s why we are here.

It may take them a while, but they will figure out that the screens are not hiding anything in our old place. And as I said, we are going to be all right.

Even with that damn sun.