Forever Sun

Colton Kelso took off his dark glasses and rubbed his pink eyes. They burned. He groped around for the small vial. He put two drops in each eye. The burning subsided a little, and Colton resumed staring at the faces on the blue screen in front of him. Class was boring and Colton was tired. It was hard for him to sleep. In the sphere, it was day forever. The sun shone always, providing light and power and a consistently hot temperature. It never wavered. Night in the sphere was an artificial construct, a technological marvel created by automatic shades that opened and closed at set times. But outside, it was always daylight. The contrived circadian rhythm that this created routinized life, made it easy--and boring. Times were controlled by computer. Eat meals at the same time. You had no choice because the computer generated your food whether you were hungry or not. If you did not finish by a certain time, the food was recycled. It hardly mattered, since the supply of energy was boundless. People could waste whatever they wanted. That very morning Colton had passed on the computer's selection of waffles, synthesized strawberries, and warm syrup. Now his stomach was angry and it was still an hour to lunch.

School was also regimented to the rhythm of automatic night. Every student attended every day at the same time to listen to the computerized teacher drone on about one of the many subjects that children were now expected to know. Because of his condition, Colton's school consisted of learning from the comfort of his house. Today's lesson was ancient history, a prolegomenon to the so-called Dyson sphere. The computerized history teacher, with the voice of a stoic human female and the expressionless face of a statue described how the idea of the sphere was really first conceived by Stapledon in 1937 of the old calendar. Of course, then the idea was far away, a Utopian fiction rooted in antiquated Enlightenment values and a now extinct Christian mythos. Dyson only expanded the concept, describing stations orbiting a star in order to tap its energy--all the energy a world would ever need. Perhaps, the computer joked, our home should be called a Stapeldon sphere instead.

The idea of the sphere remained a phantom in the minds of a handful of scientists and several dozen more science fiction writers until Swamachandra outlined how to build the first stations nearly two hundred fifty years later (old calendar). It took time to figure out some of the finer points of physics--calculations of orbits that would not decay; protection from radiation; damage control from random objects sucked into the gravity well of the star that would defy statistical odds and collide with the stations. And then the finer points of computation also had to be addressed. As the computerized teacher explained, Bradbury's Matrioska brains require very fine calculations to ensure proper energy draw without overloading. It took more than a century (old calendar) to create a computer sophisticated enough to even conceptualize the necessary calculations. Again, the computerized teacher joked that it took a computer to build a computer. Another bland joke followed, that the giant computer should really be called the Bradbury Brain.

Colton Kelso understood little of the lesson. He was too tired and anxious. He had trouble sleeping because of the perpetual day. Everything was so bright, as if the sphere was somehow built too close to the sun. He hated going outside into the arid heat, preferring to stay inside where it was cooler. The sun, of course, was the bigger problem. The perpetual day flooded the sphere with ultraviolet rays. Colton's bleach white skin burned when exposed to the forever sun. Once, several years ago, when the insomnia first manifested, his parents took Colton to Axis Point, a vacation spot at the intersection of several nodes. There, families could experience weightlessness for an entire week! Floating through museums and eating meals in the clouds, renting airtrams to glide above the urban sprawl, it was a fun trip for Colton's parents. Colton, however, suffered in the hot dry air and the bright sun. Clouds were rarities in that region of the sphere, for some reason condensing only over certain regions of the artificially constructed mega-environment. In the structures that comprised the single enormous city of the sphere, water was created by slamming hydrogen and oxygen together and pumping it through a system that circulated it in fixed quantities through every home and business. Computers adjusted the rations based on complex variables of perceived need and availability. Requests for more water were rarely granted. Once, Colton recalled, his father requested more water to start a garden. “Request denied. Sufficient nutritious food is provided for each resident.”

Colton came back from vacation red skinned and very sore. The pain was worse than it should be. His eyes burned, too. A trip to the physician proved a useless endeavor. The robotic doctor, faceless and impersonal, examined Colton's red skin and watery eyes. A laser scanner was passed over his arm. Normally a benign process, Colton writhed in pain as the concentrated photons converted an image of his skin into millions of data points for analysis. The doctor paused for a moment, searching the millions of medical cases and files. Without looking at anyone in particular, the doctor said “sunburn due to oculocutaneous albinism, type OCA1A” in an almost human voice. “Apply cream ST-1a twice daily. Time allotted has elapsed. Have a good day.” The skin cream did little to alleviate the intense pain.

The history lesson continued. The robotic teacher droned on. “The first attempt to construct a Dyson station to efficiently harness energy from a star did not begin until 2722, old calendar. First, a suitable star had to be selected. O-type stars historically have been considered the best classification of star around which to construct a Dyson sphere. The--”

“Can you explain what an O-type star is?” asked one of the students. Colton, whose eyes were drooping and whose head was spinning, did not see who asked.

The computerized teacher paused for a moment, accessing. “In the Yerkes classification system, an O-type star is characterized as a blue-white hot star with a spectral type O. An O-type star has surface temperatures that range from 30,000 to 52,000 Kelvin. This classification is notable for its high ultraviolet light. This makes it ideal for harnessing energy to power a Dyson sphere. The most current map of the galaxy has identified no fewer than 732 O-type stars. However, it is estimated that as many as 20,000 such stars could exist in the Milky Way.

“Of the 732 mapped O-type stars, 19 have been tapped for Dyson Sphere construction. Three spheres have been completed. We are living on the first completed sphere, surrounding the O-type star Mu Columbae. The other two completed spheres were built around Zeta Ophiuchi and 10-Lacertae. Three new spheres are currently under construction.”

The robotic teacher displayed a map of the galaxy and the relative position of each of the Dyson spheres, giving students time to look. It then moved away from the diversion and resumed the original lesson. Colton's head bobbed as he drifted in and out of sleep. Learning from the computer was not at all the same as being in the classroom. He missed his classmates and his friends. He missed the field trips too. At first, Colton's friends tried to find ways to include him, but it only made things worse in the end. They would describe in detail the trip to Elemental Beach, and how the different substances shimmered in the light. They brought pictures. They described how they were able to wade in the expansive but shallow lake. Imagine that, an actual lake! It was part of the original construction--one of many such lakes--to be used for recreation and as an emergency water source. Now, it was the largest remaining lake in the sphere. Gradually, the waters of the smaller lakes evaporated. As each lake evaporated, new structures were built over the empty space to accommodate a growing population. Some lakes were intentionally drained to provide water to families settling in the arid landscape.

Of course, Colton could not make the trip. His condition made it impossible. Every trip outside into the harsh never-ending sunlight left his exposed skin red and his eyes stinging. His friends, seeing how their description of the trip disturbed him, then tried shifting the narrative that the trip was not that fun.

“I mean, the beach was colorful,” said Nikola, “but I think the pictures are better. The sand was so hot it burned. You don't have that problem with pictures.”

“The water was too shallow to do anything really,” Elena added.

“Yeah, we just waded in to cool our burning feet.”

“You can't even take boats out anymore. The water is too shallow.”

“And I guess it's polluted some too,” Nikola said.

Elena showed him a souvenir. “It's a sample of all of the different elements that are on the beach. Look how colorful it is.” Colton nodded. He wished he could have gone, and the conversation depressed him. He felt a deep resentment, not at his friends, but at his condition. His ghostly white skin not only made him a pariah to the sun, but to people as well. At first, his friends came to his house frequently to visit. They told him about trips to the shopping district, low gravity skating, and many other activities that Colton would never get to experience.

Over time, his friends came over less and less often. They still called on the computer, regaling him with their adventures both daring and frightening. “Stix and I painted graffiti on the Maudlin panel. You know, the one we pass every day on the way to the rec,” Nikola bragged.
“No way! If you get caught that could be trouble,” Colton said through the computer screen.

“It was pretty terrifying. If the security police saw us, we would have been toasted big time.”

“They still might find you. There are cameras everywhere.”

“Yeah, I guess. That's one advantage of never getting to go out,” Nikola said.

One advantage, perhaps, but there were too many disadvantages. Never being able to go outside and enjoy the sunshine in a world where the sun shone all of the time and the weather was good all of the time was a pretty big problem for young Colton Kelso. Elena had a nice tan, but the same exposure would have killed Colton, or at least put him in agony until the sunburn healed. And his red eyes--they would have been ravaged with corneal blindness.

Eventually, even the computer visits stopped. He saw his friends only in class through the blue glare of the computer screen as the robotic computer teacher, the faceless ruler of the intellect, droned on with no regard for the emotional or social well-being of the students. This was especially true of the one student who could not be present in the classroom. Rather, he was consigned to the loneliness of his home.

Colton tried wearing clothes that covered as much of his skin as possible, and dark sunglasses to shield his eyes from the forever sun. It worked for a while. But the fabric, specially designed to breathe in the arid and windless environment let in a little light, and even that little light caused unimaginable redness and pain. The sunglasses had to be specially made, with wrap-around flaps to protect his eyes from the sides. Still, some light snuck in. Once, Colton's corneas got burned by the forever sun and, nearly blind, he groped around the house for several days.
Colton's mind stopped wandering for the moment. The robotic teacher was still droning on.

“--which means that the first sphere was incomplete when the first colonists began to inhabit it. The Earth was fundamentally dead, with only some algal bloom remaining in the shallow seas. Changes in the the sun, which is classified as a G-main type dwarf star, coupled with significant environmental degradation caused the climate to be progressively inhospitable to human life.”

“Not unlike what is happening to me on Mu Columbae,” Colton quipped.

Programmed to respond to questions or comments, the robotic teacher paused. “Mr. Kelso, did you have a question?”

“No,” Colton said. “I was simply commenting that for some of us, this sphere is not very conducive to human life.”

“The comment,” said the robotic teacher, “has no relevance to the current discussion. Please refrain from--”

“It has relevance to me” shouted Colton, slapping the table. His pink eyes swelled with tears, and he began to snivel. “All of you get to go out! You get to go to Elemental Beach and Four Corners and the saline dunes and all of the other places and I have to stay in this miserable house with miserable parents and no friends! The damn sun burns all the time, and I can't even enjoy it. Does that sound habitable to you?”

The only sound coming from the the robotic teacher was a gentle whirring, a sound it made when it did not know what to say. Some of Colton's classmates found the tirade funny and made faces at him through the monitor. One of them hastily scribbled “Lobster boy” on his pad and held it up to the screen. Elena and Nikola looked at each other and then hung their heads.

“The comment,” the robotic teacher said once it was done whirring, “has no relevance to the current discussion. Please refrain from distractions and direct attention to the lesson. Have a nice day.”

“Unfeeling piece of shit,” Colton said under his breath. He hoped the robotic teacher did not hear, but it was virtually impossible to not be heard. The computers, the surveillance, were everywhere. Virtually every word, every action was recorded. That was one price paid for civilization.

“Three demerits for Mr. Colton Kelso duly recorded,” the robotic instructor said. It hardly mattered to Colton. Accumulated demerits meant only that a student could not attend school trips.

“Also, Mr. Nikola Goodrich, sphere security would like to have a word with you after school has adjourned.”

Hoots and hollers. The robotic teacher and its programming was struggling to maintain order. Situations of this sort were rare in the sphere and the programming used so infrequently that it had to be retrieved. Once the class settled down, the faceless computer with the almost human voice resumed its lesson.

After school, Elena dialed Colton on the monitor. “I just wanted say I am sorry,” Elena said, “for not calling much. I feel really bad. I think Nikola is going to call you later, if they don't arrest him.”

“What's that all about?” Colton asked.

“He and Stix vandalized a Maudlin panel.”

“I thought he was kidding,” Colton gasped. “He is always bragging and I thought this was another one of his boasts.”

“No. Stix put him up to it. Some kind of dare. I guess Stix is in trouble too. They have them both on camera.”

“Can't hide anywhere,” Colton said.

“Maybe in your house,” said Elena, who immediately thought better of it. “Sorry. Hey, me and Nikola are dating now.”

“That's...that's good, I guess,” Colton said, stunned. He had always liked Elena, but he long ago realized that there was no hope there. Elena was a goer, a doer. She was always on some kind of excursion or trip or vacation to some far-off place in the sphere. She had been to all of the major landmarks at least once and was now making rounds at some of the lesser known destinations. Her last trip took her to the old Earth Museum, where interested tourists could watch a time lapse video of the warming climate and the declining habitability and the stretch into space that culminated in the colonization of the Dyson spheres. Visitors could experience trees and vegetable gardens, though on a much smaller scale than at the Clayton Botanical Gardens. There, tourists with enough money could buy actual garden grown vegetables from the gift shop. The Earth Museum lacked such sophistication, since many people had forgotten about old Earth or had become apathetic over the centuries. Elena was not that interested in the displays but did become fascinated by the idea of night--natural darkness. And the length of darkness varied with seasons. It took a while for the concept of seasons to sink in. In the sphere, the sun shone always. The only dark was artificial when buildings shut their blinds. Even then, small beams of light squeezed through, forbidding total darkness. In the sphere, there were no seasons. It was always sunny and always hot. The ultraviolet light from the O class star bombarded the sphere without respite.

At the museum, Elena was introduced to the concept of snow. At first, she did not believe it could be true. The tour guide tried to explain the phenomenon to the visitors, but most were left just as baffled by the idea as when the tour began. When Elena tried to explain the idea to Nikola and Colton they laughed at the joke and dismissed it without a second thought.

“Don't feel that way,” Elena said to Colton. “Nikola is a good guy and he does not want to hurt you any more than I do. But you know--” her voice faded like retreating snow.

“I get it. I'm happy for you,” Colton lied. Really, he was sorry for himself. In the vast expanse of the sphere, Elena was the prettiest girl he knew. Her bright brown eyes and illuminating smile were framed by tawny shoulder length hair. Her skin was well tanned from the forever sun that powered the lives of a hundred billion people. Elena's smile, Colton used to say to himself, was brighter and kinder than Mu Columbae. He always fancied himself holding her hand, walking along the shimmering colors of the elemental beach. But with his pigmentless skin being sensitive to the invisible ultraviolet rays that forever emanated from Mu Columbae, his plans were merely dreams. Besides, his paper white skin and glowing pink eyes were not exactly handsome features. His desires remained unfulfilled. From the first sunburn, Colton became confined physically. Now his isolation was social and psychological as well.

And if not Elena, then who? It is not like you can meet new people in the confines of a small house. Among a hundred billion people Colton was utterly alone. He wondered even if he was the only one like him--the only albino on a world of forever sun.

“I am really sorry that things turned out this way,” Elena said, trying to comfort Colton.

“Not as sorry as I am,” Colton replied.

“You almost blew the head off the teacher today.”

“Better luck next time.”

Nikola appeared on the screen. “Colton, that was really something, totally staggering. That stupid robot almost lost its head.” He had joined just in time to hear Elena direct the conversation to the day's event.

“Glad to see you,” Colton said. “Congratulations, by the way.” He saw Nikola's confused expression.

“I told him,” Elena said.

“Sorry, man. I mean, I was going to tell you, but you know how it is with friends, and --”

“Don't worry,” Colton interrupted. “I am not mad. I am glad for you. Really.” It sounded unconvincing.

“So how did it go with security?” Elena asked Nikola.

“Oh, yeah. No detention. I have to clean up the graffiti and do some community service. Stix got the same. Lucky there was no fine. My parents would have lost it.”

“You have to stop hanging out with that goob,” Colton said. “He is bad news.”

“Yeah, but he's fun. This place can get so dull, and you have to live a little.” Immediately, Nikola realized the damage that his words had done. It was too late to take them back. The best he could do was offer an apology.

“No worries,” Colton lied again. “Listen, I have to go. I think dinner is coming through the chute and you know how prompt the computer is.”

“Take care,” Elena said. “I'll check in on you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Nikola said. “Tomorrow.”

Nikola stomped his foot after he disconnected. He cursed himself. This was one of the reasons why he had stayed away, why he found it so hard to be friends with Colton now. It was too hard to monitor what you said. Colton was so sensitive--sometimes more to words than to light. It was not Nikola's fault that Colton could not go out. It was not his fault that Colton could not enjoy the sights and sounds, so he had to stay confined to his house all of the time. It was not his fault that Colton could not date. Why should he have to change his entire life just to make his friend feel good? Why should he have to watch what he says in every conversation? It was hard. It was too much to ask, but he tried.

The monitor transitioned to a blue screen, but Colton could not see it through his watery and burning eyes. This time, they were not burning from the forever sun. They were burning from rage. Rage over Nikola's thoughtless words and rage over Elena's slip up and rage that she was dating Nikola when it should be Colton holding her hand and taking in her smile and wading in the lake. Colton felt rage at his condition, which had gradually worsened for the last five years, so that now his isolation was complete. Rage that he was trapped in his house with his miserable parents who hardly ever spoke to him. Rage at the forever sun. Rage at the death of a planet he had never seen. He blamed it for his circumstances, somehow. It's distance in space and time held no grudge, and so it was easy to blame. His mind raced with frustration and his eyes burned with rage.
He went and found his mother, who was stoically polishing the walls of their sterile little house.

“Is this all that there is?” he asked her.

“Huh?”

“I can never leave the house. Is this the best that I can hope for?”

“You have everything you need.”

“Oh?” Colton questioned.

“You have a house and two parents who love you and food and water. You have a good school and friends.”

“And?”

“And what else do you need?” his mother asked, still polishing.

“A life,” Colton said. “I can't do anything.”

“I am sure I don't know what you mean,” he mother replied.

“I can never leave the house! I can't go to Elemental Beach. I can't go to the old Earth Museum. I can't go to the lake. I can't go to the weightless Four Corners. I can't do anything.”

“What in the sphere would you want to go to any of those things for? They are all just tourist traps. You remember when your dad and I took you to on the zero-gravity vacation at Axis Point? It cost a lot. It was fun, but a few quick shakes and you are done, and it is time to go home and go back to work and school. Besides, there are pictures. You can look at them.” All the while, Colton's mother did not look up from her chores. She did not hear the emptiness in his voice and did not see that he had been crying.

“Pictures? That is not the same at all as the experience,” Colton argued. “You do not live for pictures of experiences. There is no challenge here. Eat, sleep, work, school. And I can't sleep, I can't work, I go to school on a computer, and everything else is done for me. I want to do something for myself.”

“I am sure I do not know what you mean,” his mother said again.

“I have no friends. And even if I did, I cannot go anywhere with them. No way to meet a girl when you cannot leave your house.”

“Uh huh,” said his mother, only half-listening now. She was polishing the frames of the automatic doors. “A girl. Someday you will meet a nice girl.”
“Never mind,” Colton said, exasperated. “You are not even listening.”

The alarm rang for dinner. Today the computer chose chicken rubbed in herbs, seasoned rice and asparagus. Nothing was real, of course. Almost nothing was grown in the artificial sphere. The weather was too hot and too dry and soil was a precious thing, reserved for the arboretums. What little soil existed outside of those protected places was weathered and bereft of any nutrients that plants would need to grow. There were no microbes, either. The mycorrhizal fungi needed for plant health had gradually died on old Earth and contributed to its destruction. It did not exist in the thin artificial soil of Mu Columbae. Instead, the arboretums had to rely on artificial means to keep the trees alive. Of course, they did not grow as large or as lovely. They rarely fruited. The grand red oaks that would soar eighty feet above the ground on old Earth managed barely twenty in the limited confines of the sphere surrounding Mu Columbae. The black walnut tree, so majestic and hardy in its natural environment, was a bent, limp specimen with a handful of branches and no nuts. A couple of hardy ferns grew in the shade of the walnut, eking a living from the fragile soil. The director of arboretum had attempted to introduce fungi from the collection brought from Earth, but all of them resisted attempts at colonization. How different from humans, who took to the task so easily.

Colton sat down with his parents at the table and ate the chicken dinner that had been neatly materialized from the energy of Mu Columbae. There was a brief pause, almost a prayer, before the family dug into their synthesized meal.

“How was your day?” Colton's mother asked her husband.

“It was like any other. It was fine. We worked on the condensers again. The damn things keep shorting out.”
“Sounds dangerous,” said Colton's mother.

“Not if you keep the insulation on. As long as you're careful there is nothing to worry about.”

“That's nice.”

After that, barely a word was spoken between any of them. Colton knew that they did not understand him. No matter how he tried, no matter what he said, they simply could not understand a pigmentless man on an artificial and burning world. They had long ago stopped trying to figure it out. They had long ago given up on making Colton happy.

After dinner, Colton retired once again to his room. He tried to read, but his eyes burned. He used more eye drops, which helped ease some of the physical pain. The worse pain--the real pain--was inside. It was a pain trapped inside of a body on fire, and there was little hope for escape. Colton tried words. He sat down at his desk, pulled out his tablet, and began writing. Perhaps if he wrote it all down his parents might finally understand the terrible suffering of albinism in a world of forever sun. Perhaps some empathy would grow in them. Perhaps they would realize that for once, there was no technological solution to the problems of life. Not all things can be solved merely by harvesting raw solar energy. Perhaps they would finally care about the warming climate, the loss of water. Perhaps they would grasp the loss that Colton felt being trapped. The sense of confinement--the sense of hopelessness--was overwhelming. The whole world was a cage. All was despair. Only because of his pain could Colton see the truth.

When the letter was finished, it was late. All of the artificial lights in the house had been turned off and the shades had been closed to keep out the worst of the light, though Mu Columbae--the forever sun--still blazed brightly outside of their house. Colton wrapped himself from head to toe and put on his sunglasses. On the way out the door, he left the pad where his mother would certainly find it. The sun blazed on his clothes. The heat was nearly unbearable. Unlike most people in the sphere, Colton was not used to the intense heat.

Colton hurried down the deserted street. Even though the sun still shone, it was very late and past curfew. Colton did not want to get caught by the patrols. No doubt they would take him home, and home was the last place that he wanted to be. He tried to keep to the shadows cast by the urban landscape, but rays of sun still found its way through gaps in the buildings and in his clothing. The bright rays of the forever sun burned the exposed parts of his skin, but Colton no longer felt physical pain. His mind was so focused on his task, it was as if the rays of light merely bounced off of him. For more than a mile Colton wended his way through the sunlit city. Having never been outside his house, he really did not know which direction he was going. He simply wandered until he found what he was looking for.

Because the hatch seal release required a code, he used a butter knife that he had stolen from the table during dinner to pry off the magnetic hatch. This proved to be more difficult than Nikola had suggested. Although his braggadocio was legendary, there was no reason for Colton to distrust Nikola when he talked about breaking the seal. “It's just a magnet,” Nikola said, “and not a very strong one. I took it off easily.”
He jammed the knife against the seal and slid it across the opening. He then tried prying the hatch. It moved a little, but the magnet immediately resealed. Colton had the idea to put something between the hatch and the seal. He ripped the sleeve from his shirt and tore it into strips. Little by little he tucked the strips between the hatch and the seal until the gap began to widen. This weakened the magnetic seal and Colton was finally able to release the seal completely.

He peered into the condensers. The intricate machinery appeared to him nothing more than a jumble of circuits and wires. As he was trying to make sense of what he saw, a voice startled him from behind.

“Hey, what are you doing there?” the voice called.

Colton Kelso turned toward the voice. A security official had been monitoring the area and responded to the alarm when the magnetic seal was broken. At first, Colton's heart skipped a beat, but then he realized that the man was still far enough away for Colton to do what he had set out to do—what he knew he had to do. With no further pause, Colton Kelso grabbed a coil and tore the insulation off. He heard footsteps behind him, coming closer.

“Stop!” the voice called.

Colton grabbed the coil wire with both hands. He felt a jolt, smelled a faint odor of burning white hair and skin. A blinding flash of white light brighter than Mu Columbae pierced his pink retinas. Then there was no pain in the forever night.