Nate had been working on the farm for 3 consecutive summers. The other boys knew him well, or knew what he showed them well enough to qualify them as trusting. If ever they found some perfect freedom from consequence, Nate suspected they would exploit the system that had imprisoned him until it unleashed him, monster he was, into that paradise. Friendship and deviance found a desperate hiding place at the farm. Subtle traces of the old junky life style appeared during moments of horrendous physical exertion on the hillside. Veiled threats to accusers could be heard through the manufactured mist of the showers in the evening. The whispered words of those cynical towards their own diseases found utterance between the rows of apple trees and lavender bushes in the afternoon. Stories brimming with illegal pride filled the congenial air of the bunks at night. In committing himself to the forbidden fun most only knew in moderation, Nate had sent himself to a place where people understood him. His punishment was a pointless one. He had tasted the humane wrath of the government, and chuckled. His real destiny here was not to be rehabilitated, but to find secret support from others living in illusions parallel to his own. These kids weren't his real family, but the love he had for them eclipsed the love his parents had invested in the act of creating him. He found peace in damnation, rest in slavery. After three years of being readmitted to the farm due to a “lack of improvement” in his condition and behavior, he was beginning to praise the system that tortured him for his own good. He may have been cut off from the sweet juices of those wild nights gone by, but had discovered instead a net work of clever devils who, like himself, refused to apologize to anyone.

    There was one thing that bothered him about this unlikely mecca. The sunlight. The days were so long and the nights so short that he felt a sense of imbalance in his own body and mind. The thing that really bugged him was that he didn't remember it being so unbearable during his last 2 stays. Had the star that gave life to the planet suddenly decided on annoying the fuck out of that life? His vexation with the exaggerated day had become almost morbid. One day, he set out to prove his suspicions. One morning as he awoke to the sound of the wake-up knock on his bunk room wall (“6:00 in the morning until you find another employer” one of the advisors said) he decided to count the hours of sun-light in the day to come. During the day, he went about his labors anticipating the answer to this chaos on the face of a clock inside. At lunch time, he told the advisor he was going to run to the bathroom, and set out to find a clock to dignify his anger. He wandered the sun-lit hallways in search of time, and found only empty rooms. There was not a single clock to be seen anywhere in plain view.

Why hadn't I noticed that before? he thought to himself.
He was driven to say something during dinner that night.

“Has anyone noticed anything about the day-light around here. Its like the sun is murdering the moon.”

Dinner was normally a matter-of-fact ritual on the farm. Conversation rarely punctuated the clicks and clanks of the dining hall. His comment had exaggerated this reticence, silence blanketed the room of some 39 kids and 12 advisors. Unaware he went on.