Every day is the same. We have to block out the windows every night and put on blindfolds. Earplugs and white noise machines are used a lot. Without the night, people aren’t synchronized to begin and end activities in a predictable way, so lawns get mown and dogs get walked at all hours.

It’s safer than when we had darkness. No dark alleys for muggers to hide, no menace lurking to prey under cover of night. It’s harder to surprise anyone without the dark. People see threatening looking people from a mile away and steer clear of them.

Initially, seasonal affective disorder was a thing of the past, and it felt like an endless summer festival. But the glamor wore off in the unchanging procession of days. The glitz grew tawdry. The laughter grew tinny, then faded away.

Humans are built to face adversity and challenge. With global unlimited sun, solar power became cheap, then free. Food could grow twenty four hours a day, and there was more to eat than there were mouths to eat it. Mental breakdowns are so common. Suicides in every house. People who survived wars and famines were now undone by surplus and plenty.

Nights are for thinkers, for lovers, for philosophers. These activities quickly grew scarce. Shallowness dominated culture. Everyone wanted something new and daring, but there weren’t any artists left who could make something new. Everything became a reboot, or a sequel, or a rehash. There was nothing new under the sun.

To simulate nightlife, underground clubs in basements and caverns have popped up everywhere. It’s the enchanting to dance in light and shadows, pretending things were like they used to be. People don’t tan to look attractive anymore; they hide their faces from the sun to cultivate the pale, porcelain complexion of the night owl.

Intentional communities try and recreate the old circadian rhythms. Huge domes serve as sun shields over neighborhoods, painted on the inside with stars and a moon. There is peace there, but it’s artificial and unsettling. Most people leave after a few weeks, needing the real more than the fake to feel whole.

When people began dying, it was a relief. At least something could end, and the monotony could be interrupted. Doctors speculate that some people never could sleep without the dark, and they were progressively more and more sleep deprived until they collapsed, and even chemically assisted sleep didn’t save them.

Crazy people rage at the sky. They call on scientists to fire rockets into the sun, to bring us a new ice age for relief. They worship the moon, which we only see the shadow of some days. Scientists won’t do anything. The endless day has put an end to scientific breakthroughs.

The icecaps are melting and the sea levels are rising faster and faster. There will be no ark this time. No one has any interest in survival. When the floodwaters come to make this land into the ocean floor, we will welcome it. At least then we’ll know darkness.