BLACKOUT RADIO

Jun's pirate radio station occupied a broom cupboard above the abandoned roller rink. He had a microphone held together with tape, a transmitter older than his father, and a nightly audience of people who were either insomniacs or too polite to turn him off.

At 11:59 the lights went out across the city. Jun kept broadcasting on a battery stolen from a lawnmower. The phone lines lit up with callers reporting strange things: people had stopped laughing mid-joke, every clown in the municipal parade had fallen silent, and the mayor had been trapped in a lift with his own press secretary.

Then a woman from the power company called. "Your jokes are unlicensed," she said. "Every laugh generated by this station is a taxable energy event." She explained that the city had sold its public utility to a firm called Mirth Holdings, which collected laughter through smart meters and resold it to advertisers.

Jun could broadcast the company's secret tariff sheet or visit the power station with his reluctant producer, Dot, to find out where the laughter went.