Black Sun

There are lurkers moving about, there are people who pop out of corners and stare at you, they do not say anything and upon closer inspection you realize they are not people but flat cardboard cartoon pictures. An alien from outer space has come and turned all the people in the world into flat cartoon cardboard figures. Except for you. Because you are dead.

It is up to you to stop the alien. Occasionally you hear his laughter flitting in and out of this or that alley. But he’s swift as the wind. And he is invisible. You roam the streets for days searching for the invisible alien. You do not find him.

You wonder why it is always dark. One day you look up at the sky to see the sun has been there all along. But it’s black. It is a black sun. It is the fault of all the cartoon cardboard humans. They squandered all their hate and fear and anger on petty things, until it was all that was left, and it turned the sun black. The alien thrives on the black sun.

One day, you find a single, small, brilliantly blue flower growing in the middle of an intersection. A stubborn, rebellious streetlight feeds it despite that it has no power. You hear a large truck, and see it is headed for the flower. There is no driver in the truck, and so you know it is the invisible alien. You decide you must save the flower.

Rationality crowds into your mind. The flower is the unstoppable wall, the truck the unstoppable missile. What are you going to do? Then at last you understand, you are a spirit. You can inspire. Time goes even slower, one frame at a time, the truck advances. You go to each one of those cartoon cardboard figures in that city. You inspire them. From narrow alleys to wide avenues, everywhere, the people return back to their former selves.

One by one they go to that intersection. They, too, don’t want the invisible alien to run over the brilliant, blue flower. They stand between the truck and the flower, ready to die. Their willingness to sacrifice themselves redeems them. This redeems the sun.

The alien is aghast and swerves away from the growing mass of people smashing the truck into a building. Then like a unseen ghost he sweeps up into the sky. He flies up and up and up and through the sun, and it is no longer black.