Terrance had never seen the sky. While he had grown up in a fairly well off community and received a decent education, he was certainly not wealthy enough to go to the top of the towering complexes that made up the New Atlantic City. Of course if he really wanted to he could probably save up for a holiday or a short vacation, but it wasn't all that high on his priorities, and while Terrance had plenty of disposable income, he wasn't wasteful with it.

Dr Terrance Reinhold worked at RIMM, the Research Institute for Molecular Mechanics; part of the larger organization called The International Coalition of Western Universities. Despite the name, ICWU was not really a institute of education, at least not anymore, but rather it was closer a for-profit research conglomerate. While the Coalition may have originally consisted of a interconnected and united front for tertiary education, its modern goal was essentially to deliver new fronts in technology that could then be sold to multinational corporations, government agencies, militaries, or any other individual or group with the funds to spare.

Due to their work, the Coalition had become extremely wealthy, and they were generally considered a powerhouse of political lobbying and influence. The Molecular Mechanics branch was relatively new, having broke off from the core institution only a few years before Terrance started - and even then one could say that it didn't truly start until he arrived. Previously Terrance worked in pharmaceuticals, because although he was perhaps more passionate about computer science and engineering, the money at that time was in drugs. However once he learned of RIMM he promptly left his stable and lucrative career in drug production; Molecular Mechanics suited his interests much more, combining his love of computer science and engineering with his expertise in chemistry.

The Research Institute for Molecular Mechanics, as the name suggests, dealt with molecular mechanical structures; their work was to synthesize very complex molecular structures that interact with each other or the world around them in predictable and repeatable ways to achieve set outcomes. Terrance liked to compare it to how a computer program takes in data, reads and modifies it, then creates an output.

RIMM rose to notability with their answer to Carbon Dioxide emissions: a synthetic material somewhat analogous to the chlorophyll called AGCF or Anti-Greenhouse Carbon Filtrate (better known to the public as Oxygenerators™; a brand name Terrance despised yet tolerated, due to advice from marketing). This material preformed the relatively simple task of taking stripping apart the carbon and oxygen, and the redistributing the oxygen back into the atmosphere, the carbon would then be collected in small repositories and could be used for other projects later. Unlike plants however, which of course rely on the sun, AGCF could utilize traditional energy generation, meaning it was much more efficient in their modern world, sunless and nuclear powered. This invention was heralded as the modern standard for ecological technology, and was now being mass produced as coatings for buildings, and was near mandatory in crowded office buildings; unions had been complaining about poisoning from the poor filtration down from the upper districts where plants still got enough sunlight to grow.

Despite his hand in the creation of AGCF, Terrance had not received all that much public recognition for his efforts. Not that that particularly bothered him. He was more worried about the image of the Coalition than his individual motivations. And the Coalition had a very good image. Despite general public knowledge of widespread corruption within the ICWU, it had still been voted "Best Scientific Institution", "Most Trustworthy Scientific Source", and "Most Environmentally Friendly Company/Corporation", by the State Public Opinion Polls seventeen years running.

Although the Institute had a sizable and well paid marketing division, their success was mainly due to a lack of competition; all their major competitors had been bought out or gone bankrupt over the past few decades, and no one with half a brain had any illusions as to why. However despite all the shady corporate drama, backstabbings and alleyway dealings, the life for the researchers themselves was rather mundane and uninteresting; they generally cared not for the complex power politics of the Coalition, so long as it didn't interfere with their funding. Luckily for them, the "shotgun" approach to funding suited the Coalition perfectly well.