[ WP ] The Earth does not rotate . One side always faces the sun and is in continual daylight . The other side is in eternal night . Cultures on both side develop around this .

I suppose we were all saved by the sea. Unlike the rivers, it never seemed to freeze over in an impenetrable way. Near the shores, it got icy, like some slush of mud, fuel and ice that killed most of the shallow water wildlife, but the main throughways of the sea remained open. Miles deep, they seemed to withstand the harshness of the Great Freeze and the temper of the Daylight Zone. Not that anything was permanent like that... The Frozen areas saw light some days of the year, just as often as the Daylight Zone entered into several weeks of darkness. There is a logic to it, or so they say. 
 
 It was interesting to watch at first. Many thought that the continued sunlight ( and lack thereof ) would cause radical temperature shifts and pandemic. Untrue. Maybe, one day, the divide will grow rapidly. The few remaining scientists have yet to reach an agreement - most of the weather stations in service before the Slow Down were n't prepared to handle such a fundamental change. Many of those that were fell victim to the Twilight Conflict in'32. 
 
 Maybe the USGS was correct at the time to build its environmental monitoring stations on US military facilities, but that was decades ago. Russia once sprawled across 11 time zones. Now all we hear are rumors of constant warfare in the pitched black. Each fragment of the former super power uses its limited haze - the last fragment of sunlight Siberia will ever see - to rebuild walls, slaughter more livestock, and gaze upon color one last time. 
 
 I was lucky enough to grow up by the water. And to live in the light. When the East fell into darkness, authoritarian governments arose out of nowhere. Mostly, they came from military factions. Nobody could have foretold how important night vision capabilities would become when only the army had them. In the Americas, no revolutions of the sort took place. Rather, there was a mass migration towards temperate climates and deep-water ports. 
 
 When the Slow Down came, I was in school near a rather large port. What used to be Baltimore. The Western Hemisphere got lucky, relatively speaking. People came streaming into the former United States from Canada, fearing the coming of the Winter. The sunlight kept the snow at bay, but the constancy of precipitation and flooding made the Spring and late Fall months unbearable. To the south the situation was more dire. The border was opened initially to offer amnesty to those refugees fearing the mindless persecution of the South American hyper-religious. But religion collapsed pretty fast. 
 
 As I write this, the controversial Pan-American Agricultural Commission has been authorized another 19,000 acres of post-Mexican land to keep up with the import demand from the Balkans and has relocated or killed another 4,300 `` others'' living in the Hot Zone. They were the ones blocked entry after the second outbreak of Dengue fever in 2023. 
 
 There is no more `` Social Justice,'' like I remember as a child. It's as like the unravelling of the world is what it took to realize people are brutally, violently, and irreconcilably human. The `` Others'' die by the thousands and those who cling to the northern regions freeze. 
 
 Civilization has readjusted itself to the Slow Down and the Darkened Hemisphere of the Great Freeze needs our food as much as we need their guns. But the sun is is going to rise in a little while, and I want one more good night's sleep.
