It was with neither cheer nor happiness that we graduated.

[You are our stars being set free to roam the universe.] the digital voice spoke each word with the ease of a presenter, and the heart of a teacher.

Dean Sumbak spoke in a soft, somber tone. It was tinged with sorrow and fear. For tomorrow, would be the start of a very different life.

I bit my lip in anxiousness as I looked at my fellow classmates.

[You 24 children, will have a very different world than the one we grew up in. The changes are incredible, and yet it is not enough to overcome our current problems.]

Two dozen, that was it.

Twenty four people who were sanctioned for birth.

The Gilded Generation was called.

Each of us had received no less than personal tutors. Best of the best.

The Dean? A master of education that had lived across a millennium, shaping our educational ways to what it was today.

The problem? We were running low on available energy and we desperately needed a solution before people began to die in mass. Energy is what retained your technology. Our lives. Our existence.

[We are more vulnerable than ever before. Yet this is also the mark of where heroes rise. We believe, that you with your young minds, will find a solution to the issue that plagues our entire system.]

The Solar System of Alpha Sutri had hit its limits nearly a century ago, but Underdark operatives found lucrative work as those who could fix the system. Grant birth privileges to those who had been rejected.

Now the system was 8% overburdened. Which meant that there was a potential collapse that would wreak havoc across the three worlds and twenty solar colonies.

Death was an answer.

It was what we were prepared for. To lead the survivors towards another path.

[To you, we give the hard gift of a future that may never come. That we all pray never comes… yet we can only hope for the best, and prepare of the worst.]

I stared at the youthful-looking Dean Sumbak. His bronze skin was full of youth, but his eyes carried a weight that I imagine was also on our shoulders.

A future that was easy to prep for when once had access to the solar network, and yet it was the world we were raised to live in.

[May the future be glorious, the past be dignified, and the present be good.]

The crowd that consisted of our parents spoke along with us on that prayer.

The trillions at home or work probably followed along.

The massive halo display blinked out, and the platform we had stood on began to lower into the ground.

Chelsea Mayright walked up to me and smiled. Her strained emotions were clear as a tear rolled down her face.

She had been more present in my life than my own parents. She had slept in the same room as me, ensured my health, education, safety, and perceptions of the world as a whole.

From what I understood, her life was to ensure mine. If we were the Gilded Generation, it was only because the class directly before ours sacrificed their own lives. Those youths that had come to the conclusion that this was needed, ensured that we would be born and that they would be ready to guide us.

I reached out and wiped it off. My fingers touched the biosystem interface she had allowed to sit on the edge of her eyes.

I stared at my head tutor who hugged me.

I had no system.

None of us did.

We were cut off from the collective. We would likely never know its touch, and should a solution not be found in the next five years, we would be too old to gain full access to such bio-implants.

We were never expected to find a solution.

A full network node shutdown was predicted to cause a digital flare that could be catastrophic enough to simply overwhelm, and thus shut down, the organic host of anyone with implants.

19 trillion people.

24 guaranteed survivors that could help pick up the pieces.

Chelsea tightened her hug as I did the same. I closed my eyes and leaned into her warmth.

Gilded Generation…

I let out a humorless chuckle.

If I was the Elected Prime, I wouldn’t stop with just 24.