Lights Out

The lights went out on Earth about a year after the resources dried up. The fossil fuels were the first to go, the Steam Age had taken them out long ago. The renewables fared slightly better, holding out a few more years before failing too. Turns out they weren’t as reliable as once thought: after the majority of the population became obese and permanently motorised, and younger generations swapped hands on mechanics for online pursuits there was no hope. Not that internet interests were any use now, not since the power went. It was as if Earth’s trip switch had flipped, and people were unable to get up to push it back, let alone locate it.

Some people had turned to crackpot schemes of hoarding potatoes in an attempt to charge and power batteries, but to little avail. In a matter of weeks, the Black Market became rife with candles, matches, thick fur coats and coveted lighters. Libraries were a thing of the past, once houses of learning and enjoyment they were stripped of their books for insulation and fire starting.

If you were really lucky, you sometimes came across a jar of fireflies. They were a gem hidden in coarse sand, though. Jared could spot who might have them: dressed in long black swathes of material, bulges making them look like they were obese. Those were the people, and Jared knew to steer well clear of them. He didn’t want to end up bled out, like his Father.

Instead, the sprawling forests were the place to look. In the dead of night, when the moon was hidden in blankets of clouds was the best time. Jared had spent most of his 15 years hunting through tangled bushes and in the depths of caves, once with his Father and now alone. On his back was a black rucksack, stacked with pierced-lid jam jars wrapped in holey socks. He’d noticed of late that fireflies were getting harder to locate; fewer and fewer were visible, even on the darkest of nights. Once, he went deeper into the belly of cave than ever before, expecting to be dazzled by light but finding a measly 23 bugs. He’d counted each one.

Jared had always made sure not to take all of the flies: leaving some behind would allow them to reproduce. He’d spent a long time that week studying those flies, noticing they didn’t glow as brightly as before, either. Some had even dropped dead right into his path before he’d even gone beyond the winding entrance to a cave. Maybe it was like the fabled bees of the turn of the millennium, slowly dropping off before anyone really did anything to save them. Or, maybe the fireflies just couldn’t cope with the formerly polluted air cleaning up, or perhaps it was the bands of humans invading their habitat which was doing it.

In any case, Jared knew that the remaining fireflies had been encased in glass houses they’d never escape from, used on dark, lonely nights to light the path of a weary traveller or to give a Child of the Gloom (for that was their official title) a sense of what life was like before Lights Out.

He knew one day they’d all be snuffed out. Them and the fireflies. A shiver crept along his spine.

And what happens when the fireflies have gone?