A Society in the Dark

At first when the light began to burn, the world didn’t know how to react. Sunscreen and lotion sellers claimed to herald salvation with their ad crusades, and the world assumed only the sun burned. After all, only an instant with Sol was enough for the searing pain to start, and people couldn’t tell their blistering sunburns from the burn of their phones and fluorescent bulbs.

Quickly though, the world realized it was all light that made our skin curl and was quick to adjust. By night, blinds were made blackout, and society learnt to sleep through the toxic day. The markets switched to 9:30pm-4am, and cell phones were shut off permanently. TVs vanished, and rotary phones were rolled out with the radios. 

If light reached your retina, it burned your skin. To escape the gleaming inferno, humanity gave up its sight, and the blind became our guides. There was no way of saving the white-collar office jobs, and so the sun had set on the age of corporate greed: the billionaire class vanished, and wealth returned to the masses. With no digital screens, working from home became impossible for most professions, and homes once again became family sanctuaries. In all this, we learnt which professions really mattered. Electricians, facing a daily luminous torment, were hailed as heroes and the vitality of clear walkways made janitors community champions. 

With the streetlights shut off, we couldn’t see roads and thus couldn’t drive. Only railed transit was safe, and in this world of radiant burning, even millionaires found themselves riding in the same train cars with the rest of society, plunged into an equality of visual absence. Trains became the center of scientific innovation: smaller, faster, and more widespread. 

The coasts became only a few hours apart, and rural communities thrived with the new interconnectivity. Even once intercity trains built their ivory first class cars, the wealthy rode in the same darkness and shuffled from the station like everyone else. Isolated in the dark, people found themselves more connected than they’d ever known. 

Digital phones were left in a brighter era, and online shopping died overnight. With no way to see others anyway, the beauty industry collapsed, and sweatshops vanished. Society’s celebrities became philosophers and scientists, and people were finally judged only by the content of their character. With blindness now universal, disability was rethought. Finally free from prejudice, a more equal, certain, and enlightened society was born.

We couldn’t pollute as before, so climate change became an issue of the past. Stars returned to the cities, and the night sky became a clear tapestry of the cosmos. It surprised people, just how full the sky was. To minimize stumbling, the world’s communities installed walk lights along their sidewalks–pointing strictly down from a quarter inch above the ground. Every fourth step had its corners just barely lit every thirty seconds, which, in the new glossy blackness of our urban jungles, made the most magnificent runway effect, but society never got over just how dark the night really was. The world left their sight and poison smog in a dimmer era.

With roads carless and desolate, nature returned to the cities. Fortunately, inhuman animalia wasn’t affected by the lethal light as severely. The world went dark, but it was never fuller of sound. Songbirds replaced the cries of car horns, and the perfume of gardens overtook the world. People found themselves more comfortable touching others, guiding even strangers by the hand through the dark.

On full moons, the night was too bright for the workplace commute, so it became something of a regular holiday. Families stayed home playing games and telling stories. They’d made trips the night before the full moon to wake in the warmth of the grandparents’ home. Kids across the globe became closer with their families, and spending full moons together became an early milestone for young lovers. Unable to see one another, people became known by their voice, their words, their thoughts, their soul. 

Medical and fire personnel responding to emergency calls were bound to the same rail lines as anyone else—even in their metal sunproof suits—so advanced medical training became standard for a few people on each block. Houses were linked by intricate tunnel systems, trekked through with hands tracing along the exposed dirt walls. Lovestruck teens used the tunnels to sneak out, loving each other buried beneath the poison day. 

With only people’s hands to guide them, sex became more tender and exclusive to partnerships with deep trust already built. It became synonymous with gently caressing another, tracing their body under yours to position yourselves and line lips to lips. To know your partner physically meant gingerly trailing along, by the inch, every crevice of their body—finding every ridge, bump, blemish, and hair.  Even softly brushing the hair from your partner’s face became a sacred act of intimacy; it came with a new vulnerability that society took as divine. 

It became rare, precious, and intimate to know how someone looked. The ultimate act of love became wanting to see another—to trace lazily along their lips, gazing into their eyes—so much so that you’re willing to burn for it. With no mirrors, you’re likely to never see yourself personally, spending your precious sighted moments staring enchanted by your partner, entrusting them with a part of your soul that not even you know, learning your eye color only from their soft whisper. Couples lived, loved, and died only actually seeing each other a handful of times–locking eyes under the flickering matchlight of a bygone, blinded era for a single magnificent moment. 

Only in the night, could we leave a darker society in the past.