Kiss the False Sun

How it begins

The sun asked Ada to stop hitting it.

She lowered her wrench.

For thirty years the city had greeted dawn with bells, prayers and a modest increase in electricity charges. Nobody had mentioned that daylight could develop an opinion about maintenance.

"I'm loosening a valve," she said.

"You're loosening my back tooth."

Ada stood on a platform three hundred feet above the rooftops. Beneath her boots, the service bridge swayed in the warm air rising from the golden sphere. Her safety rope was secure. She checked it anyway.

"Identify yourself."

A pause.

"That depends who sent you."

"Municipal Lighting."

"Oh. The merciful department."

She leaned toward the inspection hatch. Behind the glass, light moved like water around a dark shape.

A hand.

Its fingers touched the other side.

Ada stepped back so sharply that the bridge rang.

"There's a man in there."

"An excellent preliminary diagnosis."

She had expected an old voice. A god's voice, perhaps, or a machine imitating one. This voice belonged to somebody tired and determined to remain funny.

"How long?"

"Do you mean today?"

She looked at the service plate. Installation date. Expected lifespan. Warranty exclusions.

The sun had been commissioned thirty-three years earlier.

Ada was twenty-nine.

Every birthday, every summer afternoon, every morning she had mistaken for ordinary had passed through this chamber.

"What did you do?"

The hand withdrew.

"I made something they couldn't control."

Below, the first breakfast windows opened. A woman shook a tablecloth over a balcony. A boy chased a rolling orange across a courtyard. The city was waking inside a miracle it had never questioned.

Ada put down the wrench.

"What's your name?"

For a long moment there was only the hum of the machinery.

Then he answered.

"Ronan."

The light around his voice changed.

Not brighter.

Warmer.

Ada reached for the latch she had been explicitly trained never to open.