Round Nine [The Atheist v. Atmosphere] posted by kza

The Atheist (Shockah rank: #4, Burley rank: #1)

v.

Atmosphere (neé Methane Madness) (Shockah rank: #7, Burley rank: #9)

ROPE A DOPE!

(Note: We’ve added a new requirement to the battles — a character sketch of the protagonist, of about 600 words. “Character sketch” can be defined anyway that I or Burley choose to interpret it. Although the idea is to have two very different sketches for each story, if one of us thinks one of the other’s sketches is top-notch, another option is to expand on that sketch for 600 more words.)

The Atheist
In a world devout to an all powerful god, one man uncovers exposes an unspeakable truth: their planet wasn’t carved by a deity, it was created to hold the most dangerous prisoners in the galaxy: their ancestors. What crime is so unspeakable that not only you will be punished for committing it, but all of your heirs will as well? And what happens when you find out that your captors are still watching your every move?

Character Sketch: Ronald Brenner
Ronald Brenner — born 1970, in Wichita, Kansas. Parents: Harry and Rochelle, and two younger siblings, Louise (Lulu) and Henry (Hank). Ronald grew up in a Presbyterian household, which, although not strict, was very devout — church every Sunday, tithing, the whole shebang. When Ronald was eight, his newborn brother Hank got sick. It looked like the baby would die, but Ronald prayed all night, and the following day, Hank’s fever broke and he survived. Ronald’s faith was strengthened, and he thought nothing could ever break it.

When he was eighteen, Ronald’s parents divorced. While this didn’t directly affect his faith in God, it did damage his faith in people and his parents specifically. Ronald, along with eight year old Hank and twelve year old Lulu stayed with his mother. His father soon remarried (to the woman who broke up the marriage), and his mother never got over it, and her health, physical and mental, deteriorated. Ronald gave up college to take care of his mother and his siblings, but his mother go worse and worse, and eventually passed away five years later.

Ronald got a job and tried to raise the two kids as best he could. He tried to find solace in the church, but his family was socially ostracized because of the divorce, and they lost one of their support networks. Lulu left home at 18 for California — ran away, really — and Hank got the chance to live, on the east coast, with a wealthy aunt and uncle on their dad’s side. For the first time (although at a cost), Ronald had the chance to focus on himself.

He decided to go back to school to get a degree in marine biology. There, he met his future wife, Aileen. They dated through college, and when they graduated, got married. Although Aileen was nominally Jewish, she wasn’t particularly religious, and by this time, the loss of his mother, the loss of his siblings, and the uncaring treatment from his church had so chipped away at his faith that he wasn’t, either. Through his college years, Ronald had some contact with his estranged family. He went to see his father just before his marriage to Aileen, and found him separated from his new wife and carrying on a relationship with another woman. (He also finally met the second wife, Kris, who, to his surprise, was a gentle soul and not the villain he built up in his mind.) He’d also heard through friends-of-friends that Lulu had fallen in with shady characters in Eugene, Oregon, and traveled out to find her. He discovered her with a group of anarchists, and Lulu was resentful of his intrusion into her life. Lastly, he’d maintained contact with Hank via letters. But when Hank came to visit Ronald at college, they realized that they’d grown apart, now that Hank was ensconced in wealth and Ronald had to work his way through school.

Ronald has been married to Aileen for about six years now. He works for a large environmental activist coalition, and she is a lawyer who has just obtained a position at a major firm. Most of their friends and general support network are made up of people from both of these areas (which occasionally overlap). Ronald best friend is Davis, his boss.

Ronald and Aileen have agreed that they don’t want to have kids — Aileen says she simply doesn’t like them and doesn’t think bringing a new one into the world is such a great idea, and Ronald agrees with this. Secretly, though, Ronald is afraid of his potential incompetence as a father. Of course, Aileen’s become pregnant, and although neither is against abortion, they’re both hesitant about doing it without a great deal of thought.

Atmosphere
In a World where stranded humans must guard themselves from a poisonous atmosphere, one scientist finds a process for rendering the air on the planet breathable. The only problem is, the planet is a prison and the guards will kill them all if they found out about the experiments.

Character Sketch: Curtis Ian Jeffries
Curtis Ian Jeffries was born on August 23, 2112, on Earth, the only child of Kendrick and Lillian Jeffries. In 2112, gene research has progressed to a point where couples can eliminate birth defects, choose sex, and a host of other choices. While there are social pressures to do so, it isn’t mandated, and some parents choose, for moral (but usually financial) reasons to have a “natural” birth. Kendrick and Lillian went with this option, and Curtis Ian was born seemingly healthy. What’s more, he appeared to be an extremely bright child, even compared to the genetically altered children, capable of doing advanced math at an early age. It wasn’t until later, when little Curtis had a tantrum of unbelievable ferocity that it was apparent that he was autistic.

Such abnormalities were close to extinct, and thus were looked at with fear, disgust, and incomprehension. No school would accept him, and his parents were forced to teach him themselves somehow. The next ten years were monstrously difficult for the Jeffries, but in the end, they were able to get him to adjust and acclimate to the world as best as he possibly could. His intelligence and grasp of science was without measure, but he still could not relate or empathize with other human beings. However, he could (except in cases of extreme stress) function in the public world.

This is primarily because they were able to educate Curtis (via computer and other long-distance systems) and before he was 18, he had already graduated with a double degree in Chemistry and Engineering. Despite his condition, he was feted by all the major corporations and governments of the world, who knew a good thing when they saw it. Against conventional wisdom, Jeffries decided to sign on with a comparatively small and unknown company — Hermes Technology — that couldn’t offer him the salary or benefits a larger firm could. What they did offer though, was far more important: they had the most experience, knowledge, and personnel dealing with a nascent technology, one that captivated Curtis: terraforming.

Mars and the moons of Jupiter had been colonized for decades, but the colonists there were still living in tin cans, using the colonies as mining operations and scientific bases. The dream was to turn these planets and moons into fertile, Earth-like territories, exploitable for producing food and as place to import people off the overpopulated homeworld. Hermes Technology was making incremental progress towards this reality, but it wasn’t until Jeffries came on board that it seemed like something this could be accomplished within most people’s lifetime.

During the next ten years, Jeffries was key in spearheading experiments and research towards this goal. He also won over his various co-workers and superiors with his hard work and natural brilliance. Although his autism was still a wall between him and the rest of humanity, Jeffries was aware of this wall, even though there was no way for him to penetrate it. He built devices to help him deal with his autism — devices that recognized human expressions and relayed that information to him — but they were never a cure for it. At one point, he looked into having brain surgery to genuinely cure it, but he was warned that it could, at the very least, remove his genius, and at worst change his personality completely. He decided not to do it.

Finally, technology caught up with theory, and Jeffries’ team made the first attempt at minor terraforming. They chose a small moon covered with ice to create a stable, breathable atmosphere for the first time. They set up the equipment, turned it on… and covered the moon with a toxic fog. The fog wasn’t breathable, and it instantly corroded and destroyed any metal it touched. The team was safe in a satellite orbiting the moon, but their equipment — a billion dollars worth — was destroyed.

Jeffries was frustrated by the failure of the experiment — by his calculations, it should’ve worked. He dived back into the calculations and into the research, and when he finally emerged, five years had passed. He had the solution now, he was sure. Unfortunately, Hermes took a big hit from the first failure, and they were moving away from terraforming. Jeffries explained what went wrong and how he’d fixed it, but the execs were not convinced. Jeffries, going above the heads of the execs, took his case straight to the CEO of Hermes, locking himself in the office to force the CEO to listen.

He listened.

Within a year, everything was in place for the second attempt at terraforming, this time within a crater of Mars called Daedalia. The button was pushed… and it worked. Within nine months, the first flower — a blue delphinium — was grown. Jeffries was lauded for his work and given a raise.

Then, near the first anniversary of the successful terraforming of Daedalia, a problem was reported with the reactor that was providing the breathable atmosphere, a problem that threatened the existence of the colony if it wasn’t quickly solved. Jeffries and his team were brought in to fix it. Jeffries spent hours upon hours deep within the reactor, working on it non-stop, obsessed with getting the reactor fixed, and becoming fatigued without realizing it. His normally sharp and all-encompassing intelligence became myopic, focused on certain details of the problem but losing sight of the forest for the trees. He began to tune out the voices of his team he heard over his radio. Just when it seemed like time was about to run out, he discovered a solution for the problem, and implemented it. He returned to the surface and saw through the window a hellish landscape he didn’t recognize — he wondered if he’d somehow teleported to a different world. He was confused by the lack of radio chatter, now that he was listening again. It soon hit him: the solution he implemented didn’t take certain factors into account, notably the presence of humans on the surface. Although there were some survivors, 90% of the colony were killed.

Jeffries was tried, convicted of killing the colonists and his team, and given a life sentence. He was sent to a recently constructed prison, known as the “Alcatraz of Jupiter” — a prison constructed entirely of plastic, on the very moon rendered toxic by Jeffries himself.

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