Sunmoon

Jonny here. Wherever here is? Whenever it is? To be honest I’m surprised I even remember my name it's been so long. We don’t really do time any more … when I say do, I mean acknowledge or act accordingly to the rules. I call myself a watcher, we are watchers. There’s watchers, takers and doers. It’s all pretty simple I stopped existing – I am aware - I think therefore I am and all that bullshit. I stepped aside, I stopped doing and started watching. I think before I act but I forgot how to act, now I think.

I think about the past and how boring we had all become and I think about the discovery, then the fear, then the hedonism – the hangover and the inevitable apathy. I try to think about the end but it has been so long I think my end will come first.. that kinda goes without saying for a normal existence, I mean billions of years passed before me and I didn’t notice then BANG I was born I rose from the proverbial dust and in theory I will live a few years and then return... if I am lucky I will leave behind a family, children and grand children. They will go on and the whole cycle will repeat until the sun swells and the earth boils then stops. But not any more.We have grown up thinking, well knowing, that we were the last, but that was the same as our folks who thought it would be them. I know that one day it will hit us and it will all be over in a flash. Our grandparents feared the Russians our parents feared the holy lands,our own president and North Korea. We feared the light that would bring the dark, the heat, the end. Now we fear only apathy, boredom and the possibility that there’s nothing left to do, to say, or to believe in... we are at the end of our time, we are the last humans and we don’t really care.

Its like an extra module in our History class. Before the light. It’s like something from the Bible – in the beginning there was void then God came and stuff happened. We fucked it up God sent the flood and we started again. Then we fucked it up again. A few thousand years later we have fucked it up so badly God has decided to leave us to it and we decided to kill him off too. Now the only things we need to be scared about are our first world problems cos we fucked up the third world so badly that we decided to just worry about the things we could actually put right. So we changed the world with reusable hemp grocery bags, spam e mails and dog ears, noses and moustaches on photos. We ended up with Gifs, sarcasm and nothing lasting more than 150 characters so no body has to concentrate on anything for too long in case they miss something else. My dad got his first mobile phone when he was 25 I got mine in a box marked baby essentials from Mothercare online.

I have 5 friends in this world that I genuinely feel love for: Kate, Nat, Caroline, Eddie and Matt if it wasn’t for them I would be in the mental health ward with all the pill takers eating their colored sweets and pretending everything is fine while they continue to exist in a room with a bed and a tv that has 1 channel that plays 90s hit sitcom friends back to back and on loop so that by the time you finish the one with the sad ending the one with the bar instead of the coffee shop comes round again regular as the amazon delivery trolleys that bring the drugs and the Blu Rays. My friends make my life worthwhile they are not watchers they are doers and they laugh at me for taking easy option of opting out of life and collecting my Existence opt-out universal credit benefit Benefit that all the government could afford to pay to people who were so badly affected by imminent death that they were no longer able to function in regular day to day activity and therefore rendered surplus to requirements however there was so much money left after they stopped paying for the 3rd world and national health that they could afford to substantially fund the type of people who called pre recorded helplines tagged onto the end of soap operas that had a pre show warning of mild peril. I am one of those people who the doers nicknamed watchers and the label stuck, we were given an extra five thousand universal credits for any offence we may have taken from this label to go towards mental recovery coupons. My doer friends are named so because they, like 70 percent of the population their parents decided to carry on as normal after the mass hysteria of the first few months of the sun-moon. They raised their children normally, as normally as the new society would allow, so they knew no better. They looked on pre sun-moon life as a kind of eccentric form of role play in the same way as children pretend to go to work and act out mundane tasks such as cooking and cleaning but with brightly coloured plastic replicas made by Fisher Price. They regarded our parents and grandparents as an oddity, bizarrely fixed into in routines set by a powerful few who lived by the ethic do as I say not as I do. So on a daily basis the doers recreate this with a certain ironic nostalgia knowing that they could stop at anytime and do something else. The one thing the doers have over their for fathers is that they can pretty much take on any role they desire and have a go no matter what training, experience or lack of they have.

Matt wants to be an actor but works in a sandwich shop. He has not quite grasped that no new TV has been made since everyone decided that anything good, worthwhile or that has anything good or worthwhile to say has already been done. The TV people decided that the easiest way to satisfy the new world’s hunger for new TV shows and to be famous was to mix the two by putting cameras into every ones houses so there are entire cities all participating in one big reality TV fest which is essentially just people watching people watching people in a never-ending loop of arguments and showing off. This reached its nadir in 2019 when only 3,645 people tuned in to watch big brother’s first live murder. Then 30 million tuned in for the repeat after it was featured on the news at 10. Matt blames everyone for his lack of success – his parents, his friends and the TV people. He continually declines the offer of becoming part of the reality TV network as he wants to keep himself true to his art. We laugh at him but we feel his pain though none of us are completely sure if he can, or has ever, acted. Matt ignores the sun-moon and puts his faith in the knowledge that when the end comes all the cameras will be destroyed and true art may once again blossom.

Caroline wants to have babies, lots of babies. The radiation from the sun moon plus the radioactive fallout from all the bombs we sent into our atmosphere to try and destroy its rained down upon our parents generation for 3 solid years and has left almost everything and everyone infertile. Caroline doesn’t care that she is single and always will be because she blames all of her boyfriends for being infertile that most men in our acquaintance circle have been on the receiving end of this blame or know her well enough to stay away. Caroline ignores the sun-moon and puts her faith in the knowledge that when the end comes all of the bad genes will be destroyed and 100 percent healthy children will once again blossom.

Kate should be a watcher but Kate refuses to let go of the past that she has never known Kate is angry but she has no idea why. She is ambitious and clever and she hates people. Kate wants to be a doctor, she wants to be a scientist, she wants to be a lawyer she wants to be everything she cant do but tries anyway. She hasn’t realised that all the things she wants to be are just things she sees on TV re runs and we now have no real need for. People don’t just get sick now they go away somewhere to die. They feel sick and they give up and waste away. Kate wants to stop this and save everyone. Kate ignores the sun-moon and put her faith in the knowledge that when the end comes everything will be destroyed except for we 6 and through our scientific breakthroughs and Caroline’s perfect genes the human race will once again blossom

Nat believes in God. Nat believes that if she can make people believe that she can save the souls of the people who put their faith in God. Nat found God in AA. Nat hold a service every Sunday to an empty church to a parish of we 5. Nat ignores the sun-moon and puts her faith in the knowledge that when the end comes everything will be destroyed and in heaven all believers will once again blossom.

I should probably mention Eddie, Eddie went for a walk one day. We all believe that one day Eddie will come back...