A.K.A.: Albion bernal
Morph: Futura
Gender Identity: Male
Morph Gender: Male
Background / Origin: Lost
Faction / Ideology: Argonaut
Physical Description: A Futura morph of approximately 24 years.
Background: The man now known as Dr. ‘Albion Bernal’ escaped from the Cognite ‘Legacy’ research station during the chaos following the well-known disaster in 8 AF on month number 34 of the FUTURA Project run, at the mental and biological age of approximately 17. The Cognite ‘FUTURA Project’ sought to quickly raise a generation of new egos through ‘Accelerated Life Experience Training’ by a factor of 6x using AI-controlled Simulspace environments (2 months real time = 1 year experiential time). Dr. Amelia Sheppard, a top scientists in the FUTURA Project, had previously identified Bernal as a genius-level intellect with great potential and managed to spirit away the gravely wounded youth just before the entire project was shut down and the remaining subjects euthanized or backed up into cold storage.
By that point in the project Bernal had advanced far in his chosen field: Simulspace world creation and programming. Or chosen for him, he’s not sure which at this point. Some time around month 24 of FUTURA, Bernal’s ego diverged into two personalities, distinct but still under nominal central control. It is possible this coincided with the still-undetected infection of all test subjects by the Watts-Macleod Exsurgent virus. During the last ‘virtual’ years of the project, Bernal’s ‘other’ personality had been surreptitiously learning how to use the weapons carried by the station security personnel (Freezers and nerfed/medicated Shard Pistols). At the same time Bernal’s original and dominant personality managed to achieve great expertise in the principles and practical operation of the station’s infosec subsystems. Bernal secretly gained the expertise to crack recreated copies of these systems by disguising his activity as regular Simulspace development.
Bernal had directly participated in the brutal murders and other mayhem that occurred during the terrible week Legacy Station was completely out of control, but after several years of intensive psychosurgery and psychiatric help managed to push the majority of these memories into dark places from which with any luck they shall never emerge. To memorialize the occassion of his 19th birthday and a new start in life, Bernal took the name of ‘Albion’, from a cycle of obscure pre-fall books he first read at the virtual age of 9. Bernal’s still-secret personalities took the names of ‘Urizen’ and ‘Urthona’ respectively.
With the continued assistance and patronage of Dr. Sheppard, Bernal trained in the fields of medicine and then psychosurgery, earning his PhD at the mental age of 22 (a real-time age of only 8 years). That was when Sheppard was permanently killed in a freak transport crash and her backups mysteriously deleted, which Albion knew was the result of her intention to publicly identify one of the Cognite dark-ops scientists involved in the Lost Generation disaster. Dr. Sheppard was near penniless and so left nothing to Albion except a few happy memories. Dr. Albion Bernal went on to a distinguished career in psychosurgery, but during the dark hours worked to identify the murderers responsible for Sheppard’s death and the ‘Lost Generation’ disaster at Legacy station. His first catch came only a year later: the next morning a sentry bot and 2 heavily armed security personnel were found deactivated or face down in the local Cognite research lab offices. And the mind of one unscrupulous Cognite research scientist had taken a permanent vacation to somewhere…best left unmentioned.
Character Description: A dauntingly intelligent man with complex ambitions and an equally complex personality. Dr. Bernal has made an excellent reputation for himsolf in the field of Simulspace-based Psychosurgeries utilizing cutting edge theories in personality editing through experiential therapy.
