Steve Suns

Several days later Steve returned to the door. It was still golden and spotless. He felt just as unsure of his next action as he had at last visit, and quite sure that he would be unsure if he waited another day or week or year for some kind of indication of what to do. The door was going to outlast him. He sat down on a step facing the door to ponder this problem.

He thought of being young, perhaps eight or nine, hunting with his father. It did not seem to matter what they were hunting, his father's most common words were: "Don't wait for the moment, create it." And the old man would pull the trigger, sometimes in quick succession, to the horror of Steve's ears. He wanted to run when that happened. He thought of running now, but the door was quiet and motionless.

"Hard to believe there used to be something called wind," Steve said to Uhlrick.

"Never heard of it," the younger man said, swinging from his safety cable from bolt to bolt with ease. He loosened them at three times the pace of Steve.

"That's why they built these things."

"And there's no more, so we take them down, eh." Uhlrick spoke easily and quickly while Steve was often out of breath.

Gray hair and a growing bald spot were the top of his head. The men were nearly two hundred feet above the still ocean, working from a hover platform to dismantle wind turbines that powered many thousands of homes. There were hundreds of them, for as far as they could see, which was quite far from this height.

"How long ago did this wind exist?" Uhlrick asked.

"Generation or a few. I kind of think my father's father spoke of it with a lot of emotion."

Steve found himself stumbling down a short flight of steps, catching his fall with a hand on a yellow door. It was shiny and clean, spotless in fact. Steve marveled at the lack of smudges, even where he had placed his hand. He was not sure where his was because he had been wandering in deep thoughts. His feet had carried him here on their own volition it seemed. He crouched and could not find a water spot despite the fact that the ground was wet from an earlier rain - the washing truck was just at the end of the block. The yellow color was that of the sun, bright and burning. He touched it again and it was warm.

He knocked. Waited. Nothing happened, there was no sound from the other side, so he put his ear to the door. It opened slowly, just an inch. Steve waited again, but nothing more happened. For what seemed an eternity, he thought about his options: opening the door, leaving, peeking inside, calling out, doing something, doing nothing. Which is what he did, nothing. He was frozen in anticipation.