What Is the SkyWorld?
The SkyWorld stories speculate on a survival solution to global collapse, led by the same people who caused it. With the world drowned and diseased, SkyCorp took humanity to the sky. They saved us, but at a grave cost. Though, it was one we would never come to notice.
Corporate oligarchy, manipulative marketing, hyper-consumerism, and an overdependence on technology — some days, it sounds like a description of our current reality. But this world has lived in my imagination for over a decade. The world that survives the end of the world.
The Beginning
The idea started growing when I was young, watching my mom work long hours to afford a better life, often at the cost of greater connection at home. As I entered into the workforce, I witnessed people lose themselves in over-consumption or by trading connections for leverage or opportunity. A dystopic existence for some, but I’ve since learned that people see very differently.
As a young adult, I questioned the systems we live in and how easily and unintentionally we become complicit in the worst of them. I had my first oft-cited SkyWorld vision: “A conveyor belt of people in drab navys, greys, and beiges being pumped up and down the veins of the city, like cables feeding energy into a massive machine.” I imagined how our silent complacency would advance…
The Raising of the First Skyplatform
Climate change floods the planet into an ocean of island masses and the leaders within markets unite to provide global solutions fast. After they save the world, government officials become more like consumer-facing representatives. Meanwhile, those same market leaders still sit behind the scenes controlling the wheel.
A few efficiency cuts later, and the next global crisis results. The ground level itself becomes a source of death, disease, and civil unrest. When the face-saving governments step away, and SkyCorp officially takes over global leadership, they had to think quickly:
SkyCities: Platform the existing megacities away from the threat.
The SkyWeb: Provide an all-encompassing digital ecosystem interconnecting Skycitizens with socialization, shopping, and connection.
E-Bots: The AI entities created by the Corporate Governors’ innovation who end up taking over the responsibility of meeting all human needs.
With thoughts uploaded through their SkyChips, SkyCorp can harvest their data to provide viral content, manage emotion, and suppress dissent, providing for greater comfort and safety. Skycitizens can make money when they improve their social rank, encouraging efficiency. Birth, parenting, grief, even memory-sharing have been outsourced to systems, and most Skycitizens are free to live strategically curated lives that earn them increasing benefits.
The Unexpected Visitor Who Challenges the System
Two-hundred years later, Grace000 has never lived through any of that. And all she wants when she discovers the truth about what the SkyWorld has become is the kind of human connection that may no longer exist.
My Name Is Grace000 is the story of an outcast thrown into an overly superficial society desperately searching for something real.
Stay connected. More system logs coming soon.
