Despite the success of the terraforming project, and particularly the terraformers’ crowning achievement, the Overdome, an artificial layer between Venus’ thermosphere and mesosphere, Hartmann’s fortunes have risen and fallen with the same unpredictable regularity of any other farming community’s. Although the Overdome, which mimics a consistent, Earth–like cycle of day and night and maintains Venus’ reasonably Earth–like atmospheric conditions, assists in regulating temperature and average rainfall on the Lakshmi Planum, it was nevertheless designed to allow for ‘natural’ variations, with the result that the Lakshmi Planum is prone to drought. Fortunately, however, the variation of sorghum that is grown in and around Hartmann was designed to be spectacularly drought–resistant, and so the little community is well enough off, if not prodigiously wealthy. They live their lives solidly, predictably, and comfortably. “No better place to live,” says the sign on the road leading into town. And, indeed, it’s a refrain often repeated after Hartmann’s citizens win pie–making contests at the county fair, or following a satisfying meal at Mrs. McCallan’s Shumai Shack.
Until one morning in early November of 2519, few Venusians◦– in fact, few Ishtarians◦– had ever heard of Hartmann. At the time, those few souls awake in Hartmann at that hour saw it◦– the pale green light that warmed the dark sky and, all told, heralded the end of eight lives. But afterward the townspeople, no longer content with Hartmann’s comfortable isolation, began to take stock of their lives, their decisions. To wonder if, perhaps, there wasn’t a better place to live, after all.
Michelle Keck was forty–nine years old. A third–generation Venusian, she had been born in IT’s capital city, Helios, the only daughter of a banker and a lawyer. Despite her white–collar upbringing, Keck found herself drawn to Lakshmi’s wide–open spaces and, to the surprise of all, took her degrees in geoplanetary physics and agriculture. While at college she was introduced to Franz Van, the younger brother of a classmate, and found herself immediately drawn to the sensitive young man, whose retiring personality and love of the ancient poets contrasted so starkly with her own robust practicality. Following a swift courtship, the two married and left Helios upon her graduation. Keck took a farming apprenticeship in Riccioli and, within five years, had taken over management of one of Lakshmi’s larger farming collectives. Keck, however, wished to own her own farm. After saving up enough money to buy property outside Hartmann, Shelly and Franz packed up their young children and Franz’s beloved collection of ancient books and moved to the little town. They lived in a two–room apartment above the local grocery store while Keck oversaw the construction of their house, out on a parcel of land she’d taken to calling Blackacre. In fall of 2507, the family had installed itself in its new home, a large and comfortable farmhouse set far off the road, down an avenue of London plane trees, their growth artificially accelerated to provide shade within a year of planting.
Hartmann agreed with Keck, whom many townsfolk already knew personally from her activities in Riccioli. After leaving the farming collective, Keck took a chair on the collective’s governing board and remained deeply involved in Riccioli’s politics. In Hartmann, her first act, after purchasing Blackacre, was to join the local council. Within six months she had established herself as a likable, dependable, and recognizable personality in Hartmann’s close–knit community.
While the relocation suited Keck and her children, Franz had already begun to struggle. Rural life did not suit him quite as neatly as it had his wife, and while he found Riccioli difficult, life in Hartmann was even more of a struggle. The shy, sensitive man, so different from his outgoing partner in both temperament and personality, began to withdraw, spending long hours in his study translating passages from the Vedas with, he claimed, an eye toward publishing the definitive examination of the ancient texts. His databites grew and grew, but the intended book never materialized. People in Hartmann spoke gently of him among themselves, generally with reference to his wife and children, and praising Keck’s unflagging support of and loyalty to a man who had, it was clear, would never realize his potential.
The younger Kecks, meanwhile, received no such side–eyed commentary, being both intelligent and well–liked children. Although the son, Hershel, took a little after his father in terms of his interests in ancient works, he was, by his fifteenth birthday, a healthy young man with a string of accolades, both intellectual and active, to his name. His sister, Jen, shared her mother’s robust enthusiasm for life and, in her sixteenth year, was both class president and on a clear path towards becoming class valedictorian.
By 2519, the Keck family was firmly established in Hartmann, their farm having grown to more than a thousand acres, and employing no fewer than eighteen laborers. Although by no means the wealthiest family in town, the Kecks were nonetheless comfortable. Shelly was known for, among other things, her habit of never paying for anything in cash. She claimed that using credits for everything, down to the smallest purchases, was the most efficient way for her to keep track of her expenditures. “I remember the lean years,” she often explained, “when I had to budget down to the last penny. I picked up the habit of only paying in credits then, and it’s served me well ever since.” Although her children found her insistence on paying in credits only◦– including their allowances◦– frustrating, they, and the rest of Hartmann, nevertheless accepted the habit with a shrug and a shake of the head. After all, Keck was one of Hartmann’s most prominent citizens; considering all she did for the local economy, she could be allowed her few eccentricities.
And, moreover, considering the number of drifters who wander the IT, robbing the occasional isolated farmhouse, it was only reasonable to keep the cash on hand to a minimum. Although Hartmann was itself so isolated that it entertained very little crime, there was no reason not to be sensible about the issue.
Sloane Deeds was eighteen years old in November of 2519. Born in Kitt, a hardscrabble community on the slopes of Ioligam, a mountain in the Maxwell Montes on the eastern edge of the IT, Sloane was the outcome of the short union between two prospectors. Initially developed as an outpost to monitor volcanic activity in the years following the dynamo’s reactivation, the town of Kitt had, by the end of the twenty–fifth century, been entirely abandoned by its scientific personnel. By the year of Sloane’s birth, Kitt was made up of no more than twenty–seven souls, their number seasonally padded by itinerant prospectors. Sloane’s own parents had both abandoned the town by 2512, leaving their daughter in the care of a local who abused the girl physically and sexually. One stormy night in 2516, the then–fourteen year old stole a knife from a neighbor and hid it under her bed. On the night of April seventh, 2516, she stabbed him five times while he slept and fled the town. It took her twelve days to hitchhike to Helios, during which time she first met Griffith Sinkman.
Griffith was twenty–seven in 2516, the second of five children born to an Aphrodite Terra couple. Aphrodite Terra had, in the decades since the dynamo’s activation and the installation of the Overdome, developed from a large–scale mining colonization project into the most notorious resort settlement of the inner planets. The Sinkman family was, like most residents of the AT, peripherally involved in the resort/casino–driven economy, the family business being a small motel on the outskirts of Eos. All five Sinkman children received decent primary educations, but only Griffith, with his love of reading and movie–star good looks, seemed to be college material. So his mother and father invested their small savings in Griffith’s potential and sent him to the University of Aphrodite Terra, Aethon. Eight months later Griffith was back home, recuperating from the helibike accident that had nearly killed him. When it was discovered that he had been on academic probation for a semester, and was near to flunking out, Griffith’s parents withdrew him from the university. Following his recovery, a process of nearly a year, Griffith, scarred and newly jittery, stole what remained of his parents’ savings and left home.