All Light Will Fall Read Free

was them. My ignorance confirmed it.
    I walked through the apartment in the dark. The television
was on in the living room. Fern sat crisscross in front of the halo-screen,
entranced by the bright flickering pixels.
    “What are you watching?” I asked.
    “The authorities, they’re stopping the investigation on
yesterday’s attack,” she said.
    “Oh,” I mumbled, “why’s that?”
    “It was a one man suicide, cased closed.”
    I didn’t like the way she spoke. She said it so simply, so
sweetly that it sent a chill running through me. “I wish they’d stop taking
about it. I really want to see the rotation,” Fern said.
    There is was again, that terrifying tone of hers. How could
she speak of death like that, like it was the wind blowing on a rainy day? How
could she speak of it so calmly? “Did you know Neptune will fall out of orbit
soon?” she asked. “They think it will crash into Uranus.”
    That’s right. How could I forget? Anything that wasn’t the
sky or related to it in some way was just another fact of life to Fern. She was
amazed by the sky, utterly obsessed with it.
    For years, the galaxy has been shifting. Planets and stars
go in and out quite often. Some return. Others journey far out into space and
vanish completely. We fear Earth will do the same. So far, we have been
fortunate. The moon still shines. The sun still rises. At least, that is what
we are told. Seventy years have passed since the Trinity Wars and the sky is
still covered in gray. I have never seen the stars. I have never seen the sun.
It is a wonder we survive.
    “My friends hope the debris reaches Earth so they can
collect the pieces,” Fern continued. “I told them it would be impossible. The
energy field will keep it from landing in the city.”
    “It is impossible,” I said.
    “They want to sneak past Norris Tower.”
    I crossed my arms. “As long as you don’t get any ideas.”
    “I’m not stupid,” Fern said. “Besides, I just want to see
Plymouth 2.”
    “You’ve seen it plenty of times.”
    “I know, but it gets closer every time, and you can see the
entire planet glow. It’s almost not a planet at all, but this fireball of
color. And the waves of light go in and out like the whole thing is breathing,
like it’s alive.”
    “If it gets any closer, it’ll run right into us.”
    Fern shook her head. “They said that Plymouth 2 has a fixed
orbital pattern...”
    “So?”
    “So they were able to determine the intervals that the
planet rotates. They said on its eight hundredth orbit it will be closer to
Venus. Sooner or later it will leave the solar system.”
    “Says who?”
    Fern shrugged. “Them,” she said, pointing to the
halo-screen.
    By them, she meant ARTIKA.
    ARTIKA was the government division established after the
Trinity Wars. When ARTIKA was born, democracy, capitalism, and global
enterprise became obsolete. The status quo was no longer built on a system of
currency. It was built on a system of world order.
    ARTIKA controlled everything: technology, media, social
behavior, national security. There was nothing it couldn’t create and nothing
it couldn’t destroy. She was the mother system, the push and pull of the earth
that nurtured all things living. She thrived in the center of Helix City as
this massive pillar of light. That energy beaming above ARTIKA headquarters
never died out. It was alive.
    Through that newly discovered energy, ARTIKA revolutionized
the human way of life. The energy, known as halos, was not of the earth. It was
supernatural in origin. In 2070, ARTIKA was able to harvest the halos energy.
With it, they did miraculous things.
    ARTIKA used halos for agricultural growth. Anything we ate
contained halos. It was used for everything. ARTIKA used it to filter water,
build buildings, light residencies, and power metro stations. Later, however,
they developed ways to use halos for more violent and unnatural means.
    Eventually, halos