When they were young, there was a sun in the sky. A burning mass that hung in the greying world. Like an older gentleman, who was almost done with this world, it was dimming. It no longer had the brilliant, eye watering glare that the older generations would remember. But instead it was that of a lightbulb in a building. Bright, yes, but not as amazing as what the sun had once been. It sat amidst grey skies and no clouds, it had been this way for years. They knew why, of course. They had caused it after all. With all of the burning and destroying they had done, one could only expect the consequences to be extreme.
  Scientists had been predicting this. For the past few days everyone was crammed around radios and television sets in tense silence. The news would flicker on and another update would stream through the crackling speakers, before suddenly clicking off again. Then they all returned to their work of the day, moving slowly. With each day, the process repeated itself over and over, and each day they would move a little slower as reality drew closer. Their feet would barely lift off the flooring, as if the effort was just too much for them to bear. There would be the scuffle of shoes as they all moved back to their respected places, then silence. No one wanted to acknowledge what was coming, though it was fast approaching and gaining speed with each day. The slower they moved, the faster it approached, like it was draining the energy out of all of them at once.
School was canceled on some days. The teachers were terrified and so were the parents. There was no way to tell how much time was left. The kids needed every chance they could get to play in the sunlight. They would dance and skip and play games in the streets, while the parents sat together talking quietly among themselves. Every time a child would approach they would quickly quiet down and then send the child away. One child in particular was much more curious than the others and she had a sense that something was going on. She would try to listen to the parents conversations or would ask questions a third grader should not be asking, only to be escorted away by one of the older children. She would stubbornly keep returning, until finally her parents scooped her up and walked to their home, not a few blocks away.
Abby would frown the whole way home while her parents stayed quiet. During the day, her mother stayed at home, and her father worked with the government. He was a part of the group who managed all the rations. There was a rule on everything. How long you can use a car, how much water allowed each day, timers on the light switches and so much more. With all the pollution and smog in the air, no one could afford to add more. So the governments of the world had met together and had mostly agreed on certain limitations that would be put in place to extend what little time was left. There were even laws on what was taught in schools. Teachers could not teach how technology works or what it does, for fear that a student might return to using the things that had caused the world so much harm. The new generations were being raised blind, and in the dark. If the world would collapse they would have no idea what to do, and that would be the end of the human race.
There was a dim light showing over the house of Abby Keen. Her father was at work and her mother was helping her struggle through a reading assignment, though her mother's attention seemed to be elsewhere at the moment. They lived on the outskirts of the city, close to the fence that kept them penned in. Everything they needed was close by, and for anything out of the city, they had to request, then wait for the once-a-month delivery truck that supplied each city. If the pair had looked outside just then, they would see a small group of people goofing off at the fence line, trying to get over. As in everything, there were some who did not agree with the laws and continued to rebel against them. This particular group was trying to get out and find a place to watch the dying light. They would be caught before they made it halfway, and the portable gas powered scooters they carried would be destroyed. They would be locked away for whatever time was deemed appropriate for their crimes. With every tick of the clock, it grew dimmer. Sunset was approaching.
The mother sat with her daughter, on the floor of the office. This room held the most windows and they would be able to see the sun as it kissed to peaks of the rolling hills. In its final descent to the earth it had raised. But it was not as glorious as it had once been, and that's what aging does. The pair sat, the girl reading, very well for her age, only slipping on the occasional word, then her mother stepped in to help. The mother's eyes rarely glanced towards her daughter, instead they were fixed on the window before them, and the view beyond it. A tiny sliver of the sun had entered the frame of the window, time was ticking, the daughter tripped over the next word.
The father was packing up to leave work. Sitting on his desk was a photograph, taken when he was a child, with a glorious sunrise in the background. His parents had taken him camping for his birthday and it was one of his fondest memories. Before there was a ban on camping and before his mother had falled ill with a fatal lung disease. He remembered the birds and the time spent on a dock fishing. The long minutes it took to pitch the tent, as they all had never been properly camping before. Sitting beside that photograph was a picture of him and his wife with their child. Standing on their lawn with the sun in the background. He was holding the small bundle, barely a few weeks old, in his arms. Like she was the finest piece of china on the planet and there was an earthquake trying to snatch her away.  Gentle and sturdy. His wife's hands rested on his shoulder and she was smiling. She hadn't been smiling recently. Not for the past few months at least. Not since the announcements had been made. With each day her smiles had shrunk. Abby could always make her smile, but he wasn’t sure that would be enough for the coming storm. He scooped up the two frames and held them, one in each hand, and flicked his glance between the two. For a moment he was calm, as the other workers buzzed about and phones rang with reports or requests. The world moved just a bit slower for him, just in a moment. Then he tucked the dark frames into his worn bag, and the world jumped back to speed.
Stepping out on to the cracked streets, no cars moved, no lights flashed. Everyone walked. Whatever direction they took they would eventually get to their destination. For some it would take hours to get home, others simply spent the night at the office and went home on the weekends. It was pointless for them to make their way home, for they would just have to turn around and head back as soon as they got there. The father took the few block walk back to his home. A scarf twinned over his nose and mouth to try and keep out all the toxins that made up the air. Someone coughed in the street and it echoed loudly, then silence. No one dared to open their mouths to speak, they feared catching something from simply breathing, let alone talking. He turned off the street and made the trek up his long driveway. In the days before, the house would have been envied by most anyone. Now it was just seen as a waste of energy. Many of the rooms had not been opened in years, and the once lovely lawn fixtures had not woken in a very long time. Even the house seemed as though the life had been sucked out of it, leaving an empty shell. Abby did not play on the lawn, that was left brown and crumbling. The bushes had long since rotted and returned to the earth. The door was chipped with red paint, the door bell was gone and the knocker was rusted.
Slipping a key into the lock, he heard it click and pushed the door inwards. Returning to keys to the hook by the door and kicking off his shoes to put them on the mat. His wife liked being organized, it made her feel as though she had some control over this crazy world that was tumbling out of control. He placed his bags on the steps. He would collect it on his way up to bed, and fill it with whatever he needed for work the next day. He knew he would probably not sleep tonight. He knew work would be the least of his worries tomorrow. Sighing and rubbing a hand across his forehead, he walked into the office where he knew they would be. Every day, for months, he had come home to them sitting there watching the sun and completing Abby’s homework. He dreaded facing them and he feared what it meant to walk into that room. The sun was now halfway into the window frame they faced. Only hours to go.
He sat on the floor next to his wife and squeezed her hand in his. The books strewn about the floor and the spilled contents of a backpack lay forgotten in a corner of the room. Days would pass until anyone even thought of them again. Abby had her hand pressed to the glass and her nose resting against the cool surface. Her breath causing the window to fog up and her eyes glittered. Standing, he helped his wife to her feet and they walked together to the window. His wife’s eyes were wet at the corners with the sadness of what lay before them. His own eyes were cold and devoid of emotion. The sun was three quarters of the way now. Resting one palm on his daughter's shoulders and the other wrapped around his wife, they stood as one in the fading glow. The sun had met the top of the first hill. His wife's hand was covering her mouth and you could see a thousand memories flashing through her mind, shown plain on her face. The daughter smiled, once in the last bit of light. The father looked down and saw what he had not yet thought could exist. The daughters eyes shown with light, hope, and the room went dark.