Billboard Sky

http://www.darksky.org/infoshts/is071.html

January, 2024

As more and more parts of the ocean are leased out for wind farms that generate electricity and eventually change the landscape of 10% of each industrialized country's coastal area on the globe,

http://www.capewind.org/

http://www.offshorewindfarms.co.uk/im/images.html Space Marketing in Georgia, a well financed company, starts investing heavily into their lobbyists in Washington. If the ocean can be used for financial gain, why not the sky? And Space Marketing didn't even need 10% of the sky; just a space the size of the moon. Less than 1% of the sky.

Money and words exchange hands in an upbeat economy and global peace that has permeated since the end of the holy war, which came abruptly to an end by an event of universal profoundness in 2021. Logic and love took over the Earth, and people found themselves more understanding of their fellow humans. With this came a sensibility that pushed business to unseen levels, as technology increased at rates termed 'star-speed'.

*~December, 2029~*
And so, after ample payments and discussion, there was to be, at night time only to start... a billboard in the sky. Lighting up only once every 2 hours, and for only a short period of 10 minutes, the first person to purchase the space billboard time was Bill Gate's son, who had continued to turn his father's fortune into an empire that could easily own the world. His choice for this first billboard in the sky was direct:

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2030
MICROSOFT.COM


And this story will be the events that follow the monumental event, from the eyes and minds of...

a 46 year old man, a drifter and angry man, who works for a day's pay at fishing docks unloading boats. Upon the night of the first billboard in the sky, he is offered decent money to help on a fishing boat for one week and although he'd never been out to sea, he goes. The boat is picked up by a squall and sunk, two days after they are out to sea off the Florida coast. He is stranded on a deserted island after swimming with his last ounce of energy, with the billboard in the sky at night his only reminder of the life he once lived and the technology and material world he so hated.

A 23 year old convenience store worker and a regular customer who is about to turn 100 years old. In her eyes, the billboard in the sky is fantastic, and represents how forward the world is going, the progress and promise that the most amazing things can be thought of and made to be real. Her favorite customer is a man who has seen so many changes from his birth in 1930, and with the year 2030 here and his birthday in late August, the convenience store worker writes a letter pleading with Space Marketing to put one ten minute slot up stating HAPPY 100th BIRTHDAY, BILL on August 24th, on the billboard in the sky. She doesn't have the two million to buy the time from the company, but she hopes the company will view it as a nice thing to do and perhaps they will do it once a month for some lucky contest winner or something to that effect.

A 31 year old male computer hacker, in California, who had been responsible for some of the most memorable website hackings the last decade had seen. He'd never been caught, thus far, and while hacking into Space Marketing's website, he obtains access into their email accounts and reads the female convenience store worker's email about Bill's 100th birthday. He decides that his next hack will be to give the convenience store worker, and Bill, the birthday greeting, as he knows from memos he reads that the company will not be doing the centurian birthday greeting idea, although they do consider it for loosening the stigma placed on the billboards in the sky by many grassroots efforts to abolish it.

Will the bum on the deserted island go mad from the billboard in the sky, or will he figure out a way to stay alive and get home? Will Bill get his 100th birthday greeting on the billboard in the sky? Will the hacker succeed, once again, and not get caught? Will love bloom between the hacker and the girl from the convenience store, as he reads her online blog, falling in love with her, and emails her that he intends to see to it she gets her requested birthday greeting for Bill, the one hundred year old man?

What does Bill think of all this? Can a man born in 1930 feel a part of 2030?

http://wink.urgo.org/bbs/