Good Morning

In the sky where our star once burned, there hangs an impostor. It looks identical from the ground—same size, same golden-white blaze, same slow arc across the heavens. The Earth still orbits it in perfect 365-day lockstep. Dawn still bleeds into day, dusk still bleeds into night. Everything mechanical is unchanged. Everything living is not. Call it the Fake Sun. The Yellow Mockery. The King’s Lantern. Scholars who still dare write about it simply label it “Sol-1.” Dogs sleep in sunbeams. Birds wheel through the light. Cattle graze under the Fake Sun and grow fat. Scientists who studied this went insane faster than the rest of us. The prevailing theory among the few who remain sane is simple and horrifying: The Fake Sun is not interested in them. It already owns them. Humanity is the only species that ever believed the universe owed us warmth and safety. The animals never lied to themselves that way. They have nothing to unmake…. We still call it sunrise. We still say “good morning.” Old habits die harder than people. And every dawn, the Fake Sun rises a little more eagerly, as though it has learned to anticipate the moment when the last human finally looks up, stops screaming, and starts smiling back….