Blinding Sunlight by Erik Brandao (Dystopian Competition Winner)
Prologue
“I’d like to thank everyone here present for our Great Embrace service and since we have a lot of young new member in our flock, I have prepared a special sermon for today. Many of you may wonder what happen on the 13th of November and what the Great Embrace is. But to understand it, you must know what was happening before that date.
Before the Great Embrace, human kind was connected, there were multiple settlements all over the world and they all talked to each other. They had trading relationships, helping each other in multiple fields. One such field was on the fuel department. See, in the old world, humans got around towns by using cars, and those were powered by fuel. But the usefulness of this commodity didn’t stop there, they used for everything. However only some of those settlements were able to have access to this fuel resource and they decided to take it by force. Many wars were fought but during all the bloodshed, the first Helion, our great father, James Helion, decided to act and stop humans from destroying themselves.
He believed in a higher power and sought to communicate with it and ask for help. That’s when, with the help of one of the most powerful nations in the old world, he created the Tower of Light. The Tower would contact our true god, the Sun, and he would provide us with unlimited energy and thus ending all the wars in our planet. However, when our Father, launched the beckoning protocol of the Tower, he got beckoned by the Sun himself, who told him that he could provide us with the unlimited energy we all wanted, but only those truly devoted enough could live in such a world. Humanity was corrupted, and we had to be reduced to start anew.
It was then that our prophet begged for a chance to select those who were believers and he himself would shepherd the group into the new world. The Sun God gave him a year and so our Father gathered our ancestors in the base of the tower forming what is now known as the Daybreak Settlement. And when the promised day came, our Father contacted the Sun God again. But this time, the Tower itself was used as an instrument of wrath as a strong beam of concentrated solar energy struck its tip, bouncing off the divine shielding he had provided for us and into the rest of the world. Cities burned, many died, until our world was purged of the heretics.
That event was known as the Great Embrace, as our God’s embrace shielded us from his wrath against the scum of the old world. Now we live here, under the authority of our Father and his descenders, enjoying free, clean energy from our god. However, we know that not all the heretics died, they remain outside our walls, in the Badlands, malformed and sickly. God only knows what happens in their encampments. That is why it is one of our regulations not to venture outside the walls at all costs, only if our Father demands it.
Now to continue our Great Embrace service, we shall all now pray and give thanks to our Father.”
Part 1: Call
After a moment of silence so that everyone present could say their prayers, the Sun-Priest Phanes Holland concluded the Great Embrace day service by sharing food and water given to the chapel by the current all father, Hyperion Hellion. The children ran around the modest wooden floored chapel as the sound of their footsteps was muffled by the indistinct noise of the adults chatting on while eating. Amid those adult was the priest himself, as he talked to them about what to do during the food crisis that was ever more present around the settlement. Some seemed angry that this was the first time that a member of the Hellion family was unable to provide for their flock. They would call the current Father, Hyperion Hellion, a disappointment and call into question whether the Sun God was still with them. However, the priest replied with words of encouragement and hope, as he had been in talks to elements of the high council and a solution was in the works. In the meantime, those who had children were welcomed to take some extra rations from the chapel, as it was all a present from the Father.
The food was mostly pre-cooked meat, packed in brown boxes, they came from the factory districts that stood along the wall that separated the sun settlement and the wasteland. Most people were already used to it as their main form of sustenance along with vitamin pills. The latter had different bright colours that, over the years, quieted the unrest of the people over what they were made of and why were they so important. All they knew was that they were gifts from father that would keep them alive to live their normal lives.
Most of the adults in the conversation were no older than 30, they wore very open clothing that offered little protection against the hot weather outside. But it was very visible that they were used to it as even the children sported a bronze-like skin complexion. But it was for this reason that one person stood in the crowd, a young boy named Silver, whose name was so due to his pale white complexion. He worked in the chapel with Phanes after he lost his parents and, due to his skin colour, he did not fare well in both the society and the weather.
Suddenly, the small entry door opened and through it came a caravan of 4 strong men armed with spears. Behind them was someone covering their face with a white cloak that went all the way to the ground and blended with his also long, white robes. The noise in the room was immediately silenced as the adults knew who it was. They rushed to retrieve their children and stayed quiet. They glanced at the figure with a sense of reverence and fear as it advanced through the chapel benches.
It stopped in front of the priest and greeted him by extending his hand which gathered a swift response from Phanes as he succumbed to his knees and pressed the extended hand across his cheek. The figure than removed his hat revealing to be Apollo Hellion, younger brother of the current Father. His job as the second son was to alleviate the burden of his brother by taking care of some public affairs. He was also a very good friend of the priest as they knew each other from the days Phanes resided in the Tower whilst taking his vows.
Apollo took Phanes aside and told him that he had an offer that would change the life of all the inhabitants of the settlement. But before he could say something else, the priest said yes, justifying his answer with the fact that he owes everything to the church, as they rescued him from his days as an orphan and raised him to be a pillar of the community.
With the answer that he wanted, Apollo departed from the chapel, leaving the priest to his lunch. They had agreed to discuss the details at a more appropriate time.
Part 2: Into the Wastelands
A month passed since that encounter, and the specifics of the offer made by Apollo were still a secret to everyone. All the common folk knew was that their priest was going to be away for a while. Silver tagged along his adoptive father as they joined a caravan that was going to the other side of the walls. To the Wastelands, where godless savages dwell. And it was these savages that were the target of the whole expedition. Phanes had been chosen to serve on a settling expedition to survey areas around the settlement for a potential expansion to occur.
With more space to live, the problems of the current food crisis and the ever-increasing population wouldn’t be so evident. The priest’s job was to teach the ways of the sun to any locals in a suitable area. Apollo said that they might learn new things from the wastelanders as they had been surviving off barren land for generations. The priest was reluctant about the savages, but felt that it was all his god given task, his objective in life.
Alongside him and Silver went a group of settlers, very poor families that couldn’t find jobs in the settlement, so they decided to try their luck with this project, and an armed escort to protect them from the waste landers themselves, as some reports had them as ruthless raiders that engaged in practices such as slavery and cannibalism.
The caravan moved on foot, walking first through the outer areas of the settlement until they reached the factories and the wall. As they left, a sense of dread filled Silver’s heart as he hesitated when taking his first step outwards.
“The Sun is always looking after us Silver, there is no need to be afraid,” said Phanes as he lightly rested his hand on his back, giving a light shove to the boy.
They moved east for 2 days, walking through the scorching dry earth whilst facing strong dust-littered winds. All of them were completely covered, unlike the traditional attire in the centre of the settlement. Silver stood out among all of them as he even wore a mask to protect his face, as he clutched a sun medal given to him by his adopted father. Phanes was upbeat and happy, he could feel the sun on his skin which, for him, was an honour, as if he was being touched by his god himself. As for the rest of the caravan, most of them were tired and hungry, however the armed escort did not let them stop more than an hour.
It was only on the 5th day that they set camp in an area near to the targeted settlement. They erected an encampment as the soldiers made a defensive perimeter around it. The priest and his son were put in the tent in the middle of the encampment, next to where the officer in command of the soldiers was sleeping, and as night fell, everything seemed normal.
But as everyone in the camp rested, shadows began dancing around the camp. Slowly moving through, going into each tent and dragging those who were inside them without making any noise.
When the sun came up and the priest woke up, Silver, who was sleeping in the same tent, was gone. But not only him, as he stepped outside, there was no one. No soldiers, no settlers, no one was left. He began to pray, waiting to awaken from a nightmare, but nothing happened. It was then that he noticed that even his supplies were gone.
He searched the horizon and saw the tower in the horizon, so that’s the direction he was going to head. Feeling like he was being tested by his god, he maintained his faith as he walked through the wasteland with only his personal water bottle. After a day, he collapsed as he no longer had the energy to continue.
Part 3: Clarity
When he woke up, he found himself in what seemed to be a factory. He noticed that his clothes were nowhere to be seen and that everyone around him was also naked. But before he could react to the situation he found himself in, soldiers from the Sun Tower appeared, rushing them through a dark tunnel in the north side of the room. At the end, many screams could be heard.
It was then that he ran towards the guards and begged to speak with his friend Apollo. To his surprise, the man he was looking for emerged from between the two soldiers and ordered the men to take the priest out of the group of panicking people. They clothed him, and Apollo began to explain where they were.
Apparently, the factory they were in was used to make food for the people of the settlement. The main ingredient? Human meat from slaves purchased on the wasteland. The truth behind the expedition the priest was sent on was to contact the main slaver in the wasteland. However, the men decided to sell everyone in the expedition and when they were ransomed back, Apollo made the decision to turn them into food.
Apollo continued by saying that such practices had been happening since the birth of the settlement and that it was the idea of the first Hellion himself. Since no animal or vegetable had survived the great embrace the only source of sustenance around were humans. It has been the job of the Hellions to make sure everything goes according to plan by sending expeditions, adopting orphans to serve them while using their parents as food for the settlement.
He added further that the Sun God was not real, the first Hellion made everything up when he went mad after being exposed by radiation in the test of the tower. This caused him to weaponize the very thing he envisioned as a symbol of hope and cause the destruction of human society. Apollo then released the priest back into his chapel, he didn’t care if he would tell anyone about the truth.
In his first sermon back, Phanes told everything to the public, many couldn’t believe him while others remained in shock. The news spread through the city and the leaders of the settlement didn’t bother to deny it. However, ultimately nothing changed, knowing that it was their only way to survive, many people continued to follow the doctrine preached by the Hellion and eating the human meat. Those who couldn’t, either ventured into the wastelands and became slaves or simply killed themselves.
Phanes roamed around the settlement, slowly going insane, preaching the truth about what he witnessed. One day, he decided to investigate the factories, and in a pile of clothes he found a familiar sun medal that was identical to the one he gave to his adopted son Silver. And so the thought of his child being made into food haunted him for two years, before he took his own life.