Northern Lights and Southern Robots

Brenda Cooper’s latest Sunday Morning Transport story begins with strange lights in the sky. ~ Julian and Fran, April 26, 2026

For April, The Sunday Morning Transport features stories by D. Xiaolin Spires, Margaret Dunlap, Rich Larson, and Brenda Cooper. We are grateful for your support in helping us get here, and in continuing to bring more extraordinary writers and their work to the page.

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Northern Lights and Southern Robots

by Brenda Cooper

Kin Way snuggled into a soft, half-waking dream about her robots marching from her factory onto construction sites. They wore hard hats and belts festooned with tools. They had clever pockets built into their hips, and their torsos were covered in the same bright yellow safety gear that human workers wore. In her dream, they waved at people, and people waved back; the robots and the people all together. A team.

The vision felt good, thick as a memory rather than diaphanous like a dream. Not that it had come true in real life yet. Deep in her heart, she knew it could. In spite of the haters.

Her factory was just two miles downhill and to the right. Three years old, gleaming with promise and hope, if not yet with revenue. Already it had turned out ten test bots. Working test bots! Perhaps that was why she kept sliding between sleep and consciousness. Euphoria. Her real and nighttime dreams braiding. Engineering dreams. Still, worry kept her from sleep. What if her robots weren’t accepted? How could she convince carpenters and bricklayers to work alongside them?

Fists pounded on her door, rattling the hinges. She startled awake.

“Come outside! Come outside! The sky!” her neighbor, a Nigerian artist named Chimaobi, screamed at her.

She lifted her wrist and peered at the tiny image from the door camera. Chimaobi’s round face gleamed in the porch light. His words made no sense, his tone a mash of fear and excitement. She finally understood him. “The sky is on fire!”

She poured herself out of the bed and found her sliders. She flung the door open. No one stood there. Her neighbors occupied the street, some in pajamas and slippers. The streets were usually dark to preserve night for the desert’s pollinators. Not now. She squinted. Brightness brushed the sky with color. She sniffed for smoke, smelled only lightly scented desert air. She darted back into her room, fumbled into her jeans and tank from the day before, grabbed her smart glasses and her phone, and raced out the door. As she emerged from under her roof, the sky commanded her focus. Reds and pinks, brighter even than the bougainvillea that covered the white stucco wall around her pool. Rising, brightening. Impossible. Red to pink to red, curtaining, swirling.

She froze mid-stride for a heartbeat, staring, held captive by color. She had seen this on a cruise, except it had been greens and blues. Softer. Smaller. She felt like she could reach toward the sky and stain the tips of her fingers with light.

Green spikes pierced the purples and reds, then the sky became largely neon green.

“It’s a miracle!” Chimaobi proclaimed, his smile so broad, it took over his entire face. “A miracle! A rainbow in the sky!”

Not a rainbow. An aurora. Chimaobi, a successful painter and sculptor, had moved here last year from near the equator. Maybe he had never seen such a thing. This sky belonged in Iceland.

What size flare would drive the northern lights all the way down to Scottsdale? She recalled a brief news article about a flare in her morning’s newsfeed. She had ignored it.

She blinked at the sky in amazement and wondered if she should feel fear. It had to be dangerous. She imagined satellites burned out of the sky, GPS fried. She had chosen her house for a direct view of the sunset over the Phoenix valley below, and she could see the lights stretching across miles and miles of sky.