Dawn Breaks, Still Unlit

The tag on the launch rack read 214. But 215 shells lay neatly in place. Only the extra one had no serial number. On its wrapping, a small star sticker—a smiling face, somehow familiar.

I’m an apprentice fire-lighter. I hold no formal qualification. They hired me anyway. The contract for tonight’s work was a single line: “Employment terminates upon completion of the launch.” That morning on the radio, the announcer had cheerfully read that employment figures had hit an all-time high. No one ever explained how one-night names like mine get counted in those totals.

The launch site was a flat, featureless lot a short way from the river. As evening came on, the temporary lights flickered to life, and the crane truck hummed at a low pitch. On a nearby stage, an idol’s rehearsal wore on. I couldn’t have told you whether she was famous. Her recorded voice poured from the speakers while she merely moved her lips. And that was enough. The audience projected its own wishes onto her moving mouth.

The master fire-lighter ran through the procedure in a clipped voice. Inspection, wiring, fuses. Everything in order—for exactly 214. When I asked about the extra shell, he only knitted his brows.

“Launch everything that arrived. That’s the contract.”

Contract. His face knew what that word swallows. I knew it too. This vacant lot was a town for one night only, and we were its one-night residents. By dawn the equipment and the people would be gone, and the place would smell of nothing but grass again.

The launch began. The first shell rose with a report and bloomed. The crowd’s cheers crossed the low ground like wind. The volleys went on. The whole sky was rewritten from one instant to the next. Between shells I glanced at the stage. The idol was waving in answer to cues from the stands. Around her wrist was a thin, glowing band. It seemed to change color with the count of applause—the entire venue’s cheers converted into a single number, lighting up on her skin.

To me it looked much like tonight’s launch. Our manual labor, too, was being tallied somewhere into one great table. The number launched, the number burnt out, the number left over. Until someone is satisfied.

Past two hundred, the wind shifted. At the signal, the launch paused for thirty minutes. The stands murmured, and on stage the idol fell into some impromptu patter. Her tone was perfect. So perfect it seemed about to melt away into the dusk sky.

Beside the powder magazine, I looked down at the extra shell. Without unwrapping it, I brought my ear close and caught a faint tremor. Not from the heat. Something inside was stirring at measured intervals, as if waiting.

The tremor had a rhythm. It slipped out of sync with the stage music, then returned. As if it were picking up the heartbeat of the stands, I thought. And in the next moment something cold ran down my spine. Perhaps something entirely separate from the ignition system was moving this one shell.

The signal to resume came. The final volley began. The sky burned. With each burst, shards of light scattered across my field of vision, then died. With trembling hands I lit one shell after another. Looking up, the night sky became a sheet of blank space, was filled in, went blank again. It was beautiful. Beautiful things are, more often than not, someone’s final accounting of their labors.

When the encore shell had been fired, exactly 214 were spent, as the tag had said. Thunderous applause rose from the venue, and the idol lifted both hands in answer. Her band blinked white—apparently the color of the highest value.

My contract should have ended there. But beside the powder magazine, that one shell still lay. The trembling had grown. From inside the wrapping came a sound like claws scratching within.

The master was busy directing the cleanup; no one was looking this way. The idol had vanished into the crowd, and the temporary lights went out one by one. The breath of morning settled over the lot—the smell of dew on grass mixed with gunpowder. A smell for today only.

I cradled the shell and sat down at the edge of the launch platform. The thing inside was waiting. If I lit it, it would surely open in a way no one had ever seen. Or perhaps it would simply end, there in my hands. Either way, it was not written in the contract.

In the distance, the cleanup crew laughed, and on this morning’s radio the new numbers were being read aloud again. The world kept turning as if nothing had happened. As if to say that I alone was waiting for this extra shell.

Dawn is near. The trembling has come to match the pace of my own heart.

If it were you—would you light it? Or would you stay, and watch the night end with me?