Read Online The Portal in the Forest by Matt Dymerski - Free Book Online

endless struggle had never left me.
    And I hoped that long-ago determination would
transfer to these kids. They were all already depleted and
terrified, but the human body had more to give than any of them
knew.
    All they had to do was keep pace.
    Teenagers, boys, girls, and children walked
together, pushing their walking stances to the limit. It was too
fast to walk comfortably, and too slow to run easily, so we were
caught at the worst speed possible. Still, we pushed on. The
crunching of sixty-six feet filled the air, mercifully drowning out
the sound of the approaching wall of fire.
    "Give it back," I told Danny, who kept the
lead beside me. " What were you thinking? "
    Breathing hard, he looked away, clutching the
tome in hand. "You left."
    "I had to," I told him. "I was wounded."
    "You didn't look hurt."
    I gulped. "I was, and I still am… inside. But
I'm sorry I left."
    He set his jaw with resentment, but handed me
the book.
    I took it with unhappy anticipation. This
world was strange enough that I needed to know if any threats
waited between us and our escape. After steeling myself, I opened
the book to the back pages.
     
    ***
     
    I knew it hadn't been my imagination.
Each day had been slightly warmer than the last, until all the snow
had melted and people were out in shorts. An Indian Summer they
called it, for some reason. Others laughed about global
warming.
    It was global warming, alright, though not
for the reasons anyone suspected.
    Most began sensing something wrong with the
night soon after that. It was subtle, really, but disruptive to
sleep: night time just wasn't as dark as it used to be. The first
reports came out that week, with the first inexplicable data.
    The stars were growing brighter.
    It was light. Light was our problem.
The stars had grown twelve percent brighter than previous recorded
values - all the stars, all at once, for no measurable reason that
anyone could discern. What could make the entire universe grow more
luminescent all at once?
    But, see, that was the wrong question.
    The Sun and Moon were both affected, too. The
Moon became a painful white beacon in the sky, illuminating the
night with stark silver. Sunglasses became mandatory during the
day, along with sunblock, air conditioning, and shade.
    It was rather astounding how long life went
on as normal. People turned up the air in their cars, stayed
indoors, and let technology furiously resist the growing heat. As a
scientist, I had a rather longer-term view of our situation, and I
wondered what they would do once the crops started dying and the
food stopped being shipped in.
    Nope. That didn't happen. My intelligent
colleagues adapted. The food harvests dipped for a year, but then
shot up the next, as a global initiative switched major crops all
over the world toward genetically engineered plants that thrived on the extra light - forty-two percent more than
usual, and climbing.
    From that perspective, things actually
started to look up. The added heat and light were just more energy
for the human race to capture and use. Fossil fuels crashed in
favor of solar, which now never, ever had dull moments - when the
Sun went down, the Moon and the stars took over energy duty. With
almost all of our energy being produced cleanly, and the atmosphere
undergoing severe weather changes, the global temperature actually
began to drop back down for a time.
    It was enough time for us to prepare. Thanks
to the heat, war ended as a thing. It was simply impossible to
field troops, and energy and food had become practically free, so
what was left to fight over? More than that, we had a global threat
on our hands, and the human race banded together to overcome.
    The weird thing about all this, though, was
that the light wasn't the right color. It was growing more and more blue , regardless of source, and we simply had no idea
why.
    I was stationed in one of the pleasantly
temperate Antarctic stations for several years. I'd never really
had family per