Why 14 March

Until now the canon said this much: the adventure happens around 2052. No date anywhere, and through fourteen events nobody missed it.

Then the playable opening went up here, and every screen needed a heading. “2052 · dawn” is half a sentence. Either I name the day or I drop the line.

It became 14 March, and two things decided it.

The dawn has to be cold. The first paragraph of the opening rests on dew: the tarp cools overnight, and by morning as much has run down into the can as has run down. In summer none of it does.

The day has to be survivable. The hero starts at the mouth of Death Valley and drives west. That valley was one of the hottest places on Earth in the old world too, and the Shield did not change that: it put the temperature back, it did not take it away. In July the heat would resolve the story on its own, just not the way I want it resolved.

What I did not expect: fixing the date put the whole road on a calendar. Four days with a column on foot, a stop, two weeks out to the coast and back — until now those floated against one another. They cannot any more: move one and the rest move with it. That is more work, and much harder to lie in.

For the reader, the year alone would have done. The day was asked for by the page, not by the book.