Johny had been a farmer all his life.

He’d been born to farmers, living just outside of Goldspeak. Polaris might be a mining colony, but all the hungry miners needed somebody to feed them. His family had owned one of the many greenhouse complexes that fed the growing city.

According to the handfull of agricultural science books he’d read during his teenage years -and which he still read through on occasion-, the polarii soil could be characterized as ‘suboptimal’. To farm in the snowglobe of a planet, one needed a heated greenhouse and a soil processing facility.

In short, farming was expensive.

Every now and then, he would dream about moving to a more fertile land. He’d heard about the Verdant League and its planets, which the ancients had sculpted with lost sciences to become as fertile as the mythical birthplace of humanity.

Yet going there was impossible; selling his every belonging and using his savings might get him as far as the Republic’s frontier worlds, yet he had a family to feed, clothe and send to school. Taking such risks was best left to the dreamy-eyed youth, whose spring-stepped ranks he’d left many years ago.

So for many cycles he’d stopped dreaming, bent his head down and kept working hard.

At times, it had been rough. Antifreeze pumps failed, turning moist leaves into icicles. Disease nipped at his harvest, killing three or four out of every ten plants. Snowstorms slammed against the greenhouse, the subsequent repairs draining his savings.

Johny had long since accepted this would go on until he died, and worked hoping his children might escape his fate. Maybe they’d grow smart enough to go to university, become doctors or engineers.

Then the akritans came. At first, nothing really changed…but not for long.

Every month another factory would awaken, repairs would get cheaper, and his savings would fatten up. Then a big refinery opened in the frostlands way up north, turning methane gas that had been trapped under frozen lakes into hydrocarbon fuel, lubricants and antifreeze.

When his eldest son was lost on a hunting trip, Johny thought him gone. A search and rescue helicopter from the newly-created national guard found him mere hours before a storm shredded through the plain, and brought him home with minor injuries that healed quickly.

Johny had never felt happier.

Then a brutal snowstorm rolled through town, and while he and his family sheltered the greenhouse was torn apart, fibreglass, soil and everything. His life’s work was gone, and the future looked bleak. He’d amased fat savings, tens of thousands of dollars. Yet that was not enough to rebuild the greenhouse, not while also sending all three children to university and having enough to retire.

The only way to help his children escape was work. Work, until they buried him under the moist soil. Another ten years of labor and worsening back pain.

His second-eldest, Pauline, told him otherwise just a week after the disaster.

“It’s all over town!” She said, practically beaming with joy, handing her prized tablet to his calloused hands.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

As he read through the advert, tears rolling down his cheeks. “This…it can’t be.” He mumbled. “Daughter…is this true?”

“It is!” She said, hugging him. “The duke’s paying for moving, transport, and giving us a starting loan! Look, there’s the interest!”

Johny had expected five, maybe six percent. The duke appeared to be a reasonable ruler, much unlike the devil-like loan sharks that had given him absurd offers the very morning after his greenhouse was destroyed.

Instead, near the very bottom of the resettlement offer, he saw it. The tablet dropped to the table, eliciting a surprised squeak from his daughter.

[…to be repaid within the next five years, at an annual interest rate of 1%]

—

Johny had grown up used to cold. Every time he went out, he made sure to wear at least three layers. During the heart of winter, that went up to as many as five, including esothermic underwear and additional layers.

So cruising through the vast green valley, feeling comfortably cool as while only wearing a shirt and jacket, was a deeply heartening experience. All he could see inside the enormous valley’s borders was green; grass, trees, and farms.

Not greenhouses, but open air farms spanning dozens if not hundreds of hectares.

So vast was the valley, that he and his family had been thrown into a helicopter to cross the distance from the spaceport to their new home in Springfield, a village that had been incorporated just months ago. His wife and children sat in the seats around his won, looking through the windows, while their bags were strapped between the two rows of seats. On the other side of the passenger cabin, another polarii farmer family did much the same.

Johny knew the parents, with whom he and his wife had met briefly at a wedding ceremony and school graduation party. He was glad they wouldn’t have to adapt to this new reality without friends, despite the ideal farming conditions and promising future under the Duke’s rule.

“Attention, dear passengers.” The co-pilot announced on the intercomm, his voice coming out clear over each person’s headset. “We will be arriving at the Springfield Regional Heliport in approximately two minutes. Thank you for flying with us on this fine morning.”

—

“Mornin’ Mike!” Johny greeted his neighbor and friend, walking out to his front porch.

It had just dawned, and the house his family had moved into just over two months ago now shined in the morning sun.

“Mornin’ to you too, Johny!” Mike, a fellow farmer and polarii, waved back.

The two men walked up to one another, exchanging a firm handshake before walking side-by-side to the bus station. It was a bright, sunny spring day, and the planting season had just begun. They were joined by many of the other villagers on their way to the fields, eager smiles on their faces.

Soon they reached the small station and boarded the waiting bus, greeting the driver as they entered and took their informal seats. Some read through the morning paper, while others chatted about the machines or the fields. Tea was exchanged for biscuits and kaf for fruitcakes, and before long they’d all tasted most of what the neighborhood's cooks had to offer.

It was a comfortable commute, the bus growing smaller and smaller as each farmer stepped off at his respective farm. Johny got off nearly last along with Mike, their plots of land being side-by-side and only separated by a simple wooden fence, about as high as their shoulder.

“See you in the evening.”

“You bet.”

…

Johny had yet to get used to running an open-air farm, but he was glad to have trained in virtual-reality. All the tools and vehicles he’d bought with the government loan had come with hefty training manuals and video courses for both operating and maintaining them. The Saint-Germaine Group’s products were expensive —especially if bought outside the government loan program— but they were high-quality through and through.

Walking outside the small farmhouse-garage that stored his new tools of the trade —itself a pre-fabricated assembly shipped in by heavy cargo shuttle—, he kneeled down into the moist soil and took a fistfull in his palm.

Soft, black soil fell through his fingers, making him smile. He’d heard of just how fertile the land was before arriving, but he could have scarcely imagined such pristine soil, ripe for sowing. Back in Polaris, he’d have to mix fertilizer and compost into harvested soil and layer it in his greenhouse to get even half as good of a result. Here…it was just waiting to be used.

“Welp, s’pose I ought to get to it.” He muttered, walking into the barn.

Domusec’s bounty wasn’t going to be sown by itself.