Within Darkness

This is a post-apocalyptic Earth, where humans have to live and survive in total darkness.

                This world is doomed, or so we believe. Supposedly, the Earth was caught in some catastrophic event long ago that plunged it into a black hole many, many years ago. But in my memory, there is nothing but darkness.

                The Earth is gone. Its surface completely plunged in darkness, and there is, nor can be, any light. Anything turned on is still dark, and no light can exist. Somehow, we are still living. Somehow, all life on this planet has adjusted.

                Except humans.

                Our entire species is blind. Not one person can see, and, so we believe, can any animals. Our sun is gone, and has been gone for as long as I know. There are still some who remember the stories: the stories of light and nature and happiness.

                Now there is only darkness.  Now there is nothing but fear and despair. Nobody knows where they are going, where they have been, or where they will be.  We are fumbling underlings in the eternal darkness of this now hostile world.

                “Caleb, Caleb where are you?” Susanne’s voice echoed through the darkness.

                “I’m picking carrots.” I said, fumbling around and searching for the carrot stalks.

                “What do you mean you are picking carrots?” Susanne was confused, “You don’t sound like you are on the right side of the farm!”

                “Well I am.” I shouted back at her, “I felt the carrot pillar!”

                “Are you sure that was the carrot pillar and not the beet pillar?”

                “Yes I’m sure.” I said, “I’m pretty sure I can feel the difference between a carrot and a beet.”

                “Alright. Dinner is ready, so come back in when you can.”

                “Alright, sis.” I sighed. Susanne was a bit protective, but I understood. Running around in the field alone wasn’t the best idea, but I wanted some carrots. When I finally found the carrot stalks, I pulled a few big ones out, and since they felt somewhat big enough to eat, I felt around for the carrot pillar and followed the rope connecting each pillar back to the house.

                “Weather pretty nice?” Mom asked when I came back inside. I smelled the fresh cooked stir fry my mom made, and that made me feel happy.

                “Same as it always is.” I said back, feeling around for my chair. “Seventy-five and cloudy.”

                “So I never got the chance to ask you how your day at work.”

                “Like normal.” I explained, “I get there, I do some random science things, and I leave.”

                “Yeah, but what random science things did you do?” Mom prompted while she served Susanne and I, “You never tell me what you do every day. You are always so vague.”

                “That’s because it’s classified, mom.” I sighed, “I can’t tell you what’s classified.”

                “Well I think you should be able to tell your mother anything.” She sat down at the other end of the table. I could hear her begin eating. Same with Susanne.

                I wasn’t hungry though. I stood up, walked over to the sink, and started to clean the dirt of my carrots. Once they were clean, I walked out of the dining room, across the living room, and into my room. I had easily memorized my house’s layout by now, so navigating wasn’t too much of a problem. I listened to a couple of songs, laying on my bed, and thought about earlier today. I knew we didn’t have long to live here, but I knew that I couldn’t tell anyone. I had barely finished two carrots before I fell asleep.

                I woke up the next morning, or just when I woke up. We have sound based clocks to keep the time, and my normal ‘go to work’ alarm broke me out of sleep. I got up, felt around for some clothes that weren’t smelly, changed, and started walking to work. My house was connected to the research facility by an underground tunnel. We got this house as a gift from higher management so I could get to work safely every day. I had to walk a mile and a half to get to the edge of the facility, where I resurfaced and went through the numerous safety precautions that my facility required. First, I had to scan my key card, then get sterilized, then use my second key card to open the second door. After that, I was cleared by a guard, and was finally allowed to enter the facility.

                “Caleb, is that you?” My boss bumped in to me on my way to my office.

                “Yeah, what’s up?” I asked.

                “Meet me in my office when you have the chance. I have to talk to you.” My boss was a pretty nice guy, so I wasn’t too worried. When I went to my office, I organized a couple of recordings I made, and thought for a while. Then I stood up and walked over to my boss’s office. By this time, most of the crew had arrived, and, upon hearing that nobody died or got lost this morning, I entered my boss’s office. I heard him tapping a voice recorder on his desk. He was nervous. “You figure out anything?” He asked me.

                “No.” I shook my head, “There is no way out of this.”

                “There has to be something.” I heard him get up and start pacing around the room, “Something that will get us out of this.”

                “Sir, with all due respect, I can’t propel the entire Earth out of a black hole.” I told him.

                “I know, I know.” He said, “But can you propel people out of it? Like in a spaceship?”

                “How do you propose building said spaceship?” I asked, “Without visual designs, architecture, or any materials?”

                “We can’t.” He said.

                “That’s why I haven’t figured anything out.”

                “Well-“ My boss was cut off by the sound of running footsteps, nearing his office. “Sir!” one of my co workers shouted, “Sir!” He burst through the door.

                “What, what?” My boss prompted.

                “The Earth, it’s accelerating!” He said, “We are spinning faster.”

                “How long do we have?”

                “Three days.” He said, “Three days before we reach the middle.”

                “Three Days!?” My boss shouted, “How did it get that extreme!?”

                “We got our calculations wrong.” The employee explained, “I’m sorry, but it’s hard to do math from a book that was written seventy years ago, you know, with words. That I can’t see. Because-“

                “I get it.” My boss interrupted him, “Do we have any way out of this?”

                “No.” I heard my co-worker shuffle his feet, “There is no way out.”

                “Three days. Three days to live.” My boss sighed, “Why did it have to be us…”

                “It had to be someone.” I said, “If it was the generation past us, that’s what they would’ve said too.”

                “You’re right.” He agreed, “So I’m shutting this facility down. You are all free to go home to your families, and spend as much time with them as possible before the end. I ask only one thing of you, though: don’t tell them. Don’t let them know how little time we have left.”

                “Why is that?” I asked.

                “Ignorance is bliss, Caleb.” He said, “Ignorance is bliss. Now go tell the others. I want everyone out of here in an hour.”

                By the time the news reached around the facility, we were gone in under twenty minutes. I decided to not take the underground path, for I wanted to listen to nature’s last breaths as I walked home. I didn’t really care if I got mauled by a bear, eaten by a mountain lion, or destroyed by anything that had better perception than I in this infinite darkness. I was already dead.

                I abruptly ran straight into the door to my house. I wasn’t really paying attention to walking, so hitting the door to the house was a bit of a surprise.

                “Hello?” My mother called from inside. She was listening to the TV.

                “It’s me, mom.” I opened the door.

                “You are home early. Like really early. Did you even go to work?”

                “My boss gave me off for the next couple days. He said I needed it.”

                “Oh you have been working too hard.” Mom was legitimately concerned, as my overworking has come up in many, many discussions. Too many discussions.

                “It’s not that, mom.”

                “Oh, don’t kid yourself.” I heard my mom get up off the sofa, “Where are you? Let me give you a hug.”

                “I don’t-“ Then I cut myself off, “I’m right over here. Next to the dining table.”

                I let her hug me for a while. I knew this was probably one of the last times she would hug me, so I let this happen this time. I felt a tear run down the side of my face, but caught it before it hit my mother’s shoulder.

                “Caleb, you seem sad. Is something wrong?”

                “I’m fine.” I said, breaking off, “I just… got some bad news at work today. It’s nothing, it just… didn’t make me very happy.”

                “And I’m guessing you can’t tell your mother because it’s classified?” That had a bit of attitude to it.

                “It’s not that.” I said, “It’s never been that. Ever. I don’t tell you things because a lot of them you wouldn’t want to hear.”

                “Like what?” Mom asked, “What could you possibly tell me that I wouldn’t want to hear? It’s not like I have anything else to listen to.” I could tell she was meaning the TV.

                “Trust me, listening to the TV is a lot better than what I have to tell you.”

                “Give me an example.” Mom said, “Just something small. Something that a lot of people know.”

                “How about the fact that we are stuck in a black hole, slowly spiraling to our imminent destruction?” I started. This made my mom pause. I didn’t stop, “Or maybe that eventually, we are going to waste away into globs of nothing, just because of our faster-than-light constant velocity? How about that we shouldn’t even be alive, because nothing can live in this darkness. Hell, we don’t even know where the damn heat is coming from. How about that we were all born with sight, we just have no way of using it because there is absolutely no light in our entire relative universe, and there is absolutely no escape from this, because even if we did manage to build something that would get us off this planet, and even on the off chance it would work, as soon as we hit the edge of the event horizon we would instantly vaporize and turn into photons! We are so lucky to be alive that it is against the laws of the natural universe that we are in this situation at all!  We have no better lives than the carrots that we pull out of the ground!” I stopped for a second. Then I realize I just terrified my mother, three days before we would all die.

                “Oh.” Mom said, “Well. I guess you are right.” Her voice cracked a little, “Just promise me you won’t tell Susanne.”

                “Mom, I’m sorry-“

                “Promise me.”

                “I promise.” I surrendered, “I shouldn’t have told you.”

                “How long do we have Caleb? How long before we all waste away?”

                “Three days.” I said, “We have three days before we hit the singularity.”

                I heard my mother sit down. “Sit down, Caleb. I need to tell you a story.” I obediently grabbed a chair and pulled it over next to my mom. “I know I don’t talk about your father very much, and I know you don’t know him very well, but… I think I should tell you about him before, you know, we die. I thought I would have more time for this, but, considering the circumstances, I think…” She paused, then continued, “Your father was a great man. You are a lot like him, you know. He was always looking up at the sky.” That made my mom laugh a bit, “A little more literally than you may think. He always thought he could see a little light in the sky. A dot of salvation that somehow, somewhere, there is light. Everyone thought he was crazy. I believed him, though. That’s how we fell in love. He was always trying to get me to look up at the sky, and look out for the white dot. I never saw it, though. But when he died, which was just a little after Susanne was born, and when I was still pregnant with you, I gave up on looking for the light. But now, that you have been working at the facility and trying to find your place in this dark, scary world, I have been finding myself looking up at the infinite sky, trying to find that little dot. Your father gave me hope, Caleb. I know whatever he was looking at was just a dream of his, but I think it was hope that he was searching for. I don’t think that your father could see any light, I just think he told himself that, to give him something to hope for, or something to try and get to.”

                “Light in the sky?” That gave me an idea, “How could he see a light in the sky when he never even knew what light looked like?” I turned around, “And if so, how could he even describe what it is, or that it even is in the sky and not in a tree?” I held my mom’s shoulder, “What if the light he was seeing was actually a light? What if it was there, he was just the only person who know what it actually was? What if we are all seeing this light, we just can perceive what it is, simply because we have no idea what it is? What if-“ I cut myself off, “The singularity.” I burst in a run down to the underground pathway, leaving my mother in the dust. I sprinted the entire way back to my workplace, and burst through the facility gates, which were now devoid of guards. I blew through the doors, and into the primary complex. Where is it? Right or left? I tried to think of a schematic of the facility, but I couldn’t quite figure where the observatory was, Left! I made a decision, and sprinted down a hallway. I knew the door number was 707, so I ran up all seven flights of stairs and felt the brail numbers on each door 774? Damnit, it was right! Not even caring about the exhaustion, or the fact that I have never been to this area before and I had no idea what was in front of me, I sprinted down the middle of the hallway until I ran straight into the door that separated the two wings of the facility.

                I ignored the pain in my head and threw open the door. 711, 710, 709, 708, Gotcha! 707! I tried to turn the door handle but it was locked. Annoyed, I removed my keys out of my pocket and tried to find the universal factory key. I found it, but upon trying to unlock the door, I noticed that the master key didn’t work. Oh screw this! I kicked the rusted and old handle off the door and then kicked in the door itself. It flew open and a cold burst of air rushed past me. I ran in the room, but I tripped after a couple of steps, because the room was not a room at all: It was a flight of stairs.

                I was really starting to feel the fatigue now, but I ran up the stairs, through the burn of my legs, and three more flights of stairs later, I was at the top. A cold wind blew across the roof of the building, and I walked along the metal walkway to the observatory across from me. After climbing one more flight of stairs, I was inside the observatory. I felt around for the large telescope, but stopped in my tracks. I didn’t need to feel around for the telescope, because I knew it was there. I just… knew where the telescope was. I turned behind me and I knew the stairs where there. I knew how many there were. I looked around in the room, and I somehow just knew where everything was. I knew how long the walls were away from me, I walked up to the telescope with confidence, and without needing to feel in front of me, just because I knew where it was. I could-

                I could see it. I didn’t just feel the smooth, metal of the telescope, or the coarse, concrete floor I stood on, I could see the texture of the concrete, and see the metal of the telescope. I could see the vaulted metal orb of the observatory, and I could see all of the equipment, and all of the everything that was inside this little observatory. It was wonderful, confusing, and scary all at the same time.

                But the one question was: how? How could I see what was in front of me? How did I know I was even seeing? How did I know what an orb was? How did I-

                Cutting the questions out of my head, I walked over to the telescope and looked through the viewing lens. There it was: the dot in the sky. It was right in front of my face the entire time, and the reflection of the singularity was lighting the room. My eyes began to burn as I looked at even the tiny star in the sky, and I had to look away. My heart was beating faster than an engine, and my brain was starting to hurt just from being able to look at everything. I could finally see what something looked like, and see where it was and how it worked. I could-

 

()

 

                I awoke in the dimly lighted room with a dull, aching pain in my head. I must’ve fainted. I could see clearly now, at least for this room. But the objects changed somehow. They are somehow different but I couldn’t tell. They had the same texture, and the same dimension and they were even the same distance and everything, but they somehow looked… different than what I saw before. Is this… color?  I stood and spun around, looking for something that would tell me in this dimly lit room. Then I saw something on the wall. It looked like a poster, and was labeled “The Light Spectrum”. It had each of these colors on it, and I looked at it and learned that the telescope was black, and the concrete floor was grey. I learned that the poster was primarily white and that the railings were a shade of blue. I learned that the singularity in the sky was yellow and that the walls of the observatory were brown. I learned about all of the colors.

                Then I stopped and thought for a second. How do I know how to read? This shocked me and confused me all at the same time. I had never seen words before, only felt what they meant. How did I know they were words in the first place?

                There was nothing more I could do in the observatory. I had to go back to my house and tell my mother that my father was right, and that what he saw was real, so I ran confidently down the cement stairs and threw back open the door to the observatory.

                What the- I was blinded by a harsh white light, more powerful than I could ever imagine. I fell to my knees and covered my eyes, unable to stand against the power of the light. My eyes burned and my brain hurt, but I knew I had to look. I knew that I had to see what was out there, and what was creating such a powerful light. I opened my eyes, and looked.

                “Oh God…” I said out loud. It wasn’t just a light in the sky anymore. It wasn’t just a dull light. Everything was lit up. Everything had color, and definition, and was bright, but nothing changed. Nothing was different at all. It was still a calm, seventy degrees, and there was the white light. There was the singularity in the sky, lighting up everything. That was the sun. I knew it. Everything was just… bright. Everything still had color. Everything was still the same.

                I could run confidently across the walkway now, not taking any moments to marvel at the blue sky or the green grass, or the shining black of the rooftops. I didn’t even take a second to sit back and admire the everything that I could now see. I had to tell someone else. I had to know what happened. So I ran home as fast as I could. I didn’t need to fumble my way down the stairs. I didn’t need to use the underground pathway. I could run on the dirt road, past the green and brown trees, through the green, rolling fields under the light blue sky. I had to figure out how I knew what these were, and how I knew everything that I was seeing, and how I knew how to see in the first place.

                Somehow, I forgot how to see. Somehow I forgot how to perceive light, how to feel it, and how beautiful colors and vision is. Now I remembered. I remembered how amazing the world was, and how it wasn’t really dark in this black hole, and how it wasn’t really the singularity. Everything was a lie. Our sun never exploded. We aren’t spiraling towards our death. It was all just a lie, something to cover up why we all forgot how to see.

                I grabbed the brown wooden doorknob on our brown wooden door, and entered our house. “Mom? Susanne? Anyone?”

                “Caleb!” My mother called from the other room, “You are back! Why did you run off so suddenly earlier?” Mom rounded the corner and I saw what she really looked like. She had smooth blonde hair, with dark brown eyes, and soft features.  She was beautiful, but I don’t know how I knew what beautiful even meant.

                “Mom, can you see me?” I asked her. “Can you see how I look?”

                “Caleb, what are you talking about?” My mom was confused, “You know we can’t see, right?”

                “But you can!” I tried to explain, “You can see, you just forgot how to. You forgot what light is, and what vision is. You forgot everything. Look, here.” I ran around the house, searching for something. I found a sharpened pencil in a cup in our kitchen, and a piece of paper in a drawer. “Mom, why do we have a sharpened pencil in the house?”

                “To write with, of course.”

                “Why?” I asked, “Why do we write if we can’t see what we are writing? How do we even know that we are writing the correct word? How do we even know we are writing words at all? We do. We do know what we are writing, because we can see it, but we don’t know that we can see it. We still perceive that it’s there, that the letters exist and that we read the letters, and we see the letters, but we don’t know that we are seeing them. We just perceive that they exist.” I handed my mother the pencil and paper, “Here. Write a letter on the paper. Any letter.” My mother wrote an “M” on the paper. “What letter did you write?” I asked her.

                “An M.” Mom replied.

                “Okay.” I picked up the paper, “What does an M mean? What is its purpose?”

                “It’s a letter. It doesn’t have purpose.”

                “Exactly.” I flipped paper over so that the ‘M’ looked like a ‘W’. “Now what does it say?”

                “M”. Mom answered, “It’s still an M.”

                “No. It’s a W.” I answered, “How did I make it a W?”

                “You flipped the paper over.” Mom said.

                “How do you know that flipping the paper over turns an M into a W and not something else, without seeing what an M looks like?”

                “Honey, you are confusing me.”

                “Just tell me how!” I was almost shouting, “How do you know you aren’t just drawing four lines on a paper? How do you know where they go, and how they are oriented? How do you know that those same four lines, inverted, turn into a different set of lines? How do you know that without seeing the letters?”

I don’t know!” Mom said back.

                “But you do know!” I said, “You do know, because you perceive the letter. You can see the letter, you just don’t know what you are seeing. You have never seen before, yet you see all the time. You forgot how to see. You can see, as long as you remember. Just remember how to see, remember what that M looks like. Remember how to perceive what the M is. Remember that light in the sky that my father said, and imagine it in your mind. Imagine a gigantic bright light in the sky. You know it’s there, you always have. That’s why you believed him, isn’t it? You believed my father, and that’s why you went with what he was saying. Something inside of you could see that bright light in the sky. Something inside of you knew it was there, you just couldn’t perceive it. Now I can perceive it, and I see the light in the sky. I see what a pencil looks like. I see what the sky looks like, and what a tree looks like. I can see everything, and it’s amazing. All you need to do is remember. Remember what my father looked like-“

                “But I never saw your father.”

                “But you did!” I said, “You saw him every time you were next to him. You saw him every time you touched, every time you talked to each-other. Now tell me, what did he look like? What do you think he looked like? You can see a picture of him in your mind. You can see him in your memory. Describe him to me.”

                “He had the most beautiful voice-“

                “Visually, mom.” I said, “What did he look like?”

                “He was taller than me.” Mom said, “And had really coarse hair He was strong and loved to laugh. He had the most beautiful eyes. I could tell every single time he looked at me.”

                “How.” I said, “How could you tell. You can’t hear him looking at you. You can’t feel him looking at you. You can’t tell that he even had beautiful eyes in the first place. So tell me, how do you remember his eyes?”

                This made my mom pause and think. She thought for a long moment, then said, “Honey, you’re scaring me.”

                “Just think, mom.” I said, “Just think about him. Think about what dad looked like. Think about what Susanne looks like. Think about what I look like, and remember how to see. Remember how to look at us, and how to see what colors are, and what light is. Remember how beautiful the world around is. Remember that light in the sky, that dad was so transfixed on. Remember looking straight at that light, and knowing it was there, but not seeing it. Now imagine that light in your mind. Imagine seeing that light in the sky. Imagine how beautiful it looks, and imagine how it lights up the entire landscape. Imagine what the fields look like, and how blue the sky is. Just take a moment to remember how much you love looking at everything, and seeing how amazing this world is.”

                Then Mom fainted.

***

                “Mom!” I tried to catch her as she fell, but I was unsuccessful. “Mom, are you okay?” I leaned over her and tried to shake her awake, to no avail. I picked her up and carried her over to the couch, where I set her down. Maybe this is what happens when people remember. I thought, I mean, I fainted in the observatory, so maybe… just maybe… I stood up. I could see my entire house, and how dirty it is. We never cleaned it, and we never could. Sure, we wiped down the counter and washed the dishes, but the dust and dirt held with the house forever I doubt I could clean it all, but I tried.

                I spent two hours cleaning before Susanne got home from work.

                “Mom! I’m home! I got good news!”

                “Susanne, quiet!” I whispered to her as she entered the room, “Mom’s sleeping.” I had to cover up the fainting somehow.

                “Sorry, sorry.” Susanne apologized, then noticed that I was home. I don’t usually get home before her. “What are you doing here Caleb?”

                “Boss gave me the day off.” I said.

                “Lucky.” Susanne answered, “All I did today was keep translating audio to brail. It sucked. Five hours of making dots on a page.”

                “Someone has to do it.” I said, taking a rag and trying to wipe the thick layer of dust on some of the counters.

                “Are you… cleaning?” Susanne asked, feeling around for a place to set her bag down, “Because I hear you wiping off stuff, and you usually don’t wipe off stuff. Mom usually does that.”

                “Well mom can’t do it right now.” I said, “So she asked me to clean a bit while she took a nap.”

                “Where is she, anyway? In her room?”

                “On the couch.” I said, “Something must’ve tuckered her out.”

                “Weird. She usually doesn’t sleep at this time.”

                “Yeah, I know. It’s the middle of the day.” Then I realized what I just said.

                “What do you mean it’s the middle of the day?” Susanne asked, “Its eight o’clock at night!”

                S**t. Whoops. She can’t see that it’s sunny outside. “Whoa really?” I covered myself, “Time flies.”

                “How long has mom been asleep for then?” Susanne felt one of the clocks to make sure she was right, and she was. At least according to that clock.

                “I don’t know, about three hours?”

                “Should I wake her up?”

                “No, no.” I said, “I don’t think so. She was really tired. She might even sleep all night.”

                “I think she has been working too hard.” Susanne walked over to a cabinet and removed a cup. “Sustaining a farm all by yourself is pretty tough.” She felt around for the faucet, and within doing so, ran straight into me. “Oh! Sorry. I didn’t hear you there.”

                “It’s fine.” I moved out of the way, “So you going anywhere tonight?”

                “What’s it to you?” Susanne turned on the faucet and filled her cup with water.

                “Just wondering.” I said, “Because I was planning on cleaning for the rest of the day.”

                “You? Clean? For a day?” Susanne was suspicious, “What’s gotten into you, Caleb?”

                “I think I should do something nice for mom every once in a while.”

                “A while being twenty two years?” I saw Susanne’s eyebrow raise. She wasn’t even looking at me.

                “Well, maybe I have had a change in heart.”

                “Yeah.” Susanne scoffed, “Right. Well, anyway, Katie called me up and asked if I would translate some audio for her, and since it’s Friday, I thought I’d stay the night, so you can have your ‘cleaning day’. I’m leaving here in a half hour.”

                “Is Katie the one with the-“

                “Lisp? Yeah.” She cut me off, “That’s the one. Anyway, I better go get ready.” She crossed the dining room, ran into the wooden pillar that separated the dining room and the living room, composed herself afterward, and began walking down the hallway to her room.

                “Oh and Susanne-“ I stopped her, “What was the good news?”

                “Brad Steiny asked me out.” Susanne said, and went to her room before I had the chance to respond.

                It took her over an hour to leave, and mom still wasn’t awake by then. Was I unconscious for that long? I thought, When I left, the clock was around ten in the morning, and I was cleaning for a couple of hours, so that puts my time returning home at five o’clock, at least. So I was out for five hours?

                I had a lot of time to clean then, and that is exactly what I did. I cleaned the entire house from bottom up, and got most of the dirt and filth off the floor and countertops, shelves and windowsills. It looked a lot better, and only took me a total of five hours, fifteen buckets of water, and two rags. Wow, vision really helps with, well, everything.

                Since mom wasn’t awake yet, and Susanne was gone, I put away the cleaning supplies, sat down, put in a movie and watched the entire thing through, completely amazed by the imaging and technology. Before I knew it I had watched a second movie, and the sun finally started setting halfway through the third.

                “So beautiful.” Mom’s voice snapped me away from the movie. She was looking outside, “It is just how I imagined it to be. Just how your father described. The light in the sky, setting on the horizon. Beautiful.”

                “Mom!” I said, “You are awake! And can see.”

                “Your father… he could see.” Mom explained, not breaking her gaze from the sunset, “He described all of these beautiful things, like the sunset and the trees, and the birds and the rolling fields, and the blue sky and the starry night. I always knew he wasn’t crazy. I always knew there was something special about him, and that his descriptions weren’t just senseless rambling about imaginary things. I knew there was something there, and that I could almost see it but something was stopping me. Something made me blind to all of the beautiful things he was seeing. You must’ve broken that, Caleb. Something in your mind snapped, and you showed me how to break that, too.” I saw a tear run down my mother’s face, “If only your father would be here to enjoy this beautiful sunset. He would’ve loved it.”

                I didn’t know what to say. I was so dumbfounded with my mother, on not only her description of what she was seeing, but about her calmness on the aspect of her vision in the first place. She was so calm, looking into the sunset. So… at peace. “I’m sure he would’ve.” I said after a while.

                “So.” Mom stood up, “Now that we can see, what are we going to do about the entire ‘three days to live’ problem?”

                I’d completely forgotten about that. “Oh. Right. That. We should probably go to the facility and figure out how they found this answer, because it definitely doesn’t seem like we are spiraling towards a singularity.”

                “Right.” Mom smiled, then said, “Well, you are a bit more handsome than I imagined.”

                “Thanks, mom.” I rolled my eyes, “Let’s go.”

 

()

 

                We reached the facility just as the sun disappeared over the horizon. I ran past the doors and through all of the gates, and led my mom through the main room of the facility

                “Caleb, is that you?” I heard the voice of my boss from across the facility.

                “Yeah. What are you doing here?” I asked him. My boss was leaning over the railing on the third floor of the facility.

                “Do you really believe it? How we only have three days left?” My boss asked.

                “I’m not sure.” I said.

                “Well I don’t want to die.” My boss said, “I don’t want to fall into a singularity.”

                “If you want my honest opinion, sir.” I said, “I don’t think we are going to die.”

                “If we are in a black hole, we are all going to die anyway.” My boss said, “So what’s the point of living?”

                “Listen, we aren’t in a black hole.” I said to him, “We all just forgot how to see.”

                My boss laughed for a long while, “Forgot how to see? How could’ve we forgot how to see? That’s impossible.”

                “Is it as impossible as sun-reliant plants living in complete darkness?” I asked back, “Is it as possible for the world to be still alive inside a black hole in the first place?”

                This made my boss think for a second. “There is no other explanation.” He said after a while, “We can’t just forget how to see. We can’t just-“

                “What other possible explanation do we have?” I asked, “That black hole thing is just something we all made up, to quantify the confusion of the darkness. Whatever data we have is completely wrong. We aren’t crashing into a singularity. We aren’t going to die. It was all some kind of hoax that kept us from the truth.”

                “And what would that truth be?”

                “I don’t know.” I said, “But that’s what I’m looking for.”

                “Well how do you expect to find that here?” My boss asked, “This is just an old science facility.  I don’t even know what it was for.”

                “Particle acceleration.” I responded, “That’s what it was for. But we have to find something that will give us a clue, something-“

                “Did you say particle acceleration?” My boss cut me off, “This plant is for particle acceleration?”

                “Yes.”

                “So that means it has some kind of history of all its findings. Why don’t you find when those stop? That should give you a date, at least. I don’t know how you could read them, being that they are past century books, but if you can, maybe there are some audio files.”

                “Do you know where I could find these?”

                “I think they are in the basement.” My boss said, “IF there is one. I’m pretty sure someone was talking about how there was a basement earlier so, hopefully you could find something there.”

                “Thank you.” I said to him.

                “No. Thank you.” He said back, “You have given me hope again.”

                We ran around the facility, looking for some entrance to the basement, and we found one. It was relatively close to my office, actually, but we had to break open the door to get in. My master key didn’t work for the basement door either, so we broke the small window on the door and got through that way.

                The basement was cold. Really, really cold. I could see my own breath, and my mother was shivering behind me. Why was it so cold? I looked around, trying to find a door that said ‘archives’ or ‘research findings’,  but found nothing. Eventually, we reached the last door on the hallway, which was wide open. Inside was a temperature controlled room, but the settings were set to -30 degrees Celsius.

                It was literally freezing inside, and everything within was frozen solid. Fortunately for us, this was the archives room, and all of the files were frozen solid. Did someone do this intentionally? I thought, then started searching. My mother and I scoured the files, trying to find the most recent data file.

                “I got it!” Mom shouted from across the room, “It’s dated for over three hundred years ago.”

                “Three hundred?” I asked, “Didn’t we only stop seeing about a hundred and fifty years ago?”

                “Yeah.” Mom answered, “Maybe we can find some files on what happened before we lost all of our vision.” We continued searching, for quite a while, and I was shivering violently when I found the file box we were looking for. This box was right next to the cooler, and was nothing more than a block of ice. I could tell the file crate was inside, but someone with no vision would only think this was an ice block. I picked it up, told my mom to get out of here, and that was got what we were looking for, and carried it out of the room. My hands hurt from the cold ice by the time we got out of the basement, and I could no longer feel them when I set the ice block down on my desk.

                “So what do you think is inside?” Mom asked me.

                “I don’t know.” I said, “I really don’t know. Something important.”

                “Do we have to wait for it to melt?”

                “No.” I said impatiently, picking up the ice block. I violently threw the block on the floor, and it shattered into pieces, making my mother jump a little. The box in the middle was unharmed, and upon opening it, noticed the contents weren’t even cold.

                “What the-“ I said, filtering through the pages. They were just newspapers, articles, and magazines. “How is this important?” I rhetorically asked my mother.

                “No idea.” She shrugged, “But there has to be something.”

                We looked through the magazines, newspapers, and articles for hours, and as soon as we had everything read through, we still had nothing.

                “These don’t have any correlation at all.” I shook my head, “One is about cats, and the next one is about the advances of particle acceleration. Why are all of these packed into the same box?”

                “I did notice something.” Mom said, “They are all written with a similar style. All of them are… opinionated.”

                “Well who are they written by?” I asked.

                “I’m not sure…” Mom said, “I couldn’t see a writer.”

                “Here we go.” I picked up one of the articles, “Vernon Hans.” I said, “They are all written by Vernon Hans.”

                “Vernon Hans?” Mom was surprised, “No, it couldn’t be him.”

                “What do you mean?”

                “Vernon Hans was a friend of your father’s.” Mom said, “You father talked about Vernon all the time. “

                “Well, he is where we go next.” I said, “So where does he live?”

                “I’m not sure.” Mom said, “Your father said so much, but never where he lived. I never met him, either.”

                “Well where do you think he lives?”

                Suddenly my boss walked into my office, “Vernon lives in the wilderness.” He said, “Somewhere in Caprica Forest. I had to deal with him a while back. He’s mad, in my opinion.”

                “What did he deal in?” I asked.

                “Marijuana.” My boss seemed a little shameful, “He was my dealer.”

                “You…-“

                “Yes.” My boss cut me off, “It helps calm me down. I have no regrets. That time has passed. But now, I believe you are searching for truth, or an answer, and if you are looking for Vernon, you will look there.”

                “Thank you.” Mom said to him.

                “Give Vernon my regards.” My boss said.

                “We will.” Mom assured him, and we left.

 

()

 

                Caprica Forest was on the outskirts of the city, about five miles from the facility. Travelling on moonlight, we walked the entire distance, only resting for minutes at a time. The sun was starting to rise by the time we reached Caprica forest.

                At this point, I had realized I had been up for nearly twenty hours. The only sleep I’d gotten in the past couple days was when I was unconscious in the observatory. We had to keep going, though. We had to push forward.

                “Where do we start?” Mom asked, looking at the huge expanse of forest in front of us.

                “Dead smack in the middle.” I said, “We should be able to find him if we reach the middle and spiral out from there.”

                “I doubt that would be very efficient…” Mom said, “What if we start by circling the edge and moving into the middle?”

                “What if his house is in the middle?”

                “What if his house is on the outside?”

                “What if he doesn’t have a house at all?” I had the last word, “Then what?”

                “Then nothing.” Mom said,” Then we could be searching for him forever.”

                “Well, let’s just find his patch.” I said, “You know, the weed patch.”

                “Yeah. Sure.”

                “What, it’s a big and seeable target. And he would visit it a lot. So… good idea?”

                “Good enough, I guess.” Mom shrugged, then we started searching.

                We looked around for about an hour, just cris-crossing around the forest. Once the sun was just over the horizon, we found the patch. It wasn’t that large, only about thirty by thirty feet. The plants stuck up in rows, and were fertilized, and some looked freshly harvested. We looked around for a path of some sort, and found one that led back to a small grotto under a tree, where we heard a fire burning and smelled smoke. “Hello?” I shouted from outside the grotto.

                “Wha? Who’s there!?” A scruffy, old voice sounded from the grotto.

                “We are looking for Vernon Hans. Are you him?” I continued.

                “Why do you care?” He quickly answered, “If you are here for pot, I’m not selling!”

                “We aren’t here for the pot we are here for some answers.”

                “Oh yeah?” The door opened to reveal Vernon. He was on older man, probably in his fifties, with a long, grey beard and dirty, loose clothing. He was very thin, and wore a scowl with eternal discontent. The most worrying thing about him, though, is that, instead of eyes, he had swollen scabs across his face. “What kinda answers?”

                “We want to know why your file was in the Cahren Particle Acceleration facility, covered in ice.”

                This set Vernon aback. “ I continued.

                “Why do you care?” He quickly answered, “If you are here for pot, I’m not selling!”

                “We aren’t here for the pot we are here for some answers.”

                “Oh yeah?” The door opened to reveal Vernon. He was on older man, probably in his fifties, with a long, grey beard and dirty, loose clothing. He was very thin, and wore a scowl with eternal discontent. The most worrying thing about him, though, is that, instead of eyes, he had swollen scabs across his face. “What kinda answers?”

                “We want to know why your file was in the Cahren Particle Acceleration facility, covered in ice.”

                This set Vernon aback. “How did you find that? How did you-“ Then it hit him, “You can see, can’t you?”

                “We both can.” I said, gesturing to my mother.

                Vernon laughed a long, emotionless laugh. It was almost condescending, the laugh, and he had a huge smile across his face. “So you can. What poor creatures.”

                “I’m sorry?” Mom asked.

                “Your vision is a curse. Your memory is a curse. If you can see, you are doomed to die insane. Now get off my property.” Vernon turned and went to close his door.

                “Vernon, I’m Harry’s wife.” Mom stopped him in his tracks, “He could see, couldn’t he?”

                “Oh god…” Vernon trailed off, head drooped, “I knew this day would come.” He said that under his breath, thinking that we couldn’t hear it. “Why do you think he died?” Vernon spoke up.

                “Vernon, we need your help. Why has everyone forgotten how to see?” I tried to focus the conversation.

                “Come inside.” He gestured us inward, “I have some explaining to do.”  We entered the small house, where a joint was burning next to a couple of dying chairs. He had a fire going, and some strange brew cooking over it. “Sit down.” He gestured towards a couple of chairs across from his, next to the fire.

                “Can you see?” I asked him.

                “I don’t know, take a guess.” Vernon said. Since I paused he continued, “No. No I can’t see. I wouldn’t want to see even if I could.”

                “Why?”

                “Have some patience, why don’t you?” Vernon walked over to a dirty cabinet, tore open a drawer, and fumbled around in it until he found a spoon. He took the spoon, walked over to his chair, stirred his stew, and took a hit from his joint.

                “Do you really need to be smoking-“ Mom began.

                “Shut up.” Vernon cut her off, “Yeah. I do. Keeps me from killing myself. Turns out it helps more than just me.” He took another hit from his joint, then tossed into the fire. “What answers do you want? Apparently you think I have them, so go.”

                “Why has everyone forgotten how to see?” I asked.

                “They didn’t forget how to see.” Vernon said, “They couldn’t bear to see anymore.”

                “Can you explain that a bit more?”

                “What’s more to explain?” Vernon said, “Humanity lost its vision because it didn’t want to see itself anymore. It couldn’t bear to look in the mirror.”

                “Why?”

                Vernon laughed. “So kid. What do you think the date is today?”

                “June 23^rd, 2667,” I said to him.

                Vernon laughed again, “What are they teaching kids in school these days. The real date is March 19^th, 2492.” That shocked me a bit, and it did so as well for my mother. “Surprising?” Vernon continued, “Thought so. Humanity told itself to believe a false story: That our star had exploded and we were now in a black hole, spiraling towards our demise, when, in reality, nothing has changed. Your generation,” He gestured towards Mom, “Was the first to be born without knowing how to see. It hasn’t been three hundred years, and there isn’t a black hole that we are falling into. Humanity can’t see because it no longer wanted to, so it stopped.”

                “How?”

                “Three hundred years ago, Earth wasn’t as it is today. It was an overpopulated, unkept orgy of sin, death, and lawlessness. There was no government, no regulation, and no rules. Complete chaos. For a hundred years, humanity indulged itself on death, sex, and pleasure. There was no work done, no economy, no, well, anything except lust, sin, and chaos. Then, not so long ago, humanity looked in the mirror. They took a second to clear their minds from the fray, and look at what they have done.  Then the world really went to hell. Humanity was in total rebellion. Everyone was so repulsed, so sorry at what they have done that there were mass suicides, in the billions. There were people running away into what little was left of nature, and secluding themselves, melting in their own anguish. Even through this, humanity was done looking at itself. It was done having that which is the root of all evil, and that thing is sight. They were done looking at others, looking and enjoying. They were done looking at their past, and having that shame. They were done at looking at their bleak, death-filled future, so they stopped looking. They stopped seeing, and forgot how to see. They forgot because they couldn’t bear to remember.”

                “And that’s how-?”

                “Yes.” Vernon concluded, “That’s how everyone forgot. That’s why everyone can’t see, and that’s why I removed my own vision, because I couldn’t bear to see. Now, you and your mother have regained your vision.”

                “How did we do that?”

                “You wanted to.” Vernon said, “You wanted to see the world. You wanted to know what everything looks like, and you wanted to see what humanity truly is. So you did. You opened your eyes, or opened your soul. You can now see the world as it is. Then go, go and show the world itself again, we are ready. I believe humanity is again ready to see itself, for we have all forgotten what we once were. We must see ourselves again, for without this, we will cease to exist. You are the future of the world. Do not fail us.”

 END

Author's Note

I would really like to know if this is feesable to the human mind. Tell me if there is anything too out there, like a near-inunderstandable plot point or description. I would like for you to pick out plot holes, redundancy, etc.

Reviews

[Raynedog]

You’ve really set forth a challenge for yourself. On the one hand, you’ve eliminated the prime sense of vision so like those in your story, the reader must be feed an abundance of information via the remaining sense. This gives multiple opportunity to change the name, shape, and feel of something and reveal it or not at your leisure.
For instance, carrots, if Caleb was picking some tickle tops, in the days of site they called them carrots. You get the idea. I think you’ve opened up a playground here and should take full advantage and get the most bang for the buck out if the darkness that the story is set in.
It leaves me wanting to know more about how everything feels in the story, like I mean to the touch. It would occur to me that these people you write about would have some amazing perspective on how things feel and sound. That unique perspective is missing.
In terms of the setting it would also seem that the earth being in total darkness would strain the mind as to if the humans had all gone blind or if something happened to the all light. From a sicience perspective it would seem that light exists at still functions for things like photosynthesis but something has happened that changed the way it’s observed so that it no longer illuminates but does provide warmth and such.
The return of site or the viewing of light seems like it would be a painful and disorienting process and maybe I expected that to be a harder transition that it was for some reason.
I think that also, you have a great idea going here with the loss and regain of site but at the same time I felt the whole did it by choice thing doesn’t sell me. It feels based on the nature of the story that it would have been something done genetically and perhaps forcibly by a cult like group.
It would also make it a bit more miracle like if then someone where to begin to be able to see.

Lots of good nuggets of originality in there.