SKY HARVEST

SKYHARVEST

• The wars ended. The surface did not survive them. What was left of humanity went underground. What was left of government calls itself the International Shelter Commission. Everything runs on Volt now — power the orbital satellites still pull from a dying sun. Year 2169. Shelter 432. Population 1,000. The previous operator died suddenly. The lottery picked you.

Every shift is the same three decisions.

• Sweep the sky until a signal answers. Lock it, align it, and open the line for ten seconds — hold it steady while the harvester climbs toward burnout.

• Then split whatever came down. Living quarters need heat. Industry needs power to produce. The infirmary needs both. The market below needs light. Their total demand is always more than you have.Someone is going to be cold tonight. You decide who.

From the eighth day, the Commission wants a report every night.

• You fill the form yourself. You choose the numbers you write down. You choose which events make it onto the page  a loss in the infirmary, a directive you quietly ignored — and which ones stay off it.

• You can lie. It works, for a while. Trust goes up. Nobody asks. Then an inspector sits down across your desk with your old forms in his hand and asks you to explain the gap between them and the records. Tell the truth. Offer an excuse. Deny it outright. He has evidence for all three.

When the shift ends, you can go down to the tunnel market.

• Trade volt for credit on a mechanical price board — the rate is set each morning by how well you performed the day before, and a big sale moves it against you.

• Repair the harvester before it fails. Buy permanent upgrades with credit and salvage.

• Send a crew to the surface for parts. Pick a ruin on the map, weigh the distance against the odds, and wait. They come back with something, orthey come back with less, or they do not come back at all.

• And when the money runs out there is a man in the dark with a very careful ledger, and a casino that will take whatever is left.

Thirty days.

• A solar flare kills the distribution relay, and from then on you patch the grid by hand — pushing every line to its limit, knowing a full line can burn.

• Refugees arrive from a shelter that went silent. Another one fails and the Commission wires it to your grid for three days, and their dead count against you, not them.

• Then the directives start contradicting each other. Then they arrive late. Then they stop arriving, and the decisions that were never yours to make land on your desk anyway.

• Eight endings. None of them are clean.

Trust is currency. Volt is life. Your shift starts now, Operator.