SkyGrid

I was almost a Starling, once. What started with a childhood wish burst in the end - like all wishes do under pressure.

If I hadn’t wished to become one, I might still have become a Starling. Not because wishes are weak or obsolete but because some things are inwrought- spoon-fed across generations, from concocted jingles that linger to uploads that no one downloads and run by default in the background.

One night, years ago, I was out walking the dog with my dad. We accidentally saw a satellite from the mid-phase rollout. The way it burned through the sky like a blazing scar stitched into the dark struck my adrenals as if it had broken through from a nightmare.

Dad was still a teacher then, a university professor who researched the best ways to integrate inclusion, equality, and diversity into organizational and societal structures. That was before we knew better. Before his wave came. Now we know that by assuming the machine's disintegration, we were actually reinforcing the very thing we sought to dismantle.

Thank God for Oxin Brox.

When he launched the 999-satellite SkyGrid program and unified the globe in seamless, omnipresent connectivity, all claims of exclusion, inequality, and cultural homogeneity didn’t just evaporate - they were declared constitutionally irrelevant. Perfect signal strength canceled centuries of static.

It wasn’t the snowball everyone thought it was - rolling around, squishing up red flags. No. It was the chance to be a world beacon, and he took it - broadcasting freedom in 8K clarity that “If it's not made in America, it's not made right.” Now, the whole planet could receive the message loud and clear.

Came off without a hitch, really, when you stop syncing and think about it. Just like Oxin Brox planned.

Anyway, that night long ago, I only went out to walk the dog because my dad told me to. Usually, I had a choice. Funny how something so ordinary can change everything. I was watching my feet, counting pavement cracks, when Dad stopped so dead in his tracks that I bumped into him and the crack number fell out of my head.

“Dad!” I snapped, annoyed, then looked up. My eyes followed to where his pointed, to where I assumed the moon would be.

“A shooting star!” I misfired, but I had already started to wish on it.

Make me a Starling, darling.

I was nowhere near 18 at the time, so I wasn't eligible to be volunteered as a Starling, but every day, I hoped for a terminal disease or some other loophole, an outlier to the rule to make me an exception.

But we weren't criminals, and I was too young at the time for the firstborn offering. I was even too young for the youth militia. I had no exceptional talent to immortalize, no mental illness or physical deficiency to contribute to the collective, and my parents were both still alive.

My hardships weren’t quite hard enough. Even though Dad and Mom had both lost their jobs by then, they got other ones right away. Like Oxin Brox said, "It's a shift, not a shutdown."

Hardship considered, I was just a kid without tragedy - exempt from early enlistment.

Still, I wished for it upon that satellite's fiery entrails, branding the dark on the night the sky opened.

Oxin Brox had a toothy grin that children trusted, a patriarch’s poise that demanded respect, and a foxy rhetoric that drove women mad. His on-screen face was everywhere. Had been since the onset of Project 999.

You see, with the resolute executive leadership and decentralized federal government came sweeping regulatory rollbacks and explosive bursts of business growth and innovation. Then came the energy boom, the nuclear revival, and finally, stratospheric dominance - ushering in the era of SkyGrid patrol. Oxin Brox was the only one with the money and the guts to provide the necessary infrastructure. Without the burden of doubt or a conscience, nothing stood in his way.

"Family first," he said. "Connected homes are the heart of a connected world."

He hacked and slashed his way through the symbolic clutter of Old America's empty holidays and limp traditions. With a global mass of biological upkeep quotas to meet, who had time for such bloated patriotic pageantry?

Flag Day was the first to go. He replaced it with Homegoing Day, to be celebrated the day after.

It was fine for us. We were already used to celebrating that day. I was born the day after Flag Day.

So, on my eighteenth birthday, we lit the candles, posed for the optional photo, submitted our smiles, and uploaded the moment to the National Joy Archive.

Mom helped me with my annual Homegoing survey. She was an Intake Specialist with the SkyGrid Compliance Bureau. She worked in the same building as Dad, a Narrative Specialist. He shifted his research toward the Homegoing volunteers and was hired to package their life stories into sanctioned-for-screen moments. He was promoted after his new dissertation on the humane aspects of death.

"Could be worse," Dad always said. "Could've been a Scriptwriter or an Emotional Optimization Specialist." He never elaborated, other than repeating that they both "turned horror into honor."

After cake, I uploaded my birthday wish. It would come as no surprise to the machine that it was the same wish I had uploaded for years. This was special, though. This was the last year I had to wish for an early enlistment exception. After tomorrow, I could sign up for next year's celebration and receive the only thing I ever wanted from this life - to leave it as a Starling.

"There's an announcement!" Mom called from the couch, siren alarms singing from all of our screens in a symphony of synthetic urgency. "Come and see!"

Dad was already beside her by the time I sat down on the floor in front of them. They each put a hand on my shoulder as we watched the urgent message from the Bureau.

The words streamed across the screen, calmly declaring to the world its next Homegoing decree.

Dad muttered something about "the Brox bastard," but I didn't catch it. He squeezed my shoulder with a hot hand, pressed his thumb into the base of my neck. I swatted him away playfully, the glowing screen magnetizing my eyes.

"Beginning this year," the announcement blared, "Homegoing is extended from a one-day celebration to a three-day holiday!"

My skeleton melted inside of me - it understood before my brain did. My parents' hands pinned me to the floor as I collapsed from archivable joy.

Sponsored Message from the SkyGrid Compliance Bureau

Public Service Announcement: Homegoing Day

Celebrating Unity and Legacy

[Opening - 0:00-0:05]

One brilliant firework blooms soundlessly against the night sky, its light lingering.

Narrator: "Some lights never fade. Some rise forever."

[Address - 0:05-0:10]

Close-up on the faces of the 999 volunteers, serene beneath backlit launch posters.

Narrator: "As each launch brightens our skies, let our gratitude rise just as high."

[Introduction - 0:10-0:15]

The digital altar hums softly. Volunteer names pulse on the memorial DigiWall.

Narrator: "Homegoing honors 999 citizens who give their last breath to join something greater than themselves."

[Benefits - 0:15-0:22]

Ashes are gently poured into fireworks shells. A child watches as the shells are loaded beside real rocket boosters.

Narrator: "Their remains fill the fireworks of our future - a symbol of unity, ascent, and undying devotion."

[Response - 0:22- 0:27]

The word "Volunteer" glows beside a long, quiet line of hopeful participants.

Narrator: "Volunteer. Rise. Remember. The next names are being chosen now - become a Starling, darling."

[Closing - 0:27-0:30]

Fireworks and rockets ignite - silent and synchronized. Fade to black.

Narrator: "Homegoing. Equal glory. Equal legacy."

I had visited the Bureau office in Richmond 3.0 one field trip.

We drove through scenes of paved-over history and skylit propaganda. We climbed the symbolic 999 zig-zagging stairs. The air was thinner. There was gasping.

Oxin Brox lived in the DigiPalace he had designed himself because the old abode "wasn't made right."

Liquid crystal spiral monoliths in the garden. SkyGrid footage looping in thin, crisscrossed screens. The floor illuminated each tracked footprint. There, in the suspended glass chamber at the top with a spherical sky view, a man-shaped signal ruled.

A tour guide strolled us through the public access portions of the SkyGrid Operations Center. The dome of seamless glass mimicked the Oxin Brox tower with a panoramic view of the sky. Unobstructed. Built about seven stories higher than the rest of the city.

I had paused at the DigiWall to feel its vibration. The sacred state-sanctioned monument rose in a sweeping arc of glass that curved around the palace entrance like a Cathedral apse.

I knew then that one day, my name would rest here among the Starlings. My name - small and luminous and barely enough. The SkyGrid would call me home.

I didn't know then that instant internet across the Earth could cure world hunger. Racism. Sex trafficking. That a fast-tracked government meant lightning-fast action and abundant resource flow. That all we were missing was immediate information. No gap, no problem.

I didn't care. All I wanted was my light in the sky. My name on the wall.

I pressed my face to the Starlings’ names and breathed them in.

"Don't smudge the glass, darling," the tour guide reminded.

I would belong to the sky. I would belong to the grid.

When we paused at PulsePark to picnic, I gazed clear across the horizon to the launch bay, then lay in the grass and smiled. It was a warm day, and there was a rock poking into my side, but it didn't matter. None of it mattered.

Then, in a flash, there I was, eighteen years old, cradled by the stability of the floor, reliving that moment at PulsePark. The memory hit like a sniper.

From the warm, state-sanctioned grass, I had stared contentedly into the sky, imagining the grid that connected us all. But it was only nothingness - only the illusion of order crocheted across a forefront in lines of remembered light.

My parents logged in to check the list of volunteers for the inaugural Homegoing three-day weekend. Sure enough, my name was among the recruits, and I reported to the Bureau at once.

My Goodbye Letters were already written and updated. My Personal Allotments were in place. Soon, I'd be ashes and sparkling dust, my spirit a part of the glorious lights. Families would cheer with pride and envy. There’d be speeches and fanfare, then eternal slumber and the final celebration - our powder shot into the stars.

A child wishes upon my light - a firefly at the mass grave of volunteers. But my name does not appear on the DigiWall. The upload stutters. Three fireworks sizzle, unfired - invisible Starlings.

There is no sky.

There is no grid.