Author's Note: Hi folks! I was selected  by Mindshare to write about the exciting possibilities of brands becoming blank slates for creators and, as an avid social media fan, I jumped at the chance to tell that story. I've been online since AOL discs were the only way to log on and I've loved watching the internet grow into a way for everyone to share their passions with the world. From Tik Tok dance crazes to amazing SoundCloud remixes, this is my homage to social media, influencer culture, and technology in the future. Hope you enjoy! XX

P. S. HUGE thanks to the Wattpad HQ creative team for this gorgeous cover. It captures my vision perfectly.

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Shriya Duvall patted her violet passion twists and adjusted her magnetized roller skates, before tapping her temple to secure her cybervision accessibility iBand. As she stepped out of the storage room onto the deck of the Abrams's deserted shuttle bay, a series of faint, echoing beeps painted Shriya's surroundings in monochrome.

"Computer, activate vision program Space Walk Space Jam.exe."

"Program activated." The opening strains of an uptempo technopop song filled the bay, bouncing images of dismantled shuttles and dormant space cruisers back to Shriya's headset, bypassing her inoperative optic nerves to communicate directly with her occipital and parietal lobes. All systems go.

Shriya threw up a hand in a padded haptic glove and activated EyeSpace Live where her fawning public, and maybe her brooding ex-girlfriend Elodie, currently living on Mars, awaited. 2500 viewers and counting... Not bad for a surprise broadcast at 3 am, Milky Way Space Center time.

"Lovelies, ladies, Unis and Spaebies, ShriyaVerso here. Put your headsets on and strap in. We're going on a Universo adventure." She pumped up the volume, feeling proud of the first crying emojis to pop in her header display. Universo was the nine-member pop band who'd been selected from communities throughout the solar system. None were from Earth, though they spoke various Earth-descended creoles and represented a variety of ethnic groups and genders. Thus, Space-Pop, better known as Spae-Pop, was born. Shriya had fallen for Calypso Frye, the group's nonbinary lead, from their very first song. Three years later, Shriya had a cyber media following of her own, so big she got perks just for posting. Tonight it was about to come in handy.

5000 viewers...6000...7500...more.

Shriya tied up her twists in a high ponytail to fit under her environmental suit helmet. "You know how Universo came to the MWSC to perform on Abrams' Day? I got to meet them." Were it not for her magnetized boots she'd be jumping for joy. Shriya could be cool but she could never be cool about Calypso or their bandmate Ajax Yellowleaf. The music she loved, but the band mates...Her crush hadn't been even a little bit subtle.

She keyed into the shuttle bay's pressurized force shield with her Nama's passcode. "I got to listen to the new single from Spae-Pop's hottest group and you get to listen to the very first...remix!"

Ajax's lyrical voice kicked them off:

Snap (snap), crackle, pop

Baby give me all that you got

Snap (snap), crackle, pop

Sweet, spicy, hot baby hot

The screaming hit Shriya's temporal lobes like banshees. She laughed and turned the volume way down. She needed her hearing. Space walks were dangerous even for the best and Shriya was the best of them.

Shriya's dark brown skin tingled with excitement as the stream's Share count doubled, then tripled, and her follower numbers grew with it.

With a twitch of her hand, she switched on her space helmet and flipped off the bay's force shield. "Snap by Universo...the Snap, Crackle, Spae-Pop remix."

And just like that, Shriya floated and flew.

You fill me up

You get me going

My power boost

I'm speedrunning

Our love story

We marathoning

Snap...POP!

With a twist, Shriya planted her feet on the Abrams's shimmering exterior hull. She cast her face toward warmth, letting her iBand grab video of the Milky Way in all her myriad colors, her arms reaching out to embrace the galaxy like a grandmother.

The high-pitched screams faded into awed silence. The planets laid out before them amid a blanket of asteroid belts, nebulae, and stars.

"Sundar sitaare," exclaimed one voice in original Earth Hindi. Soft-spoken assent issued over the stream, star-studded panoramics zipped across the cyber net, across the solar system. Beauty was made to be shared, music to be lived.

You fill me up

You get me going

The power of love

Got me speedrunning

Snap...POP!

"É brillanta como tou," wrote a Martian, LahMiyeVersoi, to a Saturnine fan called UniversomAmador in the text exchange, in new Romance creole. Shriya knew them from Private Channels: their families disapproved of interplanetary relationships yet they had fallen for Universo and each other like meteorites racing to the ground. They never missed one of Shriya's EyeSpace Lives and she always delivered them perks for loyalty. She snapped twice to private message them quality uploads of the unreleased single and her remix for their reaction broadcasts. No fan was an island.

Solar winds buffeted Shriya's body, pushing her minutely off-course. She adjusted, ducking a viewport facing her parents' offices in the Governing wing to give her audience a view worthy of Universo's next hit track. The moon's pockmarked surface glowed powder gray, the stuff of songs and poetry.

Calypso's husky flow made her heart skip a beat:

As cool as the moon

You got me reflecting

The light of the sun you always redirecting

Here in the dark we stayin' connected

Snap...POP!

A virtual representation of the PineApple cybernetics web filled Shriya's iBand, pinpoints of starlight piercing deepest black. Subsonic humming revealed the structures suspended all around her in sharp relief. The Abrams sector, a relatively new addition to the Milky Way Space Center which stretched for miles in two directions, spinning on its axis. Ships maintained stationary orbits around asteroids, caught in the pull of near planetoids' gravity.

Space had become as cluttered as any age old metropolis, sight lines obscured by fuel exhaust and discarded launch rockets bobbing in traffic lanes. Shuttles abandoned to rust after the space flight boom and bust. A mess, like anything man made, but it was home.

Shriya whirled slowly to take in a 360-degree view of everything. Her everyday. Her home, her band set to a beat she had arranged, to add-ins she'd sung.

Snap crackle, pop

Snap crackle, pop

Snap (snap), crackle, pop

Snap...POP!

"Ursa Minor is due east. There's a gas giant to the south. We can see the sun from here. Don't zoom in too close, you'll hurt your eyes." She skated along the ship's silhouette, propelled by PineApple Tech thrusters, her head bobbing to the remix she'd written and produced between shifts. "There's an abandoned Glamazon Fulfillment Hub orbiting Mars." Grumbling filled the talk chat. "If you look, you can still see undelivered packages littering the asteroid belt," she sighed. A mess indeed.

Shriya was a space lifer: she'd lived on the Milky Way Space Center since age seven months and had the atypical anatomical proportions to prove it. She couldn't remember the weight of Earth's gravity, much less tolerate it, but that hadn't stopped her from becoming famous on the Milky Way's Earth-based cybernetic web interface. The earthbound masses could no more endure the wild black than Shriya could the ground, so they lived vicariously through her.

"Check for the Crab Nebula on telescopic zoom, inside the Taurus Constellation. Makes me want Crimson Crustacean, one of our generous sponsors." Shriya flicked her eyes right to bring up the ad banner. "35% off your first drone delivery, courtesy of yours truly. The Beyond Cheese ™ cheddar biscuits are the best. Thank me after they change your life."

She grinned at the curious murmurs in the talk chat. Nobody could resist biscuits.

She rapped along to her own verse:

"Stars to the right

Steel to the left

Earth spinning down below

I ain't scared of zero gravity

No sun can snatch my glow."

In her mind's eye, she read the emoji responses racking up. Hearts, heart eyes, and rainbows. The ad-libs were always her most popular verses. She was about to be the biggest rapper-producer in Spae-Pop. Just wait.

Shriya cruised in complex loops, picking up speed, the tips of her fingers skimming the polished hull. The Abrams was a robust edifice, composed of arches, curves, and spirals created from deep space mined titanium alloys, docked to the MWSC just after Shriya was born nineteen years ago. She had done this skate before, knew this ship's complex topography as her home away from home.

On Earth, her parents had been political activists turned career politicians who'd turned their eyes to space when life didn't feel quite safe enough for an interracial couple of trans parents and their intersex kid. Now, her parents were ministers of this and professors of that, leaders to the farthest reaches of humanity, and Shriya was more than happy just as she was.

You fill me up

You get me going

Snap...POP!

Shriya followed her iBand's aural signal to swing right under a looping ship's nacelle and begin her return journey. The music beat through her body like a second heartbeat, beamed into space like song requests dedicated to the universe, playing forever.

"This is it, dolls. Dawn is rising, and the Universo Express is coming in for a landing. Grab those screenshots, snip those clips, and make sure to follow ShriyaVerso on EyeSpace Live for the latest, the greatest updates on Spae-Pop!"

Hit that star

Pop that heart

Once for love

Twice for joy

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