Round 9.2 [The Atheist v. Atmosphere]

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

v.

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

Note that I've added the "relationship to story" line, just in case we start to diverge from the primary characters into minor, but influential ones. Also, your idea of The Atheist, which takes place on Earth, was very different than mine, so I was a bit confused at first. This line should help clarify things.

And now, without further adieu:

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: Salisbury Jonathan
Relationship to story: Protagonist

(note: I think it's nearly impossible to write Sci-fi and / or fantasy names that aren't laughable, so I've used candy names for now. Better names to come).

Salisbury was always different. In this devout world, whose praise be to the god Caramel was all consuming, children were taken from their families at birth and placed in parochial schools. Segregated by sex at the age of 10 and not allowed to keep company until they reached the age of maturity, around 16. At that age, they were married to their promised one--a member of the opposite sex who was born closest to them in age without being a family member. The society believed in the theory of Truffle, which states that Caramel places soul mates on the planet Frango at nearly identical times--the division of one soul into two bodies, and through their union the souls become one.

Before the age of 10, Salisbury spent all of his time with his future betrothed (a practice the church encouraged to solidify later bonds), the precocious tomboy Natasha. Salisbury was slightly autistic, and the other boys found his ways peculiar and outcast him. Natasha, however, worked as his social barrier, creating paths for him when other children would simply exclude him. She protected him with fists and words, which made her outcast as well among the more normal girls. He trusted her like no other, and she him.

When they were separated at 10, life for both of them degraded. Salisbury found little escape in his studies, and was abused and harassed by the other boys because he wouldn't fit in. He turned to Caramel, and spent many hours worshipping devoutly at the temple. Through becoming a candidate for the priestly class, Salisbury found solace from the mocking, since religious leaders were expected, on a social level, to be relative outcasts.

Natasha had a similar experience with the girls keeping her at an arms-length, but she also had an early puberty, and grew into an adult's body quite quickly. A more lecherous teacher sexually abused her, and Natasha turned dark. When she was 15--a half year away from her union with Salisbury--she committed a ritualistic suicide---an act seen as the ultimate statement in their culture. An investigation led to the uncovering of the abuse, and as her betrothed, Salisbury was the judge. He had the option of punishment. The socially acceptable thing, which his classmates encouraged him towards, was to murder the teacher with his own hands, but he could also choose banishment if he so desired.

Salisbury, who took the word of Caramel very seriously, was torn. On one hand he was murderously angry that he had lost his beloved, and was therefore destined to a life of lonely bachelorhood. On the other hand, Caramel taught to do no violence against other people, and that only the lord Caramel had ownership over life and death.

Salisbury repressed his rage and went with the teachings of the church, punishing the teacher to banishment but not death. Salisbury himself went into a very dark time, and upon completing his studies at 16 went into the wilderness to live a hermits life for awhile.

It was there, living in a makeshift shelter and surviving off the land, that Salisbury first noticed the satellites. Most stars in the sky were stationary, but certain ones moved in both north-to-south and east-to-west directions. He became fascinated with the "moving stars", and started tracking them, realizing that before too long he could predict their appearance, location and trajectory.

This did not jive with anything about Salisbury that he had ever been taught. He returned to the city to talk to some of the religious leaders, but found when he went to point out the moving stars to them, that they were nowhere to be found.

He left the city again, people assuming the wilderness had driven him crazy, as legends always predicted it does. But, outside of the city, the satellites appeared again exactly where he predicted they would. After trial and error, he realized there was a line drawn around the city, inside of which the satellite's were not visible, but outside of which they were. By doing some simple geometry, he discovered the radius of the curve, and after identifying it, followed the line.

Salisbury stumbled across an outbuilding that, while once hidden by shrubbery, was now exposed. It contained some sort of machine that generated a force field around the city. He destroyed it, and found that he was able to see the satellites inside of the radius, as if the machine was a generator making a force field that blocked view of the satellites. .

He set up camp to study the generator that he broke, but was shocked when a space craft landed nearby and strange men, speaking a strange language got out and repaired the generator. Caramel taught that they were alone in the universe, but now Salisbury learns that this isn't true. His faith is shaken, and the deeper he starts to look, the stranger the mystery becomes.

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: Dr. Zheng James McNab
Relationship to story: Protagonist

(note: this is a rewrite and expansion of the bio that I wrote in this post . Also, please note that any science mentioned here is purely plot driven script science, and shouldn't at all indicate that I think I know what the fuck I'm talking about).

Born in Chicago, 2113. Mother was an psychologist, Father a historian in Ancient Chinese cultures whose alcoholism kept him from ever making tenure at the university. His childhood was relatively uneventful, and upon showing an early aptitude in the sciences, his mother pushed him into physics.

Young Zheng took the challenge. Named for the great Chinese Mariner Zheng He, he always felt it was his destiny to create, discover, and better the world for future generations. His myopia towards his studies, encouraged strongly by his mother and pretty much ignored by his father, led him to break new ground in high school and take a full ride to MIT, majoring in physics.

He graduated top of his class, doing groundbreaking research into small fissile reactions with methane. He followed his research at Stanford for his doctorate, making a breakthrough discovery that using small controlled explosions, he could create large amounts of oxygen. This discovery shepherded in a new era in space exploration and atmospheric work.

His post-doc work was spent developing a hockey-puck size device that could be used to refill 30 or so tanks of oxygen. All you needed was the puck and and a tank to store the product in. This device was bought out by Syncprocess, Inc. in Madison Wisconsin, where Dr. Zheng went to work as the chief engineer in atmospheric sciences.

While doing more research, Zheng worked on a theory that his process could be expanded to convert Methane based planets to breathable oxygen. He gives a talk in which he makes grandiose claims about his process, how safe it is, how effective, how it can terra form environments in extremely short time periods.

His bosses at Syncprocess just want him to focus on the smaller picture--they are not interested in grand atmospherics, simply in making sellable products to please the stock holders. But he is convinced that he could bring himself and his company great riches and fame if he could solve the problems presented to him with terra forming.

He sets up a small lab at home, and works nights and weekends. He eschews sleep for work, and to that end starts taking speed to keep his mind clear and awake. But, the drugs have their toll, and Zheng becomes convinced that his company is out to kill his artistry and research. He turns against his bosses, and doubles his pace of research.

After increasingly erratic behavior, he is asked to take a leave of absence to pull himself together. He takes advantage of his free time to work 24/7 on his process, but needs the resources of the company to run his final experiment. He breaks onto campus at night, and plugs his process into the computer to run it. He falls asleep at the computer, though, and doesn't notice the warnings as the program compiles.

It executes with errors, and instead of changing a small canister of methane into an amazingly large quantity of oxygen, it changes all oxygen within a four mile radius of the campus to pure methane, killing thousands.

Zheng was awakened by warning bells, and had time to jump into an environment suit before the tragedy struck. He lived, but by his errors he murdered thousands. He was tried and convicted of mass murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole on the Prison Planet, an (ironically) Methane covered planet where he is asked to do manual labor in orr mines to at least partially repay his sins.