In the evening he awakens and sees the last light.

The sun is coming down, he realizes.

"No," he croaked, softly, not believing that it is true.

Since he's not watching where he's going, the car rolls off the side of the road and crashes into the ditch. It flipped over twice.

Since he wasn't wearing a seat belt, he flew out and landed on the grass.

He was probably injured, but he doesn't know it. Nothing is real, now that he's seen the last light.

His name is Theodore, but he goes by Joe. His middle name is Robert.

His last name is either Murphy or Calavera, but he didn't remember.

He stood up and gazed for a moment at the last light.

The sun was going down for the last time, never to rise again.

The astronomers said it would come back up in about 500 years, that it was all a cycle, only a cycle, nothing more. They say that the sun is in the sky for 500 years at a time, and then comes the long night of 500 years. They say that people originally came from a planet that had a sun that only stayed in the sky for 24 hours. 24 hours! He cannot imagine such a thing!

The sun has been an integral part of the world for so long, and now it's setting.

Of course, it had been setting for a long while now. As far as he could recall, he had lived his entire life while the sun was just an orange fireball a little above the horizon. From what he had heard, there once was a time, about 250 years ago, back when the United Colonies formed, when the sun was right overhead.

But now it was disappearing forever.

The astronomers said it would come back up in about 500 years. What did they know? The sun would never come back up. It was so sick of the world. It wanted to leave forever, but the distances in space were so vast that it took a long time. It would never come back. People had sinned and forced it to leave them in darkness.

He realizes he is bleeding severely and struggles to remain standing, but he collapsed on the grass. What has happened? he asks himself, and he remembered. He had been in an accident. It was over.

He smiled and watched as the sun disappeared over the edge of the horizon and darkness came over the world.