City officials moved Tuesday to clarify that no sunset curfew has been imposed, explaining that the sun ‘is simply quitting at 5 p.m. now’ following the November 1 end of daylight saving time, and that complaints should be directed to ‘the Earth’s tilt, which is frankly unresponsive.’
‘We have received 200 calls asking whether it is illegal to be outside after dark,’ said city spokesperson Dana Whitfield. ‘It is not. The darkness is not a policy. The darkness is astronomy.’
The confusion began when the 5 p.m. commute, previously conducted in golden late-afternoon light, was suddenly conducted in what commuters described as ‘the void,’ ‘a cave,’ and ‘the inside of a sock.’
‘I left work at 5:05 and it was night,’ said office worker Priya Raman. ‘Actual night. I checked my phone to see if I’d been at work for seven hours. I had not. The sun had just… left. No notice. No two weeks.’
Astronomer Dr. Neil Forsythe of the county planetarium attempted to explain axial tilt at a town hall, using a globe and a lamp. ‘Halfway through, someone asked if we could just tilt it back,’ Forsythe said. ‘I said no. They asked if I was sure.’
The Darkness-at-5PM Morale Office has doubled its lantern allotment in response. ‘The tilt is doing what the tilt does,’ said Director Brenda Puckett. ‘We do what we do. We glow.’
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