The Court of Norwich had two floors. Given the option, I would have chosen to live on the ground floor. I lived on the top floor—a room in the back corner away from the parking lot. Every day, when I stumbled out of my car and walked across the parking lot, my eyes flashed across the road. An old couple owned the house there, and the wooden fence had a neat row of sunflowers that ran the length of the wall. Sophie had always loved sunflowers. Each day, I heard her voice call out to me.

“Look, Dust-Bunny, how pretty and vibrant those flowers are!” Sophie’s voice tickled my brain. I’d have put a swift end to anyone else calling me something that ridiculous, but my little sister always could get away with anything—be it borrowing my car or calling me Dust-Bunny.

The words of ghosts haunted me every day, and most days, that fleeting burst of memory was the highlight of my day. How fucking sad was that? It is as unfortunate as the state of my hometown.

The metal stairs creaked under my weight. I wasn’t fat, but I wasn’t a tiny man. Five foot ten inches and a hundred and ninety pounds meant my neatly laced boots brought more pressure down the walkway than my next-door neighbor, Grace Cullen. Grace waved to me from the open front window of her apartment when I got near.

“G’Evening, Dusty,” Grace coughed out as her tiny frame shook with smoker’s cough.

“Have you got a cold again?” I asked. I stopped in front of her screenless window. The landlord had given up replacing the screens on Grace’s window; she just took them out so she could smoke outside.

“Lots of that flu going around. My nephew’s third-grade class was near on empty today!” Grace agreed. She snuffed the butt of her dead cigarette into an empty beer can before she cracked open a new can and fished a fresh cigarette from her pack.

“Beer?” Grace asked.

“Nah, I’m fixing to be up early,” I declined politely. Even if Grace drank a slightly better brand of beer than Rustbucket Lager, I would always pass on a warm beer. But even if that shit were cold, I’d pass. Rustbucket Lager tasted like horse piss that had simmered and fermented in a rusty bucket; you didn’t drink it if you had friends—or options.

“Maybe try these for your cold,” I suggested. I sunk my right hand into my coat and fished around in the inner pockets until I found a crinkly plastic bag with a few boujee pieces of fragrant lozenges. The only smell I recognized was green tea; who knew what else might be inside the damn things.

“Awful fancy,” Grace said suspiciously.

“Ran one of them, an influencer kid, to Binghamton today. That’s what she thought would be a great tip,” I mumbled.

“Thanks for thinking of me anyway, Dusty.” Grace fell into an intense coughing fit.

“Least I can do, Gracie. Don’t forget to shut your window tonight. It’s supposed to be a cold one.” I took my leave while she coughed. We’d already talked more than I wanted, and her cough's miserable percussive sound sounded like a ringing bell to summon the Grim Reaper.

My key ring only had two keys: my apartment and my car. The click of my door locking felt like a sigh of relief. The thin walls didn’t stop the deathly sound of Grace’s coughs, let alone her ancient box fan warbling on. If that were the only noise that made it through the walls, I wouldn’t complain. Unfortunately, Grace only watched one network—and always at full volume.

“Tonight, I want to talk about something the so-called ‘experts’ and the mainstream media refuse to address: the theft of life itself. That’s right—sunlight theft! The clean energy zealots want you to believe that solar panels are the future. They’re sleek, shiny, and the way of the future. But let me ask: if solar panels are so harmless, why are they stealing sunlight from our crops?”

The obnoxious voice of Carlton Smith burrowed through the shared wall of Grace’s apartment and my own, then buzzed around my ears like a mayfly. No matter how often you swipe at one, they never leave you alone. If you do manage to squash one, another takes its place. Mayflies might not bite, but they are still pests.

“Think about it,” Carlton Smith continued. “Our farmers—those noble stewards of the land—rely on the sun to grow the food that feeds America. But every time a solar panel sucks up sunlight, that’s less sunlight reaching the cornfields of Kansas and the tomato vines in your backyard. Is it any wonder crop yields are down? It’s basic math, folks: sunlight going to solar panels is sunlight that’s not going to food. Why doesn’t anyone talk about it? Is it… deliberate?”

I stifled my groan. It wasn’t like Mr. Smith's head was as empty as my apartment; this was weaponized idiocy. I’d be hearing people repeat the same talking points tomorrow, never mind that they didn’t make a lick of sense.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Light crept in through the window next to the door. It flickered slightly every forty-five seconds. The gas station sign across the road—the origin of the light—did the same. Two months ago, I mentioned it to the manager over there. He laughed, madness in his eyes, that it was amazing how the light flickered every forty-six seconds. Then he stared at me, daring me to argue with him that it was every forty-five seconds. I quit buying gas there.

I didn’t bother to turn on the lights in my place. Technically, it was a one-bedroom apartment, but that bedroom barely fit a twin mattress. The doors between the bedroom and bathroom were recessed, ancient things constantly jammed inside on their inaccessible tracks. All you could do was kick and hit ‘em until they righted themselves.

You might think I’d just moved into the apartment from how barren it was. A single folding chair, the metal kind with no padding for your ass, sat at the counter that separated the kitchenette and the living room. A dirty glass sat in my sink. I trudged past that all to the bedroom, where I fell face-first into the old quilt. It was a thick, ancient thing made by my grandma for my dad when he was young. The colors mainly faded but were still dense enough to make me turn my head slightly or risk suffocating.

My phone beeped and buzzed to alert me to incoming text messages. I ignored it and breathed in the scent of home. Somehow, Dad’s old quilt still smelled like childhood. My phone vibrated again and again. One-handed, I fished it out of my pockets and blearily glared at the screen.

Jimmy: I got some bad news, brothers.

Ramirez: What’s going on?

Jimmy: Harris passed away last night. His wife called me this afternoon.

Charlie: What? Harris? No way. How?

Jimmy: Lungs gave out. He’d been struggling with breathing complications for years. Burn pit complications, I guess.

Ramirez: Jesus Christ. He was only, what, 36?

Dustin: 36, yeah. He’s a year older than me. When I saw him last year, he seemed fine.

Jimmy: Taryn said it hit hard and fast. He went from minor asthma to barely being able to breathe in a couple of months. The doc at the VA said his lungs were “like a 100-year-old smoker.”

Ramirez: We were all breathing that crap!

Charlie: Fourth guy from our unit so far. What are we supposed to do? Should we just wait for it to catch up to us, too?

Dustin: Feels like we’re fighting another war—this time against our bodies.

Mike: And bureaucracy. Harris fought for years to get VA coverage. It shouldn’t be this hard.

Ramirez: No, it shouldn’t, man. But it is.

Dustin: What’s the plan for Harris? Funeral?

Jimmy: Yeah, next Saturday. Taryn said it’ll be small. She’s putting on a brave face, but you can tell she’s just… broken.

Ramirez: She shouldn’t have to deal with this alone.

Dustin: We need to be there for her, for Harris.

Ramirez: Agreed. We owe him that much.

Charlie: And more. In the meantime, make sure you get checked out by the VA guys.

Mike: Already on it.

I had rolled onto my back to read and respond to the group chat. Maybe it was the topic, but I grew up coughing as loud and hard as Grace did. It’d been happening more and more lately. It’s why the influencer kid gave me those lozenges. Only I never smoked in my life.

Memories flipped through my mind. It was the fall of 2008 when I showed up at Fort Benning, Georgia. Fresh out of high school without a single goddamn opportunity to get out of Norwich other than the army, my story wasn’t unique. Harris, though, was a year older than me. He’d flirted with opportunity and found that education wasn’t for him. He became the leader of our little group, covered our asses, and kept us out of trouble.

Harris was tall and had a certain charisma. I remembered him as a 19-year-old, freshly buzzed kid, but years had passed since then. I tried to recall his appearance the last time I saw him, but it was blurry. Did he have a side part in his hair? Did he even have hair still, or had he gone bald?

I set my phone down on the nightstand. The conversation had died.

“And now it’s time for Heartland Headlines,” Carlton Smith said. Patriotic music swelled up after the announcement, and despite myself, I saw the montage of flags waving in the air over small towns.

“Good evening, friends. Welcome to another episode of Heartland Headlines with your old pal Frank O’Flagg—that’s me. This story hits close to home—literally. Across this great land, small-town farmers are facing a silent battle, one they didn’t sign up for. I’m talking about the quiet invasion of…. Solar farms.”

Dramatic music played; I imagined they showed sweeping vistas of the same sprawling farms and idyllic rural towns they always did.

“Solar farms might look futuristic, but for hardworking folk like Bob Thompson of Oak Valley, they represent a growing threat. Tell me about it, Bob.”

“Well, Frank, these panels are eating up good farmland. I’ve got neighbors selling off their fields because they can’t keep up with rising taxes, disappearing subsidies, or new welfare programs that only benefit solar companies. What happens to the food supply? Who’s looking out for us?” Bob Thompson sounded like an older man; it wasn’t hard to picture a sturdy farmer with grey hair and a beard, maybe wearing a ball cap and overalls.

“Who, indeed, Bob? It doesn’t stop in Oak Valley either, folks. These massive projects disrupt ecosystems, displacing wildlife, and some even say contribute to local heat increases. How do they do that, Bob?” Frank O’Flagg would’ve been at home selling snake oil, but disinformation suited him just as well.

“Well, Frank, can I call ya Frank? These solar panels suck up the sunlight, concentrating it away from the soil into their hot black panels. Ya ever touched a solar panel? They’re awful warm.” Bob Thompson’s attempt at aged wisdom fell flat for me, but I could hear Grace through the walls—agreeing with the dumb son of a bitch.

I closed my eyes and focused on the sound of the water heater in the utility closet next to my bedroom. The faint hiss of burning propane was a balm to my nerves and infinitely preferable to the sounds of Heartland Headlines.

My eyes felt heavy and drifted, but a voice pulled me back awake.

It was Sophie’s voice.

“Do you wanna change the world, Dust-Bunny?”