We Forgot About the sky

We Forgot About the Sky

The sky had once been a canvas of wonder, painted with stars, clouds, and the promise of infinity. But in the year 2047, it was a forgotten expanse. Augmented reality ads floated where constellations once shone. The sun’s rise was reduced to a soft notification on sleek glasses, and the moon was just another background in digital filters. People no longer looked up because their world was down—confined to screens that filled every moment with curated distractions.

For decades, humanity had been trending toward this moment. Virtual reality metaverse spaces had replaced parks, workplaces, and even the mundane grocery store. Social interactions happened through avatars, and digital feeds consumed every spare second. The natural world, with its unpredictable messiness, was dismissed as irrelevant.

Yet, the sky remained. Vast, indifferent, and quietly watching.


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Part 1: The Anomaly

Dr. Elena Marten sat alone in the antiquated observatory outside the mega-city of Arcadia. It was a relic of another era, nestled in the barren hills beyond the endless sprawl of glittering towers and sprawling slums. While her peers had long abandoned traditional astronomy for predictive AI models, Elena still clung to her telescope—a symbol of rebellion in a society where the natural sky was obsolete.

She was scanning the heavens when she saw it: a new light, moving too fast to be a comet and far too large to be debris. She ran her calculations, then ran them again. The result was always the same. The object—2025-Q7—was on a collision course with Earth. Impact was 88 days away.

Her hands trembled as she typed her report, but she knew it wouldn’t matter. Arcadia’s bureaucrats would dismiss her as a relic, and the corporations that controlled information flow wouldn’t see a profit in her warnings. Still, she sent her findings up the chain and waited.

When days passed with no response, she turned to the one avenue left: the vast, tangled network of social media.


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Part 2: Digital Dissonance

The post read simply:

> "A meteor is coming. We have 88 days. Look up."



Within hours, it had millions of interactions. But the attention wasn’t what Elena hoped. Influencers turned her message into a trend, posting #MeteorChallenge videos of themselves “looking up” in ridiculous poses. Memes ridiculed her, turning the streaking light in the sky into a viral joke. Corporate accounts seized the opportunity to advertise AR glasses with slogans like, “See the sky, but better!”

Some tried to take her seriously, but their voices were drowned in the noise. Conspiracy theories erupted:

The meteor was a hoax to distract from government corruption.

It was an alien ship disguised as a natural disaster.

It was just another ARG (augmented reality game).


As days turned into weeks, the streak of light grew brighter, visible even through the haze of Arcadia’s artificial clouds. But society, lost in its screens, dismissed it as nothing more than an elaborate marketing stunt.


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Part 3: The Forgotten World

Arcadia was a city of extremes. At its core, glittering towers rose into the smog-filled sky, housing the elite who lived in perpetual luxury, shielded by technology. Beyond lay sprawling slums where the poor survived in the shadows of wealth, working tirelessly to maintain the systems that excluded them.

For decades, environmental collapse had forced humanity indoors. Clean air, green spaces, and real food were luxuries few could afford. The natural world had become a ghost, its absence filled by an endless stream of digital facsimiles.

Even as the meteor fragments began hitting the planet—small impacts that devastated rural areas—most people remained unmoved. Media coverage dismissed the events as “isolated natural disasters.” The government issued empty reassurances, promising “advanced meteor mitigation strategies” that didn’t exist.

Elena’s frustration grew as she watched the world spiral deeper into denial. She found unlikely allies in Ravi, a burned-out journalist who once fought misinformation, and Mia, a teenager whose parents dismissed her growing panic. Together, they formed a ragtag resistance, using underground channels to spread the truth.

But the truth was a hard sell in a world addicted to lies.


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Part 4: The Fall

When the meteor finally breached the atmosphere, it was undeniable. The sky turned blood-red, and the ground quaked as the massive object hurtled toward Earth. Screams replaced the usual hum of the city’s automated systems as people looked up—truly looked up—for the first time in years.

But it was too late.

The impact shattered the world. Arcadia’s towers collapsed, consumed by firestorms. Oceans surged, swallowing entire coastlines. The digital infrastructure crumbled, leaving humanity blind, cut off from the virtual world that had consumed their lives.

Elena, Ravi, and Mia survived in an old shelter beneath the observatory. For weeks, they waited, listening to the eerie silence above. When they finally emerged, the air was sharp with ash, but the stars were visible for the first time in decades.


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Part 5: A New Sky

The survivors gathered in the ruins of Arcadia, their numbers few. The holograms and artificial skies were gone, leaving behind the unfiltered heavens. Elena stood in the center of the group, gazing upward. The stars felt like old friends, their light a reminder of what humanity had lost—and what it might yet rebuild.

“We forgot about the sky,” she said softly, tears in her eyes.

Mia, standing beside her, nodded. “But maybe we can remember now.”

As the survivors began to rebuild, they did so with a newfound reverence for the natural world. The sky became their guide, its vastness a source of hope. And though the road ahead was long and fraught with challenges, they carried one lesson with them:

The sky had always been there, waiting for them to look up.


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