Clock Out

My job is to hold up the sky.

I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean that in a very literal, aching-back, calloused-hand, “don’t sneeze or a solar flare will slip through and vaporize Detroit” kind of way.

You’ve never seen me because I’m not supposed to be seen. That’s part of the contract. There’s a clause. Page 213, Section 9B: “Visibility void in all Earthly spectrums, unless system breach or divine audit.”

Basically, I exist in the space between perception. You pass by me on your commute, while scrolling on your phone, while blaming the weather on something vaguely political. I’m always there. Holding.

Every day, I wake up in the sky’s underlayer. It’s cold in the mornings. Not the kind of cold that makes you shiver — the kind that presses inside your bones, the kind that makes memory feel brittle. The kind that doesn’t care.

I stretch. I brace. I lift.

The sky is heavier than it looks. It’s not just blue and clouds. It’s layers — ozone, wind currents, static guilt, ancient sighs. I once held up a thunderstorm for seven hours because a wedding photographer bribed the Weather Bureau. Another time, I had to realign two constellations because Mercury was in retrograde and people started screaming at their houseplants.

There are rules, of course. Always rules.

Don’t drop the sky unless the protocol team is notified 48 hours in advance.

Don’t speak to passing birds. They’re spies.

Don’t question why there’s no sunset anymore.

Don’t ask what happened to the last person who held up the sky.

And above all, don’t look down.

I broke that last one on Day 476.

I looked down.

And you know what I saw?

A man yelling at a barista for getting his coffee “too emotional.” A woman walking into traffic because her dating app glitched and told her love was 300 feet to the left. A kid live-streaming themselves trying to punch a self-driving car for clout.

I saw buildings growing like weeds and people shrinking into screens.

I saw the world I was holding up.

And I started to wonder… why?

No one thanks you for holding up the sky. There’s no paycheck. Just “cosmic purpose” and a pat on the back from a middle manager named Varn who smells like printer ink and apocalypse.

Still, I tried to care. I really did. I hummed lullabies into wind tunnels. I adjusted the moon’s tilt to make full moons land on weekends. I even hand-drew a cloud shaped like a golden retriever just to cheer up a sad kid in Ohio.

But no one noticed.

Instead, I got emails.

“Sky too bright. Fix ASAP.”

“Can we replace rain with something sexier?”

“I manifested success and I’m still broke.”

“Your vibe is off. Unsubscribe.”

Then came the update.

Some intern at Cosmic Ops decided we needed to “streamline” the heavens. They outsourced moon calibration to an AI named LUNA_THX1138. She glitched and made it snow frogs in Chile for five days. Management said it was “an experimental aesthetic.”

I asked if I could take a break. Not a long one — just a moment to breathe, to unclench the storm system in my shoulder, to maybe look at a tree.

They sent me a fruit basket. Digital.

It gave my thoughts spam.

Then came the final straw.

Tuesday. 3:03 a.m. Eastern Time.

A memo drops: “Effective immediately, gravity responsibilities will also fall under your jurisdiction. Please onboard yourself via linktree/godhands.”

Gravity.

As if holding up the sky wasn’t enough, they want me to pin the earth down too.

I laughed. Out loud. A rare occurrence up here.

And that laugh cracked something.

Not in the sky.

In me.

A thin line behind my ribs, the kind of fracture that lets light through. I felt the wind hear it. The stars paused.

And for the first time in 997 days, I put the sky down.

Not all the way. I set it gently on a cloudbank. It sagged a little. A few satellites drifted into awkward angles. Elon Musk’s internet balloon spiraled dramatically, but honestly, it had it coming.

I sat.

I took off my gloves.

I felt… light.

Below, the world carried on. Planes flew crooked. Timezones hiccuped. Someone mistook a celestial malfunction for an NFT drop.

But I didn’t care.

Because suddenly, I mattered.

Not as a function. Not as a silent guardian of weather and weight.

But as a person.

A tired, unseen, dangerously close-to-snapping person.

That’s when Varn called. His voice warbled through the stratosphere like an unpaid cable bill.

“We’re seeing a 0.0008% dip in sky integrity. Re-engage protocol, please and thank you.”

I stared into the sun until it blinked.

And then I said it.

Clearly. Freely. With all the gravity they just tried to dump on me:

“You know what? I quit.”

There was silence on the other end.

Silence from the clouds.

Silence from the storm.

Silence even from LUNA_THX1138.

I think the stars were listening.

Then I stood up.

Not to lift.

Just to walk.

The sky wobbled behind me, confused but intact. It could learn to hold itself.

Or fall.

Either way, not my problem anymore.

As I stepped off the cloudbank, I expected the sky to scream, to crash, to come tumbling down like some ancient myth. Instead, it sighed — a long, shivering breath, as if relieved.

Maybe it was tired too.

I wandered the edge of the atmosphere, skimming the tops of skyscrapers, unseen and unburdened. Somewhere below, a child looked up mid-temper tantrum, eyes wide — as if she sensed something had shifted. Not broken. Just… changed.

Maybe they’ll find someone else to hold the sky. Maybe they’ll try to automate it. Maybe it’ll hold itself. Maybe it won’t.

Not my story anymore.

I found a quiet place at the edge of the ionosphere and sat. I watched the auroras flicker — not for anyone else. Just for me.

And for the first time in longer than I could remember,

I wasn’t holding up anything.

I was just being.

And it felt like the beginning.