HANK
Grew up in Fairvale. Only child of parents who married late in life. Father retired while Hank was still in high school. Growing up, Hank was a spacey kid who never seemed to know where he was going, but who nonetheless proved himself to be not entirely lacking in brains. By the time he reached high school, he was conscious of feeling “left out”. By the time he reached his senior year, Hank still didn’t know where he was going, nor did he have any idea what he wanted to do with his life. He knew it was expected of him to attend college, and when the time came to choose where to go he chose a college in California for the vague, half-formed reason that since it was physically the farthest away from Fairvale it would somehow be closest to wherever it was that he was going.Once it was decided where Hank would spend his college years, his parents announced that they were selling the house and moving to Florida. As a result, Hank had no pressing reason to return to Fairvale; and he never has, before now.
It is now over six years since Hank graduated from high school. Being undecided and directionless, the tug of the place and time in which he found himself led him inexorably to a major in Computer Science. After receiving his B. S., however, his tendency towards indecision got the better of him once more, and, unsure of what he wanted to do with his degree, he allowed himself to be lured by a newly-created, cutting-edge Master’s program and spent another two years being carried along by the tide. And it was with a seeming inevitability that this tide carried him finally to a job with a Silicon Valley start-up. In preparation for his entrance into the adult stage of his existence, Hank has decided to visit the site of his childhood; perhaps to make sure he hasn’t left anything behind there that he might need for his life to come. To accompany him on his pilgrimage, he has asked Michiko, with whom his relationship is precariously balanced somewhere between friend and lover. She has accepted.