Chapter 1

  Sat, June 5th

  1:06 am

  The sun still hasn’t gone down. For over 5 hours now, the Sun has been sitting on the horizon without moving. Everyone is freaking out. Including me. I do wonder, though, if this is a good reason to stay home from work.

  I work at a grocery store, a big one. A team of about 30 of us stocks the shelves at night so that they won’t be empty by noon the next day. I don’t think the people who shop there realize how much shit they buy. If they did, they probably wouldn’t bitch so much about the stockers getting in their way.

  Anyway, the job isn’t terrible. It’s a decent gig. I make more money working there than I would at any other grocery store or anywhere else around here. I live in a small town on the outskirts of a slightly less small town. And I like it this way. The quiet life for me, thank you very much. What was I talking about? Oh yeah.

  The fucking sun hasn’t moved in over 5 hours! It is now 1:08 in the morning, but outside it looks like it’s late evening. I’m not making this up. I wish I possessed the sort of imagination that could come up with something like this.

  I was standing over the kitchen sink with my weed pipe in one hand and a salt shaker in the other when I suddenly became aware of the fact that I wasn’t standing in total darkness. I glanced at the time as it was displayed on the microwave. 9:11 pm, it read in blocky red digits. I scrunched up my brow as I shifted my stony-eyed gaze to the time displayed over the oven. 9:12 pm was the time o’oven.

  I sat the pipe and salt down and went to look out a window. Then I remembered that my subterranean apartment only has one window and that it doesn’t open. I basically live in a prison cell. With that in mind, I made for the exit.

  Outside, I climbed up the steps and emerged onto the sidewalk. I wasn’t the only one to notice the strange lighting. There were dozens of people out there, all staring up at the unusually bright sky like baby birds. My first thought was that it was something manmade, some sort of crazy bright lightbulb. I ran up the sidewalk, excusing myself as I squeezed between my fellow gawkers.

  “Cal!”

  I stopped, turned, and searched for the person who had shouted my name. I knew the voice well. It was my friend Jasmine. She must have come out to stare at the broken sky, too, but I couldn’t find her.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Calvin! Up here!”

  I craned my neck and saw her hanging out of the 3rd story window of my apartment complex, waving like she was parking a plane. I smiled. Jasmine is a special girl, let’s say. I don’t know anybody else like her.

  I held up a finger instead of shouting at her to wait. I possess some refinement, a certain sophistication that Jasmine doesn’t particularly value. Then, I made my way back to the building and up the stairs to Jasmine’s apartment.

  “Dude!” She yelled as she opened the door, “This shit is crazy! Have you seen the sun?”

  “What?” I stammered, “The sun? What are you talking about?”

  She hurried me through the door and shut it behind me. “The sun! It’s crazy, man. Everybody is freaking the fuck out. Look.”

  She ushered me to her dilapidated couch and turned up the volume on the TV. A woman wearing a pound of make-up and ten pounds of hairspray in her hair was speaking with a bespectacled, silver-haired old man. The woman was visibly nervous.

  “And what?” She said, swallowing hard, “do you think is causing this phenomenon, Doctor West?”

  “Well,” was the response from the wizened man, “we don’t really know.”

  “You don’t know.” Said the anchorwoman, clearly out of character. This was no interview. This was a private call being played over the air. Christ, I thought, is it that bad?

  “I’m afraid that,” continued the man, “we have no idea. Nothing is different, as far as we know. There is no cause for this phenomenon. Quite frankly, it’s baffling.”

  “It’s been going on like this for over an hour.” Jasmine blurted, “I told you; NOBODY knows what’s going on with the sun.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.” Was my absentminded reply.

  “Oh… well, I’ve said it to myself a lot.”

  What in the hell is happening? I’m no idiot. I’ve gathered thus far that it’s light outside at midnight because the sun is broken. But that raises more questions than it answers.

  “That’s not even the craziest part,” Jasmine said deviously. “Look at this.”

  She extended her arms and put her wrists at eye level. Suddenly, my vision was diminished to a pink-banded Snoopy watch and a green-banded Scooby Doo watch. I knew instantly what she was trying to show me. With an odd sense of displacement, I noticed that neither of the second hands were moving.

  “So, what?” I asked, fighting against a wave of vertigo, “Time stopped? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Time is fucking broken, man!” She said, “Watch this.”

  She brought a hand up and began fiddling with the dials of her watches. Every time she twisted them, the analog clockfaces disappeared. All I could see was TV static. When she pulled her hand away, the clockface returned and displayed the same time as before.

  I recoiled as if she were holding up vipers. “What the fuck?”

  She shrugged. “I told you. Time is broken. It’s like this everywhere according to the news. Are you okay?”

  I was not okay. I felt cold. You never really think about it, but all of the things we take for granted on a daily basis are the same principles that prop up our entire understanding of the world. For all intents and purposes, Jasmine had just torn down the walls of my house. I felt naked and exposed, like I was about to fall from very high up.

  “Dude,” Jasmine said, reaching out to hold my hand. “Are you okay? You look pale.”

  “What does this mean?” I asked in a whisper. I had to stay quiet for some reason.

  “Uhm…” She whispered back, “I don’t know. But it’s going to be okay.”

  I blinked, felt a lurching sensation, and then I believed her. Jasmine is the person I trust most in the world. If she says it’s okay, then it’s okay. She’s the wonderful soul who taught me to be mindful and showed me what it was like to live without fear. “Move deeply into the now, and fully embrace this version of reality.” Her words. I’ll never forget those words. Of course, I believed her now.

  “Okay,” I croaked through my dry throat, nodding shakily “What do we do?”

  “I’ve just kind of been doing what I usually do.” She said with a shrug, “I have been watching the news more.”

  I chuckled. It wasn’t much, but it felt good. “Okay,” I said, “Thanks, Jazz.”

  She pursed her lips and cocked her head, which was Jasminese for “you’re welcome.”