When The Possessor Wars starts, Harriet Brightway lives in a building that’s 3000 stories tall and a mile wide. This type of building is common in the year 2715 and it’s called an arcology (for more on arcologies, see The History of the World of Tomorrow. One important thing to remember about arcologies is that the higher you live inside them, the richer you are. If you’re middle class or poorer, you live on a lower floor than the rich people.
At the start of The Boy Who Fell into the Sky, Harriet is 14, like her friends Jeff and Akio. She’s a bit of a hothead, but she mostly grows out of that by the start of The Outcasts.
Harriet and her family are very close, which gives Harriet a happy home life. And although they’re not rich by any means, her family is a bit better off than Jeff’s and Akio’s families.
Harriet, Jeff, and Akio live in economically difficult times. The Earth is way overpopulated. That’s why people live in arcologies. But robots and computers are getting smarter and can do more of the jobs that people used to do. So jobs are getting scarce in the Solar System. In other star systems, people are doing well, so humans in the Solar System are starting to leave as space travel gets cheaper. At the start of the first book, Akio’s family decides to colonize the planet Yokohama in the New Tokyo star system.
Harriet has always like sports. In fact, she taught an ancient game called “baseball” to her friends Jeff and Akio. The three of them formed a group that played baseball regularly at an indoor park in their Sector of the arcology.
Another interest of Harriet’s is dancing. Her cousin works in a dance studio, so Harriet learned for free. Dancing is extremely popular among the wealthier kids in the upper sections of the arcology. One big reason for this is the Reproductive Allowance Laws.
In order to limit the population of the overcrowded Solar System, the Federated Alliance passed the Reproductive Allowance Laws. One part of those laws states that if you’re under 16, you can’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend. You could actually go to jail for holding hands with someone when you’re 14. Seriously. Don’t even ask about what happens if you kiss them.
The dance studios have a special permit that allows guys and girls to dance together starting at age 14. The studios are carefully monitored so that the kids don’t do more than just dance. There’s always someone watching. Really bites, doesn’t it?
So like a lot of teenagers in 2715, Harriet enjoys dancing because it enables her to associate with guy in ways she can’t in any other place in her society.
Jeff and Akio, on the other hand, are typical 14 year old guys. They live in a society in which they have to be VERY hands-off when it comes to the girls. So they are very awkward around them. Dancing is a whole new world for the two of them. Think "fish out of water” and you’ll get the idea.
Harriet also like spending time in artificial reality programs, but she doesn’t get to do it very much because it’s a bit pricey for her and her family. So she’s been into a few programs, but not that many.
AR programs are about what you’d expect. They’re virtual worlds created by computers. The computer interacts directly with the player’s brain, so it seems to the person as if they’re really in that world.
Because of her family’s economic situation, Harriet tends to stick more with activities that are free, like baseball and surfing. Yes, there’s surfing in the indoor water park in her Sector. And it’s free. Because Harriet is so athletic, she’s an extremely good surfer. Only Akio is better than her and that’s because Akio’s a bit on the crazy side when it comes to his personal safety. Harriet prefers not to risk the kind of spectacular wipeouts that Akio is known for.
Harriet, like her friends, tries to do her best with what life hands her. She tries to make the best choices she can. And to her credit, the choices she makes are usually quite good.
And that’s Harriet in a nutshell.
Chad
The Possessor Wars
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