A/N

So, this is admittedly an example of what I call "science porn" (a term I made up three seconds ago), but basically, idea for this came from watching a video, arguing that Venus is actually a better terraforming option than Mars. In that the planet is closer to Earth than Mars is, and at 0.9g, its gravity is far more condusive to human settlement than Mars. Even when its surface temperatures are basically Hell, that doesn't rule out aerostat colonies or somesuch.

Truth be told, I'm a bit wary of terraforming nowadays, because the timeframe for avoiding ecological collapse on Earth is much shorter than the time it would take to terraform a planet, even if such a thing is possible. But regardless, drabbled this up. Figure if climate change kills us, maybe that's a better fate than demonic invasion?

Men Are From Venus, Women Are From Mars

Earth was dying. In lieu of that fact, some said that Mars was the future. When they said that, Heath knew that they were specifically referring to the future of the human race. Right now, in Aerostat 9, situated above the clouds of Venus, he reflected that if Mars was the future of the human race, then Venus might be the future of Earth.

Key word being "might," because he understood that the runaway greenhouse state Venus had found itself in was unlikely to be duplicated on Earth for at least a billion years. Venus's atmosphere of (insert figure here) carbon dioxide was in part allowed due to its lack of plate tectonics, and lack of surface water to absorb all the CO2. In a distant past, long before life had crawled out onto the land, Venus and Earth might have been like Earth. But as the sun had warmed, as Venus had turned into Hell, and Mars a frigid wasteland, only Earth had retained multicellular life. And, truth be told, it likely always would. Humanity had triggered a sixth mass extinction, but humanity would perish before all life on Earth did. Still, since it was in humanity's self-interests to survive, that hadn't stopped the UAC from setting up terraforming technology on Mars just adjacent to Mars City, in a bid to make the planet more hospitable towards long-term settlement.

He understood the goal, flawed as it was. Which was why he was here. Why, at last, Subarathia Singh walked into the conference room he was standing in, as he stared out the steelglass window to the Venusian sky.

"Heath Conrad?"

He turned round and looked at her. "That's me."

"Sorry I'm late." She took a seat at the end of the table that could fit at least twenty personnel at it. She drew up a laptop. "Still, this shouldn't take long."

He glanced at the door, then back at her. "What about the others?"

"Others?"

"The other people for this meeting."

She leant back in her chair, smiling. "Oh Heath, you don't get it. This is one of those meetings where I listen to your proposition, so that the boys and girls on Earth can be assured that a meeting actually happened." She leant forward. "You see, what's going to happen, is that you're going to explain your proposal, and I have to explain why it's a bad idea. Then I send a message to Earth, and four minutes later, UAC HQ gets to enter it into their logs. After that, you get to fly on back home in a trip that'll last eight hours, and you get back to doing…whatever it is you do."

He scowled. "I work with UAC Terraforming."

"Yes, you do. Which is why by all rights you should be on Mars, not on Venus, where we've got ten aerostats doing nothing but carrying out science for the sake of science, and reminding the people on Earth that as bad as things are right now, they could be worse." She glanced out of the steelglass, at the cloud cover that existed beneath the aerostat. "Way worse." She looked back at Heath. "Still, go on. Let's hear it."

Heath remained standing. He had a data drive in his pocket that he would have used for his presentation, but he could already tell that was a doomed effort. Least a conventional one. He glanced at the Venusian clouds once more before he leant back against the window.

"I'm waiting," Suba said.

If she was going to treat this like a game, he would therefore have to play it and win. So to that end, he took the data drive in his hand, and dropped it on the table.

"What did I just do?" he asked.

Suba stared at him.

"Well?"

"Is this a trick question Heath?"

"I dropped the data drive. Notice anything?"

She leant back in her chair and folded her arms. "I don't follow."

"What I did was drop a data drive. And because Venus has ninety percent Earth gravity, it dropped at pretty much the same rate."

"Duly noted," Suba said. "What's your point?"

"My point is that if we were on Mars, which has a gravity of less than half of Earth, it would fall much slower."

Suba sighed. "I know how gravity works Heath."

"Then you know that there's still a lack of consensus as to what the prolonged effects of lower gravity will do to the human body," he said. "Which is why Venus has escaped those studies because the gravity's so similar to Earth."

"Yes, Venus has similar gravity to Earth," Suba said. "What of it?"

"Well, there's the fact that Venus is a much shorter trip from Earth than the trip is from Earth to Mars."

Suba nodded outside. "And the atmosphere?"

"It took us only a few centuries to change Earth's atmospheric composition so that we're now over three degrees warmer on average than when the Industrial Revolution began. It's why people are still funnelling billions into terraforming efforts on Mars under the pretence that we can change Mars's atmosphere like we've changed Earth in a shorter amount of time."

"Yes, and those billions are part of what's keeping the UAC afloat," Suba said. "The aerostats? Not so much."

"Perhaps. But if we were to terraform Venus? We get a planet with easier travel time, with kinder gravity, and a pre-established base from which to work from." Suba opened her mouth, but she interrupted her. "And if you want to know how, it's all in here."

She got to her feet. "Think I've heard enough."

Heath beamed. "So, you'll look at it?"

"No. I won't." She deactivated her laptop.

"But I-"

"Heath, the UAC has sunk billions into Mars. If we pull this off, we're looking at a return on investment in the realm of trillions." She looked up at him. "People settle on Mars. The UAC owns Mars. More people on Mars, the fewer people on Earth, and the fewer people there are on Earth, the faster the planet will heal. So tell me Heath, in the midst of one planet on the verge of death, and another on the verge of new life, tell me why the heck the UAC should bother with Venus?"

He extended his hand to her. "Because of everything in here. Because of what I've just said. Because of how I could just strap some goggles on and a rebreather, and walk outside this aerostat with nothing to worry about. Which is far more than I could say about Mars right now."

"Right now," Suba murmured. "Decades, centuries from this moment? That's another story."

"Right." He scowled at her. "Provided Mars City isn't destroyed in the process."

Suba didn't answer. She just headed for the door.

"You've heard the rumours, haven't you?" he asked. "The accidents. The dementia. The people requesting transfers away from Mars City."

Suba opened the door.

"Do you even care? Do you even know about half the shit that people are talking about there?"

"I work on Venus, Heath," Suba said. She lingered at the door. "And when I say on Venus, I mean above Venus, because that's as far as we can go without being crushed, or suffocated, or burnt alive, or any of the thousand ways this little shithole can kill us."

"And Mars is better," Heath said. "Even with its temperatures, its gravity, and its lack of magnetic field. You really think Mars is going to save humanity."

Suba didn't answer. She just closed the door and left Heath alone.

Looking out upon the skies of Venus, and dreaming of what could be.