Not a Lick of Sense

The radioactive factories put out enough energy to power things. I’ve read about how it was before – the world was too cold at the poles, too hot at the equator. Most people shuffled around in the in-between zones, the temperate zones, managing their clothes and buildings to deal with the hot or cold. Even people changed – I’ve seen pictures of Eskimos and Aborigines, hardly looking like the same species because they changed to meet their environment.

It's like that. You live closer to the factories and hulking remains of cities and buildings to pick up more energy, to grow things easier and use machines, but then you wear more protective clothing and deal with the cancers. If you live farther out, in places that I guess used to be ‘the middle of nowhere’ but now have a lot of people, the machines don’t work, or barely work, and people have to do everything. We have to collect our poop and food scraps and make fertilizer for every inch of food, because the radiation-adapted plants don’t take off like rockets out here. We don’t have to wear lead all the time, though, and don’t get nearly so many cancers.   

It's darker out here, too.  The bioluminescent algae and fungi really light up in the old cities.  

You don’t even need to worry about bringing light. Anywhere you go, it’s just lit up with the green slime on the walls. If you do want to go somewhere dark, just scrape some gunk off the ground, throw it in a jar or something, and bring it with you.  

That’s what I heard, anyway. I’ve never been to a city, of course. I’d be cooked. I’m – adapted, I think? - to this radiation.   My grandpa talked about how his grandpa could go back and forth, city mouse to country mouse, but we don’t do that anymore. Pretty much anyone from my clan that goes to an old city comes back with a tumor, and we don’t welcome anyone from the city. Anyone they stayed with would start getting sick.  

Anyway, the light. We have to farm it, grow it, here. It’s an important job. We know by now which metals and stone are the hottest and kept the most poison, and when we find it we take it to the algae farms. Everyone has an algae or fungus pod in their house, and we have our little pods to carry around. Sometimes someone gets all bundled up, all lead-shielded, and heads in to get more hot junk. It’s a dangerous job, but we have more light again for a while. 

I’ve heard of the sun, but I don’t believe it. A ball of light in the sky? How would the algae stay up there?  If you throw it up it just falls down, and ruins it likely, too. You can’t break it up like that. My grandpa said the sun wasn’t algae, just a big fire in the sky. I’ve seen fire, I understand that, but that doesn’t make sense either. Fire’s dangerous – you don’t know which air is going to explode if there’s a spark. Algae is safer.  Grandpa said they called it hot winter – the sun disappeared like they thought, but it didn’t get cold and kill everyone, instead everything heated up. I don’t understand winter. I told him it didn’t make any sense, and he said I was right. None of it made a lick of sense. 

So that’s what I’m doing out here, finding fuel for the algae farms. Everyone has to do it when they grow up. Even if it won’t be your job for real, you have to go out at least once, far enough to get something hot and bring it back. It’s harder now. My dad, before he died of his cancer, said when he was a kid you barely out had to go out of the settlement before your Geiger found a chunk of hot dirt. Anything close has been found and either brought back and used or cleared out, so I’ll have to be out here overnight to get to new territory to find enough. I don’t think that’s fair – they should change the rules since it’s harder. But I still have to bring back enough to light a house pod for a day. 

My Geiger’s going crazy, but it’s all background – I need something to spike big that I can pick up and carry. I have water I can get to, but I can’t eat anything until I get back. That’s ok, we’re used to that.  My lead-lined backpack is getting heavy, but we are used to that, too.  

I slip the cover over my pod and look around, letting my eyes adjust to the dark. If I could find a glimmer, that might be a sign there are enough hot rocks or something to take back. There’s barely a glow everywhere – you can see the outlines of things if you know how to look. Jarrol in my settlement said his grandpa said there are places further out that don’t have any algae, they have to use, like, fire in containers for light, but I don’t believe that. 

Finally! There, to my right, more of a glow. I fix the place in my mind, uncover my light and head over. My Geiger started buzzing, too, so I’m excited I might be headed towards something good.  

It gets brighter as I get closer and the Geiger ramps up. I cover my light again and see a glow from the ground, almost like looking at a algae farm from a distance. It’s brighter and brighter, more light than I’ve ever seen at one time in my life, and then I realize I’m standing at edge of a hole. It’s a pretty big one, but what’s weird is it’s regular. Like, smooth on the sides, with sloping walls and a flat bottom. It would be big enough to stand in and not be seen from someone a little ways away. We have craters, of course, everywhere, but they are ragged and rough and dangerous. Nothing smooth like this.   

And the whole thing is lit up. It’s a different kind of algae or fungus, not clumpy but perfectly smooth and covering every tiny bit of the hole from the lip to the bottom. It’s a huge, glowing bowl. I’ve never seen so much light!  Is this what the sun was like? I can’t even think about looking for something to take, I just stand here in awe, trying to understand how there can be so much light all at once.  

I lean down and run my gloved hand over the green. It’s soft, and long! Every algae and fungus I’ve ever seen is flat, squashed, dug into the rock or metal. You have to chip it or dig it out, and it usually dies. That’s why we have to farm it, get it to grow where we need it. But this! I get on the ground and put my face right to it. At the bottom of the stuff, against the sides of the bowl, it is glowing green and flat on the rock, but hundreds – millions – so many tiny green stalks stick up, each almost as long as my finger, hair-thin, a tiny pod on the tip. The whole thing glows but each little pod glows brighter, like a house pod. I brush my hand through again. They bend under my hand, then stand up again but still moving a little.  Like if you bumped water in a pot and it moved on its own, like it is waving. I never saw anything like this before.  

My mind is racing. How do I take this back?  I dig my fingers under, at the bottom, just to see how hard it holds on to the rock. But it peels up, just like the rind off of a fruit! It comes right up! I crawl my fingers under, loosening more, until my hand is covered and then try to lift my hand. It resists, the strands tightly woven together. Finally I get both hands under and pull as hard as I can and it rips free, leaving rough glowing edges. I have a solid little carpet of light in my hand.  

Now what? I’m shaking. I can see the tendrils vibrating as I cradle the – whatever it is – between my hands. But is it going to die? Did I kill it? How do I tell? I stare at it, but I can’t tell if it’s changing. I squeeze my eyes close as long as I can stand it, then lean down and hold my handful next to the big bowl. It looks the same, not fading. My heart is pounding, and I can feel the sweat dripping down the inside of my lead-lined clothes.  

Think, think. What’s next? What is it growing on? Can I take it? I ease one hand free and feel over the edge of the hole. It feels like metal plates against dirt.  I carefully put my handful of light to the side and dig in with both fingers, then get out the tools in my bag – a chisel, a little pickax – and dig more and more desperately until a square plate about the size of both of my hands pops off. 

It gets away from me and starts sliding down slope and I slam my chisel down on it. It stops, but when I lift the metal I see I’ve hurt the light giving plant underneath. Where each little stalk was bent it already is darkening. My heart stops as the irregular square gets dimmer, but I breathe again as it stops at the edge of the bruised part. I had had a vision of the darkness I caused spreading through this whole oasis, ruining it forever. 

I somehow got myself and my treasure home, I barely remember how. When the gatekeeper took my backpack he teased me about how light it is, and how soon I’ll be going back out. But I sat right on the road at the gate and opened it up, taking out one little patch of light after another. I heard a hoarse shout and people came running. Where the pods were bent on the edges of my little tufts they are dark, but I had sat by the hole a long time, watching and hoping. I sat long enough to see the tiny stalk pods on the bruised greenery start to slowly, slowly straighten, and then to glow. 

We have a lot more light now. This new stuff, the farmers said, is a moss – not an algae or fungus at all. It doesn’t need radiation, either. It grows on dirt and water and dead leaves. And it glows and glows.  The settlement has started working its way into the safer dark lands, now that we don’t need radiation for the algae.  It even makes enough light for plants to grow! Well, barely, but the farmers are hopeful.  The biggest change is we don’t have to keep hot rocks in our houses now for light, so they think the amount of cancers are going to keep going down.

And now I know what the sun looks like.