I was among a team of scientists and we were at camp. It was like an action movie team though filled with the stock characters. The angry vigilante. The wisecracking genius. The charismatic leader. I think I was the initiate because I could never quite make out what was happening. Our mission was critical. I got that much.

I was watching the sun come up. It was as if I had telescopic vision. The world was dark and the sky was dark and I watched the sun rise very close by. Only it was like a ball of molten lava, mostly large black masses floating around very liquid across gleaming orange rivers of heat. But it was clear it was also an illusion, an oasis of the sun. The sun hadn’t actually come up. It was a reflection or a foreshadowing of the actual sunrise.

When the sun did rise there was something horribly wrong with it. The sun looked just the same but it put out an incredible chill that threatened to destroy the world. Our camp was ice and snow.

There was a machine or a switch not terribly different in invention than a light switch. A member of our scientific expedition flipped the switch. It corrected the sun. The sun now produced heat. But all other energy was gone. There was no electricity. I was vaguely but instantly aware that no energy was still better than a quick freeze which most assuredly would have happened. I also understood that the sun was stopped which implied that the orbit of the sun and the earth was also stopped. Energy and time were stopped to save the world from being nearly instantly iced.

A passing train stopped. It didn’t slow to a stop. Perhaps inertia had been erased too. It jolted to a stop like a movie on pause. Only all the passengers, still subject to inertia I guess, were catapulted from the dead train. Most of them were crushed instantly like bugs on a windshield. A few mangled souls, thrown from the tin can train and into the softer snow survived long enough to question what had happened.

Our team had to move camp. Meantime, the sun still produced light and heat but didn’t move. And people still breathed and the heart still pumped inside our fleshy husks but otherwise everything was all wrong. No sounds. No breeze. The river stopped running.

During our move – I hid rather than helped – we were joined by inquisitive and impatient special agents. The team wanted to keep secret what horrible apocalypse was happening. The secret didn’t seem unlikely at the time. But this thing that had happened had created all sorts of aberrations. Not just in the sky and earth where things didn’t move. We – the team – had a dog, or dog-like creature. Our dog only had half a body. Only his head and torso and front two legs. But he seemed unaware he had been halved and still lived and played and moved about as if he were whole. We had to hide the dog from the agents. Otherwise we would be found out. It was a grotesque moment that would have played like a moment of comedy in the midst of tragedy. We successfully hid our monster dog. And the agents, while suspect, had nothing to trap us and left.

I can’t imagine how we might have saved the sun and the world and the universe. It became a thing of very little interest after the agents gave up their inquisition. I know that we always had the option of turning the switch back off which would have restarted time and regenerated energy but would have, no question, reset the sun to cold. When I woke up, gratefully, the sun was up before me, and it was, as I have grown accustomed, presumably producing heat.

SS