John Stuart

THE BASICS:

Name: John Martin Stuart
Nickname: Jack, Martin, JM
Role in Game: Government Agent
Species: Human
 Ethnicity: Mostly European (40% Italian, 30% English, 10% French, 8% German, 6% Swedish, 4% Iroquois, 2% Middle Eastern), or were you asking for a more general answer like what it says on his passport (i.e. United States of America) or appears on a census form (i.e. Caucasian)?

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PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:

Gender: Male
Age: 30
Hair: Dark Brown
Eyes: Dark Brown
Distinguishing Marks: None

Description of General Appearance: John is more fit than he might appear when dressed with a BMI of an ideal 21.7%, +/- 1.5% based on the variance of measures and time of measurement.  At 6’ tall this put him at 160 lbs, +/- a pound, not counting clothing and gear he might be carrying at any given time.

His eyes, though dark, always seem alive and tend to shift between a general observation of the world and an intense focus on the smallest details, the corner of a smile, the slope of a shoulder, the cut of a dress.  It can be a bit judgmental when he finds something amiss, but his smile is forgiving, the contrast sometimes making it hard to tell which is his true feeling.

He has a particular taste for clothes, designer, tailored, fitted.  That’s not to say he doesn’t own jeans and t-shirts, only that they are selected for a specific fit and feel and he seems to know what to wear when, from formal wear to business casual, from business formal to gym wear, none of it worn out or ill fitting, unless that’s exactly the style he wanted.

In contrast to his precision with clothing, he tends to let his hair be as it wishes.  That usually means there’s a bit flaring on the sides, dropping towards his eyes or sticking up in the wind.  Still, like most other things about him, it seems to suit him.

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UNDER THE HOOD:

Personality:  Depending on someone’s view he might come off as sophisticated and erudite or as arrogant and distant.  It’s all a matter of perspective, though in his case his personality doesn’t change or adapt for his audience, he either expects his audience to understand and adapt or get out of his way.  Generally, he doesn’t have much time for the latter and will go above someone’s head to get what he wants or just as likely, let things go bad to prove his point, assuming it will just go bad and not apocalyptic.  He avoids boredom through activity and is never idle, with even sleep regimented, measured and managed.  While he’s more than willing to indulge in ‘trivial’ pursuits, he generally does so with only half his attention (or more likely a fraction there of) and is typically known to watch a half dozen programs on TV at one time while cooking, conversing, working out or just working.  He rarely sits down to a single activity unless it’s social and even then it may seem as though his mind is only half present and that’s part of it is off somewhere doing calculations or something else in his head.

He generally only focuses when on a very specific ‘project’ or when encountering particularly interesting or clever people, both of which he seeks out (projects and people), Cidervale being a perfect example of both.  However, while he likes interesting projects and people, he dislikes rudeness and doesn’t have much time for easily avoidable or easily solvable problems and often leaves all of the above to others.

Strengths: Discipline is not the same thing as control.  Discipline is enforced externally, discipline has no power over him.  He is controlled and makes his decisions based on an understanding of the systems in which he operates.  There are a lot of systems, physical, philosophical, psychological, social, political and those are just the small, less complex ones.  Making it his business to understand them all, their boundaries, hierarchy, nesting characteristics, adaptive rates, as well as equifinality, the various ways to reach a given end state.

He achieves this self-control and the knowledge allowing it through study and observation, often watching dozens of news feeds at a time, reading every book on a subject and just as importantly, diving head first, hands on into those subjects (i.e. getting his hands dirty).  He would explain that systems are composed of layers, parts, and processes, those parts and processes create interdependencies and ancillary Newtonian interactions.  The majority of problems can be understood and solved by knowing a single system or small cluster of interrelated systems (i.e. a technocratic view of the world), though even the simplest of actions may have the potentiality to affect actuality in a dynamic system.

At least that’s the way he would describe it if he wanted to make someone’s eyes glaze over.  If he felt like being more poetic he might describe it as Apophenia Synchronicity, identifying patterns between unrelated things in order to form meaningful connections for the sake of predictions.  If he felt like being a smartass, he’d just pull out some cards or sticks or bones and pretend they had some magical power to predict the future on Earth One.

Weaknesses:  He’s plagued with guilt as he often makes choices (or more specifically, makes recommendations) which lead to harm to select populations in favor of the whole.  A firm believer in the good of the whole over the good of the many, an equation which has only gotten more complicated with the discovery of alternate Earths and alternate other places.  He manages that guilt through a variety of methods, some of which would seem contradictory to his otherwise well-managed lifestyle, including excessive drinking, indiscriminate sexual encounters and the occasional act of self-harm.  He would, however, argue that those ‘excesses’ are generally well control, selectively implemented and well concealed in socially acceptable ways.

Appearances are everything.  They’re actually nothing, but he makes undo effort to maintain them, from visual style to select paper trails, schedules, and personality traits.  He goes to great lengths to both establish and protect those appearances to the point that he has few close friends with whom he shares more significant truths.

Though he wouldn’t be quick to admit it, he’s rather lonely.  Though he doesn’t consider himself ‘above’ others exactly, he does consider himself different and finds most individuals ‘boring’.  He divides people into three categories, Cogs, Operators and Engineers.  Cogs are workers, important and interesting only in a two dimensional way.  Operators are managers, directors and the vast majority of the people he deals with in government and corporate environments.  He generally finds them the least interesting type and one he ‘humors’ more than anything else in order to maintain his position and work his systems.  Engineers are the rarest of types, those who actually construct or manipulate the systems.  Occasionally he meet these people at the highest levels of society or the furthest fringes.  These are the most interesting of all types of people, though he still considers himself different as he’s more of a consultant to engineers and not an engineer himself (or so he tells himself).

Overstimulation is sometimes a problem and he can be driven to distraction chasing threads of ideas.  As a result he sometimes has to practice focusing techniques when in public in order to avoid growing distant or missing key signals.  Focus is key when working which is why he generally prefers to do his prep work alone without interference and has been known to clear rooms when he needed time to think.  He’s also been known to follow unimportant tangents to their conclusion, simply to conclude them so he can return to important work or at least semi-interesting work.

Fears:  When you think you know everything there isn’t much to fear except being wrong.  Though perhaps a contradiction, while a significant fear (being wrong), it’s also one of his greatest joys.  While in trivial instances (e.g. gambling), being wrong doesn’t hold much weight, he’s always pleased when someone, someones or something surprises him.  However, he’s growing increasingly concerned regarding his recommendations and observations of portal behavior, the impacts of portal exploration and immigration and worries that one mistake could lead to catastrophic outcomes.

He’s equally afraid of not pursuing portal research and exploration as it’s a predictable expectation that portals will expand beyond Cidervale, up to and including within enemy nations states or underdeveloped nation states where they might abuse or recklessly exploit.  In other words, he’s less worried about the nukes in Cidervale than he is one popping up elsewhere and leading to the end of the world, something which is almost certainly going to happen eventually.  In the meantime, he supposes it will at least be interesting as he learns all he can and tryings to figure out how to delay the inevitable.

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SKILLS AND ABILITIES:

Education:  According to university records, John holds degrees from MIT and Stanford though you would be hard pressed to find anyone who could actually verify he ever attended.

Special Training: As part of his routine of self-control he works out regularly and has a rudimentary knowledge of several martial arts (below amatuer level) and has a particular draw towards boxing given it's a bit more systematic in its sport form.  Still, even with that he's at best an amatuer in skill.  Most recently, he's taken up swordplay, thinking it would be useful in a number of potential portal scenarios.  He’s also familiar with the operation of firearms, but is no marksman (he can load, unload, point and shoot and hit a general body shaped target at reasonable distances).

Powers: N/A

Talents/Skills:

Apophenia Synchronicity - Pre, Post and Concurrent Cognition through pattern recognition with a high degree of accuracy (i.e. more than 50%... though he’d likely claim a more specific figure):

• Post-Cognition:  By connecting the dots, including seemingly unrelated dots and generally following breadcrumbs of information he can often find explanations for past events, as well as their probably Butterfly Effect into the current timeline.
  
  
• Claircognizance: While he can’t project his vision, hearing or any senses, by connecting dots between pre and post and cross referencing time he can usually figure out present time situations.  This usually involves knowing where someone or something is within a high probability of accuracy.  As a result, he’s never lost his cell phone or keys.
  
  
• Pre-Cognition:  The heart of Apophenia Synchronicity is the ability to predict the next stage in the progress of a given sequence of events.  While far from infallible, when combined with logic and research, he’s often able to predict the outcome of events.  This can be from who’s going to win the Super Bowl to which stocks will go up or down.  Typically, his pre-cognition doesn’t extend far into the future, usually limited to hours or days as the future becomes more and more chaotic the longer outside forces have to alter the patterns. Longer predictions tend towards trends and moods rather than specific outcomes.

The probability of accuracy is directly related to his familiarity with the source data and statistics with his current areas of expertise focusing on politics, finance and social behavior (i.e. group psychology) though as more data becomes available regarding portals he should theoretically learn to predict their rate of emergence, location and destinations, as well as their potential effects on a case by case basis and overall as more and more are kept open (something he generally argues against).

Knowledge Repository:  Though his knowledge focuses primarily on systems (i.e. a more holistic view), it includes bits and pieces regarding the parts and processes of most of those systems, from science to philosophy, finance to society.  While not an expert in any one field, he has enough working knowledge of most to talk intelligently and/or get up to speed within a relatively short amount of time.

Polyglot:  He’s set a goal of learning at least one new language a year, something he’s undertaken since the age of 12.  Since then he’s learned twenty languages ranging from French and Italian to Chinese (both Cantonese and Mandarin).  His accent with them varies based on his frequency of use as well as the regional acceptance of those accents.  For instance, in Italy it’s more widely accepted to speak with an accent than it is in France and so his accent in Italian is more pronounced.  He alternates his choices of languages to learn based on the number of speakers and the difficulty of the language, three of which happen to have overlapped (Mandarin, Arabic and Japanese).

Technical Acumen:  More hobbyist than professional, access to the latest ARPA drones and technology has inspired an interest in cybernetics and electro-mechanical engineering.  While already a passable ‘hacker’ he’s beginning to learn how to apply those skills to data cuffs, optical interfaces and drones.

Miscellaneous: He’s a decent dancer, but has zero musical talent, is a surprisingly good cook, as long as it’s Chinese, Asian Fusion or French cuisine, but he’s adamant about not using microwaves for cooking and has been known to throw one out a window in disgust.  He knows how to drive, but hasn’t driven himself in years.  He has an unhealthy interest in the fashion industry and knows a wealth of pop culture, history, religious and academic trivia and minutia.  He's an avid supporter of the arts, especially visual arts and performance, though avoids bringing any of it home with him to keep his place clean and free of visual distractions other than those he uses to work.

Adopted Ability via Portal Influence: N/A


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GETTING REAL:

Occupation/Position in Society:  Up until recently Jack has been an independent consultant to governments, financial institutions, energy corporations, private military companies and any other sort of high powered, wealthy and/or interesting parties with more money than information who were looking for some guidance, predictions or strategies for their future.  When he’s on the books it’s usually as a ‘Strategic Consultant’, when he’s off it doesn’t matter what he’s called.  Currently, he’s on the books as Special Executive for Evaluation and Recommendation, which was someone’s clever idea for an acronym since heaven forbid his title to be as meaningless as the chain of command under which he’s expected to report.

Background/History:  There’s history and there’s background, the difference being one is the aggregate of the past, the other is what one did.  In Jack’s case, his history is easier to share than his background, in part because his history is curated, his background is not, background simply is.

Records say he was born in Portland, OR and spent his first decade of life there, something which conforms with his pronunciation, which is decidedly west coast, been (like bin not bean), or caramel, pronounced care-a-mel, not car-ml (though he’d argue there are differences between care-a-mel (a sauce) and car-ml (a candy).  Point being, he’s probably really from the West Coast of the United States originally, like his records say though after there are no verifiable records of his parents existing.  There were tax filings, bank statements and all the sorts of things that suggest a person was real, but there are no first-hand accounts, no friends of the family, no teachers who recall a bright though distant boy who was bored and acted out that boredom by teasing and taunting his fellow students or the staff of the school.  That’s how he described himself growing up, stuck in a system he understood, but had felt separate from, like he’d outgrown it, outgrown parents, outgrown schools, outgrown everything, including his own shoes.

That same vague history followed him through college with an Engineering and Systems Science degree from MIT along with a Masters in Economics and a doctorate in Systems Theory from Stanford.  Several papers attributed to him were published in those years covering a range of topics though other than transcript records which would be confirmed by university administrators, and test documents and other associated records, no professors would recall him ever attending class.

In part that was because he never did, but he’d learned that while he’d outgrown the system, the world hadn’t and if he wanted to participate, wanted to remain within the collective human race, he needed to at least pretend to be a part of it.  And so, he worked with a very talented hacker and others of flexible moral views and an abundance of skill to construct a sufficient paper trail to open the doors he wanted to peer within.

Over the years those doors led to the halls of power, government and private, corporate and non-profit, places that made differences, though arguably not always for the better.  Then again, good, bad, indifferent were subjective values, often based on proximity in time.  When you added time, effects began to ripple and curve and sometimes something terrible would lead to something good, sometimes something good would lead to something terrible.  Those sorts of surprises happened all the time and it was his job, or at least, he made a lot of money, predicting which was which and pointing people and entities in the right direction.

Since then he’s helped direct financial decisions within dozens of political campaigns, helped market pharmaceuticals (something for which he’s somewhat apologetic), helped a dozen Fortune 500 companies become Fortune 100 companies and two become Fortune 10s, averted at two financial catastrophes and caused at least one.

Now as it turns out, one of the political campaigns he aided is currently in a position of power regarding the City of Cidervale and grateful for his help with one of the two near catastrophes and a number of smaller issues which he’s advised them on, so he was one of the first calls made when a dragon appeared in the skies.  They didn’t take his advice and began the end of the world, not with a bang, but a whimper… a slow, plodding, inevitable whimper.

It was only a matter of time and they came calling again when they’d encountered a world with physics very unlike their own Earth and a man who claimed to be a wizard and could bend time and space.  After a brief meeting, Jack had recommended not only sealing the portal but outright destroying the world, even going so far as to provide the means, which perhaps ironically, came from an idea inadvertently suggested by that self-same wizard.

From there on out, he was brought on full time, given an official position, a stupid title, a chain of command through which to report and provide guidance and a backdoor channel when that chain of command failed (which it was guaranteed to do).  He’d had a few other demands as well, though surprisingly, none of those included a salary.  They paid him all the same, to keep the books looking right, but what use was money when the world was going to end.  It turned out, it was very useful and he was going to live well in those final days (months, years, decades, he was still reading the tea leaves to decide how long they had left).

Why are you in Cidervale?  Because Jack knows more than he should about more than he should.  A specialist in Systems Theory, he’s used his abilities to help predict elections, financial fluctuations and the emergence of portals to alternate dimensions, though he’s quick to point out that he missed the timeline (the first portal appeared nearly three years before he expected) let alone the fact that first contact with extra dimensional being would involve a dragon.  He did however correctly predict that contact with extra dimensional beings would likely include contact with beings of a higher magnitude of order than the human species (though he also predicted it would include contact with beings of lesser magnitude as well).

While Jack’s role is varied given his knowledge and skills, his primary ‘mission’ is to apply systems theory to portal evaluations to determine the potential interactions between alternate worlds and Earth One, as well as be on the lookout for potential emergence phenomenon (e.g. portals which may create unintended interdependencies, unexpected Earth One impacts or other physical, social or technological catastrophes).  He’s also self-tasked with learning as much as humanly possible about the portals in order to avert those same catastrophes, which he’s determined to be inevitable, but hasn’t yet solidified a timeline.

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Writing Sample:

“Nǐ kàn dào sìliào ma?”  the voice over the speaker on his counter said, remarkably calm considering the subject they were discussing.  Did you see the feed?

“Wǒ zuòle,” John replied.  I did.

“Well you were right,” the voice conceded begrudgingly, as though they’d lost a friendly wager over a hand of cards.

“Not exactly, I hadn’t anticipated a dragon,” John answered, stirring sizzling noodles in a pan as they spoke, lifting a few to his mouth to taste them before setting the chopsticks aside and selecting another pair to continue stirring.

“I’ll forgive you that,” the other voice said and even through the speaker and seven thousand four hundred and forty-seven miles he could make out the smile, grim as it was under the circumstances.

“How soon can you be here?” the voice asked.

“Half hour for dinner, an hour in traffic, eighteen in the air,” he calculated, leaving out the time to say goodbye, pack, get through customs, get to a cab on the other side.

“Make it an even twenty-four, twelve when you convert for time,” he concluded, dividing the noodles into two bowls and making another calculation as he did.

“Just make it twenty-four,” he amended again, glancing at his guest who wasn’t pleased with the idea that he’d be leaving so suddenly.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he told the voice who began to say something else, but was cut off when John ended the call.

“Wǒmen quán tiān zǎoshang,” he promised with a smile, they had all morning and though he hadn’t said it, the better part of the afternoon.