on curing SAD

For nearly a century, Grigovian researchers puzzled over the abnormally large numbers of depressed people living in deep valleys high up in the Yiptlong Massif. Some blamed the soured spirits on economics or politics or religion, but a few tenacious scientists began to see patterns in their data, patterns that cut across economic and religious and political lines. Was something in the water fouling the collective mood? they asked, and, Could the cause be genetic? Questions vanished with the discovery of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a condition brought about primarily by insufficient exposure to sunlight. In the wake of SAD, tanning salons in Grigovia's larger cities did a brisk business, but persons living in outlying areas remained depressed, sullen, withdrawn, and grumpy. Plans were drawn up to install artificial sunlight delivery units in public baths in regional population centers throughout Grigovia's higher elevations, but the projected maintenance and electrical costs involved were deemed too high. Then, however planners heard about a Norwegian town installing arrays of sun-tracking heliostats on the tops of the hills that used to shield it from the light of Sol, and they raced to set up copycat operations on Grigovian soil. The first bank of sun-tracking heliostats has been installed 15 kilometers north-west of Grig in the town of Phuir, where it now redirects, on sunny days, a constant stream of bright sunlight onto the town's central square. Local health officials indicate that, at least among the town's elderly persons wheeled out into the square on cloudless days, moods seem to be lifting. More on this story as it develops. Huzzah.

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