Stories
"We determined to destroy the light."
In a grimy, apocalyptic world both like and unlike our own, light becomes the ultimate form of control. Those who own the light own the people, and those lost in the dark have nothing, not even hope. Or do they? What happens to a population when its ruling class takes everything?
A unique collaboration between human-made story telling and AI generated visuals, ‘The Light Thieves’ explores themes of power, authority and late stage capitalism.
‘The Light Thieves’ is a fully animated, narrated, motion picture short story by internationally best selling poet and storyteller David Jones. His work is followed by over 1 million readers around the world, and his books have appeared on multiple best seller lists.
Full text:
We determined to destroy the light. We began with obvious things like the street lamps, the houses, even the rogue lightbulbs.
The people protested, of course, fools that they are.
“We need the light for all manner of things! We need it to live!” they cried, but we ignored them.
We put out the sun and then the moon, but the stars remained. These were more stubborn, but in the end we threw a blanket over the whole world.
At last, in the depths of the darkness we lit a single light.
“This is our light” we said “And anybody who wants it will have to bow to us and pay for the privilege.”
At first the people came. Those that could pay paid and those who could not were lost in the darkness.
We lit more and more lights, demanding ever higher payments and ever greater worship. Eventually, the world was bright again, but it was bright on our terms.
Something was wrong. Darkness crept over the world again, putting out our lights one by one.
“We would rather live in darkness than your light” said a voice, and we recognised it as the voice of the people.
A new darkness, deeper and darker than before, swept across the world. We tried to turn the lights back on, tried to reason and to bargain, but the rest is silence.