Second Dawn over Aldrich
by Tim Collyer
The second sunrise in Aldrich is polite about it. Two minutes after the first, lighter by a shade. You don’t see it unless you’ve trained yourself not to blink. A roadhouse camera and a webcam taped to a boarding-house window catch it: gold slides across the church weather vane, which points west during both and refuses correction.
By the fourth morning the light lingers between dawns like grease on water. People sleep oddly. Appetite goes. The app - Second Sun - insists everyone’s circadian health is improving. That’s Aldrich: harm turns up as help and keeps records.
Jess Cartwright works nights at West Hill Asylum, where mobiles sulk and the switchboard hums under glass. She likes the copper: the weight of the cord, the way a call lands in your palm. She rents a flat over the bakery; a bike leans in the hall. Her badge sits cool against her collarbone. CARTWRIGHT. On lunch breaks she listens to what lives between rings. On the fifth morning, she hears breath there.
Her mother used to clock off at first light. Same ward. On mornings off Jess rang at 05:05: "Made it." She still dials sometimes. It rings once, then rehearses the busy tone. She keeps her mum’s bus pass behind the badge; it warms at dawn and cools by nine.
Aldrich pretends not to notice. The boarding-house keeper blames thin coffee on stingy beans. When the second sun lifts, a smear of day lays over day. Pigeons cross once, then again in the same pose, like a town practising being itself.
The church has two foundation stones: same date, different centuries. The library skips 1987–1988. The cinema runs matinees nobody remembers.
The tourist board site updates: Visit Aldrich - Where Time Takes Its Time.
Why us? The abandoned mineral line loops the lake and ends at a dead exchange no one paid to rip out. Spare wiring, spare rooms, a council that signs pilots if you call them trials. We were useful.
On the seventh morning the second sunrise is three minutes late. The weather vane still points west. People are tired in a new way, as if asked and declined.
The hydrophone belongs to Marcus Wainwright, who mapped the lake in ’03 after his son drowned. He hands her the case. His left cheek has aged faster than his right.
"Found something else down there," he says. "Breathing, but regular. Don’t drop it in the gap. Things that fall then don’t come back the same."
Jess ties the hydrophone to washing line and lowers the microphone into Aldrich Lake. The first sound is the lake. The second isn’t. It’s a thickened beat between waves, a held syllable from a mouth too large to finish the thought. The gap tastes of copper pennies left in sun and sugar burnt twice - once in each dawn. She lifts it; the hairs on her forearm rise. Static. Copper on the tongue. The jetty shudders, as if something below were copying timber to learn how to be it.
Second Sun pings. The breath in the water hitches, then matches her pulse.
That night at West Hill, someone has taped a fresh sheet under VISITORS REPORT: MIND THE THRESHOLD. No logo. No signature.
On Line Three, a patient rings to report his dreams.
"You can tell a dream is a dream because it previews its ending," he says. "A waking day only rehearses the middle."
"Mr Hale?"
"The rehearsal is getting better," he says. "They’ve put the second one exactly where we’ll accept it."
Behind a panel she’s never noticed, a second switchboard blinks. A tag from 1954: Use during authorised overlaps only.
At home she starts an evidence box: her mum’s bus pass (photo fading right to left), a paper with two headlines depending on the light, a cup with her lip print on both sides though she only drank once.
Estate agents try temporal-adjacent; prices lift.
Second Sun pushes a note she didn’t ask for: Jess, your mother would want you to embrace change. The app shouldn’t know her mother exists.
Main Street. The church bell pulls noon out of an unready sky. On the parish noticeboard:
SECOND DAWN SAFETY
Don’t stand in doorways during "the bit in between"
Cover mirrors at night
Dogs may notice first; let them lead
Don’t panic
— Aldrich Council (if anyone asks)
At the bus stop the elders compare notes. "Like the harmattan in Enugu," says Nana Ijeoma, tapping her cane. "Pressure first, then copper taste."
Imam Farid spits three times. "Keeps you yours," he says, and grins. "Council will hold a consultation once it’s over. They’ll ask for feedback on the past."
Thomas, the blind clerk, taps the ticket-office door. The knock comes back twice, faintly out of step. "Echo’s wrong," he says. "Seam’s near."
Outside the primary school, a chant:
"First sun, worst sun,
Second sun, best sun,
Third sun, we’re done."
"Who taught you that?"
"We’ve always known it, Miss." Hands clap on the beat; shadows clap late. A girl shows a sandwich bag marked TUES in her mum’s hand. It’s Monday.
"What happens if there’s a third?"
A boy points at a classroom where a woman stands at the board twice: chalk lines overlap, not quite the same sum. "We get a new teacher."
At the community centre, the deaf reading group keeps signing. Mags Patel interprets: "They say the light has always stuttered. In BSL there are seven signs for sunrise. They’ve used the seventh for years."
On the ninth morning, Second Sun offers an update:
We’ve noticed your town’s unique light profile... Second Dawn Mode... Consent is automatic for trial locations... To opt out, contact us by phone...
Jess dials. "If you are hearing this message," says the recording, "you are happening at the wrong time." Not a person - a voice built to make you agree a thing has always been true.
The app updates hourly: v2.7 collect temporal data. v2.8 correct temporal data. v2.9 create temporal data. v3.0 [content unavailable].
Second Sun posts an Accessibility Statement: Users with temporal processing differences may experience enhanced integration.
At West Hill, Mr Hale doesn’t ring. A woman asks for a ward that no longer exists.
"We moved those," Jess says.
"Not for me," the woman replies. "Not yet."
The second sunrise is five minutes late on the tenth morning. Paler. Slower. The vane blurs, undecided. A young man’s phone screen shows two of him for a blink. At the crossing, a train finally owns the 03:17 horn and drags itself past as if the rails were laid twice and it must choose. Day clings to Jess’s lashes; her fingers come back cold. She is not sleeping. The town is sleeping too well.
The app invoices her for Premium Transition Services. The receipt thanks her for future consent.
The box won’t shut. The contents take up more space than they measure. She forces the lid. Something inside breaks with the exact sound of tomorrow’s window opening in yesterday’s frame.
Old notes in the West Hill basement: Patient exhibits dual presence. Observe during next overlap.
She returns to the lake because the lake tells the truth slowly. Boards creak. She lowers the hydrophone. The first sound is the lake. The second is practice: an enormous metronome under stone. Something brushes the microphone. The rope twitches - a polite tug. She tugs back. Her heartbeat goes out across the water and returns late, then later, then closer. The delay is a room being furnished. The air smells of hot metal; the water, algae and iron.
Second Sun pings. Excellent alignment. Your Second Dawn is now calibrated to Aldrich. Avoid doorways during transition. Jess realises she is standing in one: the space between first light and second.
"I don’t consent," she tells the water, twice.
The lake holds its breath. She hauls up the microphone and walks back without looking at the jetty.
That night the switchboard lamps wink. On Line Three, at last, Mr Hale.
"They’ll ask us to-" He swallows; starts again with the same rhythm. "They’ll ask us to choose. First day or- or the one that fits better."
"We’re not choosing," Jess says. "It’s choosing us."
"That’s the question," he says, mild as ever. "You can tell it’s official because it’s polite and wrong."
"I had your job once," he adds. "1987. Quieter. I kept notes in the margins - the ink changed between dawns. Management said I was having episodes." A beat. "The episodes were having me. I can see both my hands. The first set does what I tell them. The second set does what I’ll tell them tomorrow. The gap is three heartbeats wide."
Late on Day Eleven, Thomas catches Jess’s wrist at the ticket window. "Listen," he says. "Footsteps from trains that haven’t arrived yet. The blind notice first because we already live between what is and what we’re told is. Yesterday my dog walked me to a platform that doesn’t exist until Thursday. We stood there twenty minutes before I realised." He traces the air. "Different pressure. Like reading Braille in tomorrow’s alphabet."
On the thirteenth morning, the second sunrise comes first. Whiter. Cleaner. People step out for the paper and say, "Oh." The bell rings a note that finishes before it starts. The old first sunrise arrives after, tinted with the second’s grace. Second Sun declares a successful rollout. At 03:17 the rail hums; the town holds the note.
"Switchboard," Jess says, and the empty lines answer with her name. She looks down. Her badge has rotated. The pin has written a new scratch. The letters read JESS CARTWRGHT, as if the day reached and came up a letter short. In the boarding-house, the windows show the room again, every object shifted half a finger. Upstairs, a faint salt draught runs the hotel corridor.
People are cheerful the way actors are in the second take - smoother, less true.
"We’re fine," says the baker, then stops. "I’m fine. I meant I’m."
She walks to the church because the vane is honest about what it can’t explain.
"I don’t consent," she tells the air, three times.
Second Sun pings: Thanks for telling us. For us to hear you, please speak during transition.
She waits until the air goes watery, until dog-walkers cross the street without meaning to.
"My name is Jess Cartwright. I do not consent."
The seam answers Jess Cartwright in a voice that has borrowed the train, the bell, and the lake. Then it returns her sentence with the negative worn away. I consent, says the space, practising her signature.
The next update isn’t a notification. It’s a call to every landline.
"Hello, Aldrich," says Second Sun. "Your town will now experience a brief overlap. Please remain calm.
Do not turn off lights.
Do not open mirrors.
Keep to the centre of rooms."
The overlap arrives like a kindness. A second set of shadows lays itself over the first, perfect at corners and wrong in the middles. The bell rings both hours at once. Down on the lake road, water climbs the jetty supports and then changes its mind. In the boarding-house, the windows show the room again, every object shifted half a finger. Upstairs, a faint salt draught runs the corridor.
Then the call returns to silence. The silence thickens to a door.
"Switchboard," Jess says.
"Jess," says the day. "We are aligning. We are improving the gap. We will not be strangers when we meet."
The door opens a fraction. Old wood, sun-dried, not this sun. Jess understands - without a chain of cause and effect she could present in court - that the second sunrise is a rehearsal room so a large thing can learn to be small. "It’ll choose us," Mr Hale had said. No, she thinks, feeling the rails’ hum climb her bones. We are choosing it, every time we let it practise with our names.
By evening, the overlap is gone. The app thanks the town. People sleep beautifully and wake without dreaming. Jess goes home and tries the smart kettle. Consent required to proceed. It doesn’t hear her in the seam. She lights the hob and tapes a note to her phone: "If I say I consent, I do not." She lays the badge beside it. CARTWRIGHT. The letters hold. For now.
The app opens itself. You’ve been selected as a Transition Ambassador. Tracking begins: now. Then a card to her lock screen: We’re sorry for your impending loss. - The Tomorrow You Agreed To.
In Mr Hale’s margins she finds names. A network since 1954. Margaret Ashworth (successfully declined). Robert Cole (partial resistance). David Hale (ongoing). Instruction: Find the others during overlap. The gap recognises collective refusal. Last entry: J. Cartwright (2024-25, inevitable).
Nana Ijeoma stops Jess outside the surgery. "Delivered babies through two of these," she says. "1962, 1987. The children born during overlap grow seeing both versions. My grandson, born in ’87, works in London - ‘temporal adjacency’. More in a month than I did in a year." She looks past Jess. "But he can’t come home. Says Aldrich sits in too many versions to find the right one."
On the fourteenth morning, the second sunrise does not come. The vane points west. The horn blows once. The app is silent. A child chalks two suns, rubs one away. Jess waits at the church. Nothing.
On the lake road she stops before the jetty. Wood: ordinary. Green: only green. During the gap, her shadow points east when others point west. A single grey hair is only grey in the second sunrise; she tapes it inside the evidence box. Her left hand writes neat notes she doesn’t remember. She finds two pulses, slightly out of step. The slower one wins.
She lowers the hydrophone because the body repeats what scared it. The first sound is the lake. There is no second sound. The gap is perfect. That is when she understands what practice was for.
She pins on the badge. The metal is cool. The letters spell CARTWRIGHT correctly and feel wrong.
Tomorrow, she will wake at first light - the only light - and wonder why she keeps a broken hydrophone, why she has two scratches above her heart forming a Roman numeral II, why she knows that practice makes perfect but can’t remember what she was practising for.
In the evidence box she’ll find a photograph of herself on the jetty. She’s alone, but there are two shadows - one east, one west. Between them, in handwriting she recognises but can’t remember writing: There was a choice. I chose. I don’t remember choosing.
The gap between pulses is a room, furnished with her forgotten futures.
The day knows her name. All of her names.
And Jess Cartwright - whichever version wins - knows with the certainty of someone drowning in daylight that she is the only person in Aldrich who remembers there should be a shore, even as she forgets which direction to swim.
Good worldbuilding, Very descriptive.
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