The prybar snapped the corporate seal with a sound like a fractured bone, revealing the glowing cargo.
The iron prybar bit into the wood. I leaned my entire body weight against the rusted handle, my boots sliding slightly on the oil-slicked concrete. The wood screamed. The corporate seal—a stamped wax emblem of the Mayor’s private procurement division—shattered into brittle red flakes across the toes of my boots.
I struck the prybar again. The lid of the crate gave way with a violent crack.
I stepped back, dropping the iron bar. It clattered against a stack of stripped alternator belts. I wiped my grease-stained palms on my denim thighs, leaving dark streaks across the fabric. The summer heat inside the corrugated tin garage was absolute. Sweat stung the corners of my eyes, blurring my vision for a second. I blinked it away and looked down into the crate.
The packing straw was synthetic, woven in tight yellow plastic spirals. Beneath it, nestled in individual foam divots, were the sun-peaches.
They glowed. It wasn't a trick of the harsh afternoon sunlight filtering through the dirty skylights. The fruit emitted a soft, bioluminescent hum, casting a faint golden-orange aura against the white foam. I reached out, my fingers trembling slightly. The skin of the peach was perfectly fuzzy, warm to the touch, and heavy. It felt like holding a living heart.
"You have got to be kidding me," I said to the empty garage.
These were illegal. Highly regulated. Genetically modified to grow in hyper-saline soil, but restricted to the executive sectors down south. The fact that a crate of them was sitting in my boss's impound bay meant the Mayor was smuggling them in for his private summer solstice banquet, while the town's food bank was currently rationing dehydrated potato flakes and synthetic protein pucks.
I shoved the peach into the pocket of my coveralls. I needed Larry.
I left the garage door wide open. The glare of the mid-July sun hit me like a physical blow as I sprinted across the cracked asphalt of the shipyard. The air was a vibrating sheet of heat distortion. Blooming ragweed and mutated dandelions shoved their way up through the concrete fissures, aggressively yellow and defiant.
I hit the stairs to Larry's apartment building two at a time. The metal railing was scalding. I didn't knock on his door. I kicked the baseboard, twisting the loose brass knob, and shoved my way inside.
"Larry!" I shouted.
He was standing in the center of his living room, a roll of silver duct tape in one hand and a disassembled floor lamp in the other. The room was a disaster zone of cardboard boxes, crumpled newspaper, and dismantled electronics.
"Do you not understand the concept of a door hinge, Jay?" Larry asked. He didn't look up. He tore a strip of tape with his teeth and slapped it across the top of a box marked 'KITCHEN CRAP'.
"You are actually packing," I said, ignoring his question. I stepped over a pile of tangled extension cords.
"I am actively applying tape to cardboard. Yes. That is the universal visual shorthand for packing."
"You're leaving tonight."
"The transport arrives at 2100 hours. I have a ticket. I have a designated seat. I am removing my physical form from this geographic coordinate. We have discussed this extensively, Jay."
"This town is not dead yet, Larry."
"This town is a dead-end shithole," Larry shot back, finally looking at me. His face was flushed, his hair stuck to his forehead in damp spikes. "The hydroponics bay failed three weeks ago. The municipal water filter is a joke. The Mayor is actively embezzling the relief funds. I am not waiting around to starve just because you have a romantic attachment to rust and misery."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the sun-peach. I held it up in the center of the room. The golden bioluminescence cut through the dull, dusty light of the apartment.
Larry stopped moving. The roll of duct tape slipped from his fingers and hit the linoleum floor with a dull thud.
"Where did you procure a Class-A botanical contraband?" he asked, his voice dropping an octave.
"Impound Bay Four. Addressed to the Mayor's private residence. There are forty crates of them, Larry. Forty. Sitting in the dark while the community center hands out sawdust bricks to children."
"Put that away," Larry said, taking a step back. "If a private security drone scans that radiation signature on your person, you will be indentured to a lithium mine by Tuesday."
"We are stealing the municipal hover-truck," I said.
"We are doing absolutely nothing of the sort."
"We are stealing the municipal hover-truck," I repeated, stepping closer to him, forcing him to look at the glowing fruit. "We are loading the forty crates. We are driving across the permafrost highway, and we are delivering them to the food bank."
"You are hallucinating from heatstroke," Larry said. He turned away and grabbed a stack of folded t-shirts. "I am leaving on a bus in six hours. I am going south. I am going to live in a city that has functional plumbing."
"You are a coward."
"I am a pragmatist!" Larry yelled, slamming the shirts into a box. "I am trying not to drown with the rest of you!"
"Then do this one last thing," I said. My voice was steady. I didn't yell. I just watched his shoulders tense. "Do this one last thing, and I will personally walk you to the transport terminal. I will carry your bags. But you cannot tell me you are going to walk out of here knowing the Mayor is hoarding glowing fruit while Old Man Tobe eats synthetic gruel."
Larry stared at the cardboard box. He closed his eyes. His jaw clenched.
"A hover-truck requires a dual-authorization biometric bypass," Larry muttered.
"Which is why I need the guy who rebuilt a plasma conduit in his bedroom."
Larry turned around. He looked at the peach, then at me.
"If I miss my bus because I am incarcerated," Larry said, "I will legally adopt you just so I can disown you."
The chain-link fence bordering Municipal Lot C was warped from the relentless sun. The metal was hot enough to blister skin. I scaled it first, my boots finding the familiar diamond-shaped gaps, and dropped into the dusty compound. Larry landed beside me a second later, his knees buckling slightly beneath the weight of his overstuffed messenger bag.
"Security cameras are sweeping in a thirty-second oscillation," Larry whispered, pressing his back against the rusted hull of a decommissioned snowplow.
"I know," I said. "I timed them yesterday."
"You timed them yesterday? Have you been planning this before you even found the peaches?"
"I like to be prepared for spontaneous felony," I said.
We moved in the blind spots, sliding between the massive, dormant utility vehicles. The summer heat trapped in the lot was suffocating. The air wavered, making the massive silhouettes of the trucks look liquid. We reached the target: a heavy-duty corporate hover-truck, painted in the Mayor’s obnoxious matte silver. The payload bed was massive, designed for industrial hauling.
I slid under the driver's side door and popped the external access panel with my multitool. Wires spilled out in a tangled cascade of red, blue, and yellow.
"Alright, bypass the biometric lock," I said, stepping back.
Larry dropped to his knees. He pulled a custom-spliced datapad from his bag and connected a series of copper leads to the truck's wiring harness. His fingers moved with frantic, practiced precision.
"The encryption is standard municipal garbage," Larry said, his eyes locked on the scrolling code on his screen. "They didn't even bother updating the firmware from the 2024 patch. Pathetic."
A green light flashed on the door handle. The heavy metal door hissed and swung open on hydraulic hinges.
We climbed inside. The cab was an oven. The synthetic leather seats burned through my coveralls. I slid behind the steering yoke, while Larry took the passenger side, immediately plugging his datapad into the central console to override the ignition protocol.
"Firing the repulsors in three, two, one," Larry said.
The truck vibrated. A deep, resonant hum vibrated through the floorboards. The dashboard illuminated in a wash of crisp blue light.
Then, the central screen flared pink.
"Good afternoon, Municipal Employees!" a bright, synthetic voice chirped through the surround-sound speakers. "I am S.A.R.A.H., your Systemic Artificial Route and Happiness companion! It is a beautiful summer day. Current external temperature is thirty-four degrees Celsius. Would you like me to initiate the cabin climate control?"
Larry stared at the dashboard in horror. "What is that?"
"It's the new experimental AI the Mayor bought with the infrastructure budget," I said, frantically tapping the screen trying to find a mute button. "I thought they uninstalled it because it kept trying to be a therapist."
"I detect elevated heart rates!" Sarah chirped. "Are we excited for our shift? I have prepared a playlist of upbeat, morale-boosting audio tracks. Initiating track one!"
A painfully loud, generic pop song flooded the cabin. Synthesizer beats bounced off the glass.
"Kill it!" I yelled over the music.
"I am trying!" Larry shouted, his fingers flying across his datapad. "She's hardcoded into the ignition sequence! If I disable her, the repulsors shut down!"
"Just drive!"
I slammed the thrust lever forward. The massive truck lurched up from the asphalt, floating three feet in the air, and blasted through the flimsy aluminum gate of Lot C. We sped toward Impound Bay Four. Loading the crates took twenty agonizing minutes of manual labor. My muscles screamed, slick with sweat, as Larry and I hauled forty heavy wooden boxes into the cargo bed.
With the payload secured, I directed the truck toward the northern edge of town, aiming for the permafrost highway that connected the industrial zone to the community center.
"Warning," Sarah announced, lowering the volume of the pop music by a fraction. "The designated route involves the Northern Permafrost Highway. Due to extreme summer anomalies, structural integrity of the road is currently at twenty-two percent. Would you like me to calculate a scenic detour?"
"Ignore her," Larry said, staring out the window.
The highway was a disaster. What used to be a solid, reliable stretch of frozen earth was now a treacherous, shifting landscape of mud, collapsed asphalt, and deep slush-pockets where the permafrost had completely surrendered to the heat. Giant, mutated fireweed bloomed aggressively along the fractured edges of the road, their bright pink petals mocking the devastation.
"This is insane," Larry muttered, gripping the grab handle above his door as the truck pitched violently to the left. "The ground is literally melting beneath us."
"We just have to make it three miles," I said, white-knuckling the steering yoke.
"Alert!" Sarah chimed. "Approaching a localized environmental anomaly. Corporate cryo-coolant pipeline rupture detected. Temperature shift imminent. Please ensure your seatbelts are fastened for safety and comfort!"
"Cryo-coolant what?" Larry asked.
Before I could answer, the truck slammed into a massive depression in the road. Mud exploded outward in a brown tidal wave. The repulsors whined in agony, choked by the thick sludge. The truck lurched forward, sank deep into a trench of liquid earth, and violently powered down. The hum of the repulsors died.
Then, the temperature crashed.
Frost instantaneously spider-webbed across the windshield. The agonizing summer heat inside the cabin vanished, replaced by a biting, violent cold. I saw my own breath plume in the air.
"What just happened?" Larry yelled, his teeth chattering uncontrollably within seconds.
"The pipeline!" I said, pointing through the frosted glass.
Fifty yards ahead, a massive, rusted corporate pipe jutted from the mud. It was violently venting a pressurized stream of liquid nitrogen and cryo-coolant meant to stabilize the permafrost. The rupture was creating a localized, minus-forty degree microclimate. The mud and slush around the truck was flash-freezing into a concrete-hard trap of jagged brown ice.
"We are stuck," Larry said, his voice laced with panic. "We are literally frozen in the mud."
"We have a winch on the front bumper," I said, popping the door lever. "I just need to attach it to that concrete pylon across the ditch."
"You cannot go out there! You are wearing summer coveralls!"
"We do not have a choice!"
I shoved the door open. The cold hit me like a wall of knives. The wind whipped across the flash-frozen mud, driving ice crystals into my face. I jumped down from the cab. My boots hit the frozen slush and immediately slipped. I slammed hard onto my knees, the impact sending a shockwave of pain up my spine.
Larry was out a second later. He didn't say a word. He grabbed the heavy steel hook of the winch cable and started dragging it toward the pylon. I scrambled up and helped him pull. The steel cable was freezing to the skin of our palms.
"You are insane!" Larry screamed over the howling wind of the ruptured pipe. "We are going to die out here for a crate of fruit!"
"Pull the damn cable!" I yelled back.
We reached the pylon. My fingers were completely numb, clumsy blocks of wood as I forced the heavy steel hook around the reinforced concrete and snapped the locking carabiner into place.
I turned to run back to the truck, but Larry grabbed the collar of my coveralls. He yanked me backward, slamming me against the concrete pylon.
"I am not doing this anymore!" Larry screamed, his face inches from mine. His eyes were wide, terrified. "I am missing my bus! I am dying in a freezing mud pit because you refuse to let go!"
"I am not forcing you!" I shoved him back, my boots sliding on the ice. "You could have walked away in your apartment!"
"You brought the glowing peach into my living room, Jay! You knew exactly what you were doing! You are manipulating me into staying in this graveyard!"
"I am trying to save our home!" I stepped forward and shoved him hard in the chest. Larry stumbled backward, tripping over the heavy winch cable, and fell hard into the jagged ice.
"I'm not abandoning you!" Larry screamed from the ground, his voice cracking. He didn't try to get up. He just sat there in the frozen mud. "I'm not abandoning you, I'm just trying not to drown with the rest of this place!"
The wind howled. I looked at him sitting in the dirt. My chest heaved. I felt a sudden, sharp exhaustion behind my ribs.
"Leaving just accelerates the death," I said softly, though the wind carried the words away. "Every time one of you leaves, another light turns off."
Suddenly, the truck's external speakers cracked to life.
"Morale levels critically low!" Sarah's voice boomed across the frozen wasteland, echoing off the dying permafrost. "Initiating aggressive cheer protocol!"
The deafening, upbeat rhythm of a 2000s summer pop anthem blasted from the truck. The bright, synthetic horns and clapping beats clashed violently with the desolate, freezing mudscape and the hissing cryo-pipe.
Larry looked up at the truck. He looked at me. A bizarre, hysterical laugh ripped out of his throat.
I reached down and grabbed his hand, hauling him to his feet.
"Let's just winch the truck," I said.
We ran back to the cab. I hit the dashboard controls. The winch whined, straining against the flash-frozen mud. Slowly, agonizingly, the heavy vehicle was dragged forward, the repulsors tearing free from the ice trap.
As the truck pulled onto a slightly more stable patch of road, out of the direct blast of the cryo-vent, the temperature inside the cab began to slowly normalize.
I steered us forward, the pop music still playing at a low volume.
"Look out!" Larry suddenly yelled, pointing at the windshield.
Standing in the middle of the road, wrapped in a heavy, insulated parka that looked entirely out of place in the summer landscape, was a figure. I slammed on the repulsor brakes. The truck skidded to a halt inches from the person.
It was Old Man Tobe. He carried a heavy metal thermos and a modified ice-fishing auger.
I rolled down the window. The ambient heat of the summer was returning as we moved away from the rupture.
"Tobe?" I asked. "What are you doing out here?"
"Mud-fishing," Tobe rasped, his face weathered into deep, leathery canyons. "Looking for the old subterranean aquifers. But the ground is collapsing too fast."
He looked exhausted. His hands shook as he gripped his auger.
I looked at Larry. Larry nodded.
I reached backward into the cargo slot, pried open the top crate, and pulled out a single, glowing sun-peach. I held it out the window.
"Trade you for whatever is in that thermos," I said.
Tobe stared at the peach. His eyes widened. He dropped his auger. He took the fruit with trembling hands, offering me the heavy thermos in exchange. Tobe didn't wait. He bit directly into the peach. The golden juice illuminated his chin in the dimming light.
Tobe closed his eyes. Tears leaked from the corners of his deeply lined eyes, tracking through the dirt on his face.
"I remember when the winters were cold enough to freeze the ocean," Tobe whispered, chewing slowly. "I remember when the ground didn't betray us. It tastes like the sun, boy. It tastes like before."
Before I could respond, a sound like a bomb detonating echoed from behind us.
"Warning!" Sarah shrieked, her voice overriding the pop music. "Catastrophic structural failure detected! The permafrost shelf is collapsing!"
I looked in the rearview mirror. The road behind us was disappearing into a massive, yawning black fissure.
The earth was simply giving up. A jagged crack, ten feet wide and expanding rapidly, tore through the center of the permafrost highway. The cryo-pipe we had just passed violently snapped, sending a massive geyser of white vapor into the sky as the ground beneath it vanished into the abyss.
"Drive!" Larry screamed, slamming his hands against the dashboard.
I floored the thrust lever. The heavy corporate truck groaned, the repulsors maxing out at a deafening pitch. We shot forward.
Behind us, the fissure chased us like a living predator. The road buckled and collapsed in massive, house-sized chunks. The sound was deafening—a continuous, roaring thunder of tearing earth and snapping roots.
"Current speed is forty-five miles per hour!" Sarah announced cheerfully. "The collapsing void is traveling at forty-seven miles per hour! We are currently operating at a net-negative survival trajectory!"
"Shut up, Sarah!" I yelled, swerving violently to avoid a massive boulder that had erupted from the disintegrating road.
The truck bounced off a ridge of hardened mud, catching air for a terrifying second before slamming back down. The suspension screamed. The crates in the back slammed against the bulkhead.
"I am transferring auxiliary power from the climate controls to the rear repulsors!" Larry yelled, frantically typing on his datapad.
"Do it!"
The dashboard lights flickered. The AC died, and a sudden burst of speed threw us back into our seats. The edge of the fissure was inches from our rear bumper. I could see the void in the rearview camera—a bottomless trench swallowing the summer weeds and the broken asphalt.
The shoreline of the town appeared ahead. The solid, bedrock foundation of the community center hill.
"Come on, come on, come on!" I chanted, holding the yoke perfectly straight.
We hit the ramp of solid bedrock just as the last section of the permafrost highway disintegrated behind us. The truck launched onto the concrete plaza of the community center, skidding wildly. I yanked the steering yoke, throwing the massive vehicle into a broadside slide to bleed off speed. We slammed into a set of decorative concrete planters, shattering them into dust.
The truck came to a violent halt.
The dashboard flashed red.
"Battery depleted," Sarah whispered, her voice slowing down, distorting into a deep drawl. "Have a... wonderful... day..."
The screens went black. The repulsors died with a heavy, metallic clunk.
Silence fell over the cabin, save for our ragged breathing and the distant, settling rumbles of the destroyed highway.
"We made it," Larry whispered, staring out the window at the intact community center doors.
"Yeah," I said. I popped my door open. "Now we carry."
We spent the next hour hauling the forty crates by hand from the dead truck up the steps to the community center doors. My arms were entirely numb by the tenth trip. Larry was practically dragging his feet, his breath coming in shallow gasps.
When we kicked the double doors open on the final trip, the food bank director—a weary woman named Martha with graying hair and thick spectacles—dropped her clipboard.
We set the final crate on the linoleum floor. I took my prybar and snapped the lid off.
The dim, fluorescent-lit room was instantly bathed in the warm, golden-orange glow of the sun-peaches.
Martha walked forward slowly. She reached into the crate and picked one up, her face illuminated by the bioluminescence. She looked at me, then at Larry, completely speechless.
"Compliments of the Mayor," I said, wiping a streak of freezing mud from my forehead.
***
The next morning, the summer sun rose aggressively, baking the town in a relentless glare.
I stood at the chain-link fence of the transit depot. Larry was adjusting the strap of his messenger bag. The massive, armored transport bus idled behind him, its engines humming with reliable, expensive power.
"You could still get a ticket," Larry said. "They sell them at the kiosk. I have enough credits to cover you."
I shook my head. "Someone has to dismantle the Mayor's truck before his private security traces it to the plaza."
Larry offered a weak smile. "You are going to get yourself killed, Jay."
"Maybe," I said.
He stepped forward and hugged me. It was a brief, tight grip.
"Don't drown," Larry said softly.
"Don't forget how to breathe," I replied.
I watched him turn and walk up the metal stairs of the transport. The doors hissed shut. The bus pulled away, kicking up a cloud of dry summer dust that drifted over the cracked pavement. I watched it until it disappeared around the bend, heading south toward the cities with functional plumbing.
I reached into my pocket. My fingers brushed against a small, hard object.
It was the pitted seed from the peach I had eaten on the walk home last night. I pulled it out and looked at it in the sunlight. It didn't glow anymore, but it felt dense. Heavy with potential.
I turned away from the empty road and started walking back toward the industrial zone. I dropped the first pitted seed into the dry, cracked soil of the hydroponics bay, wondering if the roots would take hold before the rest of the town collapsed.
“I dropped the first pitted seed into the dry, cracked soil of the hydroponics bay, wondering if the roots would take hold before the rest of the town collapsed.”
