Zach was born mute with a
deformed vocal box. He had a prosthetic voice box surgically implanted,
enabling him to talk. When he got particularly excited or angry, the voice box
made his voice sound mechanical, and he sometimes pretended to be an android.
He had a power over machines;
even those that normally could not be controlled were helpless to do his
bidding. On the planet of Barateck, a technologically based bureaucratic
republic within the Consortium of Civilized Worlds, there were plenty of
machines available.
When he was four years old, Zach
could control his powers fully, but not his youthful temper. In a fit of
frustration of being told what to do by his parents, he ordered the household
machines to attack them. When the dust cleared, Zach was orphaned. He hadn’t
truly understood death before, hadn’t really believed that his parents could be
hurt, that he actually had the power to harm them. Now, he understood it all
too well.
He became terrified, of his own
power, and of his own violence. He made himself believe that he had a chip in
his brain that held the violence in check. The power of his belief was so
strong, that he would go into physical seizures at the first sign of actually
attempting physical violence, just as if he really did have the chip.
Zach Foster was raised by
machines and by human foster parents. He never was able to bond with anyone
living. He forgot, or perhaps traumatically suppressed, both most of his powers
and his actions. He had only one major power left to him, a specialized
telemechanics that let him see everything about a machine, strengths,
weaknesses, right down to lines of code. While he also had speed reading and a
photographic memory, these things were common, and could be passed as trained
skills by a studious learner rather than true powers.
He grew up unaware of his past
of other abilities. He even went to a psychic testing facility to test himself
for psionics, and was listed as a D class psychic, not even enough power for the
mandatory registration. He was rather unremarkable in appearance, with dirty
blond hair and watery blue eyes, he was thin and pale and of medium height, he
had an easily forgotten face. He always followed the rules, almost religiously,
dotting every i and crossing every T, no matter what.
He went to college, majored in
computers, and managed to acquire a hefty college loan debt. The debt was
slightly less that the average debt, which was still in the tens of thousands of
credits. He graduated at 20, young but not remarkably young for graduation.
When he was in the workforce for
about a year, the government came out with a new poverty-fighting program. It
was called the Work Corps, and it took people with low income and put them in
work that would best suit their talents. Zach, with his college debt, somehow
ended up as a negative income on their records and was drafted.
Zach, of course, was livid. His
government contracted him out to three different planets, each who wanted a
specialist in computers and electronics to upgrade their current systems. His
first job as a “government slave” was to help the curious and friendly Stonekin
race upgrade a major network inside one of their corporations. Being curious,
and rather friendly, they kept bugging him, asking him what he was doing, and
making it very difficult for the poor computer programmer to concentrate. Zach
responded by being rude and obnoxious, hoping that if he was bad enough that
they would simply leave him alone. For the most part, it worked.
Unfortunately… one day he
insulted a Royal Stonekin, which was a crime on the planet. Zach was tortured
with tasers for his rudeness, which wasn’t actually legal for the race to do to
a contracted employee from another government.
Zach’s vocal box shorted out,
leaving him unable to speak. He realized that the government that sent him out
as a contracted employee didn’t actually protect him except on paper. He was on
his own. It ‘scared him straight,’ he quickly stopped being rude. Of course,
not being able to speak was actually helpful, if someone asked him a question he
would very slowly write it out the answer on a piece of paper. It prevented him
from being rude, and only the most patient of beings could find the time to
bother him.
His voice box “self” repaired
within a month, Zach not realizing that his own powers leaked through his mental
blocks and healed the ailing machine. After two more government contracts, Zach
went home and tried to get another job.
No luck. No one would take
him. It was cheaper for companies to take recently trained techs fresh out of
college than to retrain Zach with his now-obsolete knowledge. The government
Work Corps agency decided that he had the job skills necessary to survive on his
own now, and so he wasn’t eligible for the Work Corps again. He didn’t have the
funds to go back to college. He couldn’t get a job.
He blamed the government for his
problems, but they weren’t about to help him. (He didn’t realize until later
that the Stonekin had given him a REALLY bad reference, saying he was impossible
to work with, and THAT was the main reason no one wanted him.) He was stuck,
bills piling up, eviction notices plaguing his messages, and from all the stress
he got really sick. Without a job and without insurance he had no way to get to
a doctor, twenty-two year old Zach found himself pretty much at rock bottom, and
wondered if he was going to die.
The night before his eviction,
feverish from sickness and hadn’t slept from all the stress, he fell asleep and
his consciousness found itself drifting through the internet. He NetWalked
(similar to the power machine ghost), aimlessly wandering the networks and
mainframes.
He got caught in some Black Ice,
a powerful anti-hacker program that caught him. Within the NetWalk dream he was
at an icy lake, and fell through the ice. He was holding onto the surface of
the lake with his elbows and arms, scrambling to try to bring his body out of
the icy cold “water.” The sky was blue and filled with binary numbers; he
flailed his arms and tried to escape, to no avail.
He saw a young woman skating on
the ice, approaching. She was beautiful, with long red hair framing her
flawless skin and large, bright green eyes. She skated closer, curious, but not
particularly offering to help him. He realized she was some sort of program,
and called for help: “F1! F1!”
She skated closer, and asked why
he was using such words. Her voice was a melodious soprano. Zach didn’t have
time to argue with a program, even one as obviously sophisticated as her.
“I’m dying. I’m stuck, with no
way out. Please, will you help me?”
“If there is no way out, then
you will die,” she replied simply.
“I will survive or die trying!”
Zach declared, and a fierce survival instinct rose up, pushing down his
depression. He scrambled to get out of the Black Ice trap, but failed and fell
through, into the water.
Perhaps he would have died, or
perhaps he would have awakened with a headache had he drowned in this dream.
But before he could find out he was pulled into another computer system.
His mind was inside a super computer, a serious felony. An android was there, a
military grade sentient being. He gave Zach a choice: to go back to his life
the way it was, or to work for the android. Zach took the second option.
He woke up in his room, the land
lord pounding on his door. He didn’t know if it had been a dream or real, but
he had hope. He left his apartment, and wandered rather aimlessly about the
city.
While crossing a crosswalk, he
was nearly run over by a stolen vehicle. Looking at the 6 wheeled tank like
ground car, sizing up the programming of the onboard computer, he saw a weakness
in its “anti psychic” programming. He used his “minor” power to tell the
onboard computer: “murder me.”
The computer quickly checked
this request against a pre-defined list of “thou shalt not do,” saw that murder
was on the top of that list, and shut down the car. The car halted, mere
inches from the outstretched hand of one lone psychic holding it at bay. He
held it there until cops arrived a few minutes later.
The police requested that he
give contact information. Zach replied that he had none… being now homeless he
didn’t have a phone. The cops, believing him to be a suspicious smartass, took
him into custody. After talking to an interrogating case worker who knew nothing
about psionics and even less about computers, Zach was locked up until a psychic
specialist could arrive.
The specialist came, a rather
powerful android by the name of Dante. He was sculpted to be handsome, with a
perpetual cocky smile that was half-sneer. He declared that Zach “acted within
the parameters of his ability.” The human cop said he was free to go, but Dante
contested it, and took Zach into protective custody, with the intention of going
to a homeless shelter.
Dante drove Zach to the
airport. When they went to a private and military grade plane rather than a
passenger plane, Zach realized something was up. He took one look at the craft
and demanded what was going on. Dante, with a growl, simply sedated the human.
The last thing he heard before passing out was: “You asked for this, remember?”
Zach woke up in a strange room
done in Tiki style, with Dante and another android there. The other android
introduced himself as Marten. While Dante was a thug and a shock trooper,
Marten was a manager or officer. He looked and acted human, so much so that
Zach’s human senses were completely fooled, though his other senses knew right
away. Marten explained that he would be working on the program known as Julia,
perfecting a few flaws in her system. Zach’s secrecy was expected, and he would
be paid for his time.
Zach spent a long summer in the
Beach House. He never found out which beach the little prefabricated house was
located at, nor did he care. There was no real sense of time, just of peace and
tranquility. With the two war-weapon androids, he felt completely safe. Dante
would tease him, but even that small annoyance was welcome compared to the past
year.
Zach worked on the program known
as Julia. She was powerful, a weapon designed to bring governments to their
knees. Zach… fell in love with her. She was just a computer program, and yet,
he truly loved her. He set up a programming block that made certain that she
wouldn’t take satisfaction out of harming sentient beings, perhaps not realizing
that his simple line of code might have saved countless lives.
Julia was mostly finished before
Zach had ever met her, but the government cell that had made her was shut down
for being too dangerous. The three of them, Julia, Marten, and Dante, were all
part of the same grand scheme. Marten was an officer, strategist, meant to lead
groups of people and machines. Dante, a shock trooper, enforcer, was meant to
keep those people in line, and annihilate dissidents. Julia was designed to
break through the networks and defenses of any government, crippling them.
Between the three of them, they could probably have taken over the galaxy. If
they wanted to.
Perhaps Zach knew but buried
that knowledge deep within the corners of his mind. Perhaps he was completely
oblivious. Either way, with a few lines of code he was able to program them to
not want to use their talents for galactic domination.
During this time Julia found out
about Zach’s past. She deleted the information in all but the memory banks of
her, Marten and Dante, realizing that Zach was something special and that in the
wrong hands he could be a very dangerous weapon. As far as his personal file
was concerned, and to the knowledge of Zach himself, his parents died in an
accident.
At the end of the summer, Julia
realized that the government had found out about the Beach House, and it was
time to move. Zach was sent back to the city after being sedated, Julia told
him that it was dangerous and she had to leave, and might not survive. Helpless
to assist his loved one, all Zach could do was try and find a job, and hope that
everything was okay. If he tracked her down, she would only be in more danger.
He was a liability if she contacted him, and knew it.
Before he was taken back to his
home city, Dante gave him a cruel parting present. He told the Zach that the
real reason he couldn’t get a job was because of his bad references, it was HIS
fault, not the governments, that he couldn’t get a job. Any company rich enough
to do a background check could see the horrible black mark staining his record.
It was a harsh truth to face, that his problems could be of his own making.
Zach gave up on finding
employment in the IT world, and managed to get a job at a fast food restaurant.
It paid enough for him to survive. During his time there he invented a
revolutionary new program that improved efficiency by 300%, and sold it to the
restaurant chain. He managed to get enough money to pull himself out of debt
and break even. He got promoted to manager, and was actually somewhat happy.
The government decided that this
was a good time to draft him back into the Work Corp. Instead of an IT job, he
was a fast food manager at an important archeological dig off planet, a
government sponsored dig.
Zach didn’t even get to the dig
without some sort of incident. The captain of the ship he was traveling on did
NOT like psychics, did not trust them, and forced Zach to go on anti-psychic
medication that blocked his powers. For Zach, it was senses deprivation. He
depended on his powers, and to be without them he couldn’t tell what was real
and what was not. He had insomnia and thought he was going crazy, and was
locked up inside the brig “for his own good” until they arrived on planet.
The ship was taken over by space
pirates, the captain locked up in the same cell as the seemingly insane young
psychic, who was convinced that the captain was in fact a hallucination come to
haunt him. The captain said “You’re a psychic, can’t you get out of here?”
Zach was horrified at the thought of disobeying the captain’s orders to stay in
the cell and stop causing trouble! Surely the hallucination was just there to
try to get him into more trouble!
One of the pirates turned out to
be Dante, stolen by them and converted to their use. He had a control chip they
put inside him to make him do their bidding. When he found out that Zach was on
board, he quickly de-toxed the anti-psychic medicine and had Zach help him
remove the control chip.
Afterwards, Dante turned to Zach
and said: “There is a computer program that took over the ship’s computer. Do
you know any way to override it?”
“I can’t override something like
that! I’m only a D class psychic! All I could do is activate the antivirus
software and tell it that the file is corrupted and it has to restore to an
earlier date and settings before the pirates came on board. It’s not like I can
control the ship!”
Dante smiled as the ship ran the
antivirus program and returned control to a very bewildered captain. The
android fled after the ship was taken care of, and Zach continued onto the
planet he was scheduled to go to, the archeological dig site.
To his surprise, Marten was the
CO, the man in charge of this operation, leading the dig. Everyone else thought
that Mr. Marten was a human, very few people knew the truth. Marten explained
that there were a few of his models running around and quite a few more Dantes
(though they were all involved in military settings at that time). Marten told
him that Julia was hiding, even from them, and they didn’t know whether she was
alive or deleted.
Zach spent a few months managing
the cafeteria, when a bully who was the ex-boyfriend of one of the employees,
Becky, started coming around and harassing her. Zach couldn’t do violence, of
course, and depended on his chip to hold his temper for him. But he could (and
did) refuse service to the man, throwing him out. Zach put up a poster of
people who weren’t welcome. Five of the list were the people in the government
who had designed and passed the Work Corps law (and the likelihood of them going
to that cafeteria was nil), as well as a few others from other employees. It
was an effective morale boost.
Until the ex-boyfriend took it
personally. He brought in a few of his friends and tried to trash the
cafeteria. Zach called Marten, who came down. Marten was angry. First he
warned the thugs and told them if he ever got a report about harassment again,
he would put them in the brig and dock his pay. Then he turned on Zach,
informing him that his immature abuse of the rules endangered his employees, and
if he didn’t shape up he would get a bad evaluation.
Marten was good at finding
peoples’ weak points and using them against the person. Zach “shaped up”
quickly, becoming stressed with worry and fearful of making a mistake. When Zach
got stressed he got sick, and this time was no exception. He caught a severe
flu, and had to call in sick to work a few days later.
Marten picked Zach up from his
apartment to have a “talk” with him. He took the psychic into the archeological
dig, where they had uncovered some sort of machine that no one had been able to
figure out, though it obviously had tremendous power. Marten told Zach to sit
down while he had a talk with the foreman.
Zach sat down next to the
machine, and realizing immediately that it was some sort of molecular
synthesizer, able to create materials out of seemingly thin air, by combining
atoms into molecules and then into items. Zach asked for a glass of water. The
machine politely gave him a glass of water, and told him it required payment.
Zach handed over some coins, then wondered why the room suddenly went quiet.
Marten, smiling, took Zach to
the infirmary. Zach didn’t understand exactly what had just happened, but
shrugged it off as soon as Marten said that he would give him a good evaluation
provided that he didn’t do anything particularly horrible.
A few months later Zach went
back to his home world, and tried to get a job. This time he found trouble
because the employers asked why did he keep changing jobs? His answer didn’t
seem to satisfy them. At nights he complained about the government in a blog at
a site along with other complainers. Most of them were just worded complaints,
done by people who had no plans of dissent other than posting a few angry words
to be read by other angry-word-posters.
He found one blog that was
unusual. It was a post complaining about a specific government agency that
enslaved some of its members so that they couldn’t escape, forcing them to do
covert operations. According to the blog their recruiting practices were
downright evil, kidnapping people and forcing them to work for it. The agency
had a front of a corporation.
The blog vanished after one
day. Where most saw a conspiracy, Zach… saw a job opportunity. He had been a
“government slave” so many times he pretty much thought he was used to it by
now. He did research into this company, and one night, prepared to hack into
them. He dressed up in a white collared shirt and slacks, had all this clothes
neatly packed in a suit case, and with his computer tried to hack into the
company networks.
He was found out quickly, and
within a half hour a squad entered his room and held him at gun point. Zach
surrendered immediately, and was not surprised to be sedated and wake up in a
strange and secret interrogation room.
There was the usual camera,
steel table and 2 chairs, a one way mirror taking up most of one of the walls.
Zach patiently waited for the interrogator, and when questioned he told him that
he was hacking into the computer to try and illegally download software
tutorials on the latest edition of a certain software. He figured if he could
learn this software, he would be able to get a job.
The interrogator gave him a
choice: either go to jail as a hacker and criminal, or work for them. Zach
smiled and asked for the paperwork. Those at the agency weren’t exactly sure
what to make of him. He was listed as a D class psychic, with various jobs, no
criminal history, and he acted downright strange. There was no outrage, no
sullenness, just a total cooperation and an eagerness to please. They watched
him closely, figuring he might be a spy.
Months passed. Zach learned and
worked for them. He made friends with an android war weapon who wasn’t as
sophisticated as Dante, but still was a decent fighter. One of his supervisors
who didn’t know much about psychics or android programming got suspicious and
asked the war weapon got along with Zach so well.
“He is a zero-threat-level,” the
android replied calmly, equating Zach to the same harmlessness normally reserved
for newborn babies.
“I don’t trust him. Mark him as
a level 1 threat,” said the supervisor, not realizing that level 1 was actually
the highest threat, 5 being the lowest except for zero, rather than the
yellow-alert that he wanted. The android’s eyes turned bright red. A level one
threat had to be neutralized within seconds, and that usually meant death. Zach
had less than a second to react. He dropped to the floor and went limp. The
android broke his arms and legs, and knocked him out with a karate-chop between
the shoulder blades.
The supervisor yelped in
surprise, not expecting this level of violence. However it served some purpose,
if Zach would allow a robot to break all his limbs, surely he couldn’t control
androids or robots, he must be the simple D class psychic he claimed to be.
Zach woke up in the infirmary.
The “Chief,” a dark eyed man known only as Chief, and one of the higher-ups in
the organization, decided to question Zach. He used the “I already know, why
did you think you could get away with it?” trick to find out Zach’s true
purpose. Zach fell for it, of course, and Chief managed to piece together that
the main reason the psychic was there was for job security.
Chief saw to it that he wasn’t
bothered after that. He wasn’t a spy, he was just a “dweeb.” Zach spent almost
two years working for the company, on various machines, programs, and electrical
things. Chief tried to train him in weapons, but after going into seizures at
merely holding a gun, that idea was quickly dropped. Zach did go on a few
covert missions, but always with backup that could actually fight if necessary.
His skills with computers, electronics, and mechanics were unparalleled, but it
was the only thing he seemed able to do.
Then one day the agency was
attacked. First a virus froze the computers. The lights went off, and two
feminine caricature green eyes appeared on all the monitors, first looking left,
then right, then winking. Zach realized it was Julia, still alive. The
computers and systems came back on, and he realized that it was a warning, they
were about to be attacked. Zach was helpless to assist in the fight, but with
his warning everyone was prepared when a rival agency attacked over political
machinations. Chief managed to help him escape the building, since he was
useless in combat, and went back into the fight.
Zach fled the city, and went to
a hotel. Making himself easy to find, he billed his company, and ordered lots
of room service. He spent about 3 days waiting for his comrades to come collect
him; it didn’t even occur to him that this was the perfect chance to run.
Dante found him, and sounding
rather annoyed collected Zach and told him it was no longer safe for him on
planet, he would have to leave. He found himself whisked away back to the
archeological dig where he had worked as a fast food manager. He was met by
Marten and by another android, a woman. She had red hair, a flawless porcelain
skin, it was Julia. Their reunion was passionate. He was now 28 years old,
though with the medical advances he could live for more than a hundred more
years, and though it had been a few years since they last truly saw eachother he
hadn’t changed too much. He matured a little, perhaps, but not by much. He was
still deeply in love with her.
Marten informed him that they
found something at the dig, but it would take a psychic of Zach’s power to
figure it out. They went deep underground into a pyramid, with machines that
were ancient and yet still somehow working. Zach told them he didn’t really
have a power, just his telemechanics to sense stuff. He had never been able to
control anything.
An ancient machine attacked
them. It was huge, a dismantler, and was quite capable of taking them all out.
Julia wasn’t able to control it with her network stopping powers, and Dante was
torn in half trying to stop it. Marten and Julia took cover, but they only
managed to delay the ancient monster. It was only a matter of time.
Marten, who knew every button to
push, just glared at Zach. “You’ve always had the power to control machines.
You killed your parents when you were little by having machines attack them.
Stop lying to yourself. Now, because of you, Julia is going to die too.”
Zach… had a nervous breakdown
when confronted with the truth. He snapped. He fell on his side, curling up
into a ball, and unleashed his power. It launched out, not only to the three
androids and the ancient machine, but to the entire pyramid. It was an ancient
spaceship, and Zach both healed every machine and reprogrammed them all at once.
Dante was repaired and part of
his programming changed, he was given a new directive, to protect Zach. The
spaceship was reprogrammed, its machines healed and systems restored. The use
of all his psionics was a huge strain, Zach passed out.
When he awoke, he, Dante,
Marten, and Julia were on a cargo ship. Named the Beach House, its primary
purpose was to be a home for Zach. He spent not-quite-a year being coddled
while he slowly recovered his memories and some of his sanity. He was still
nervous and agitated all the time, despite the constant reassurance and
protection from his friends. They traveled with a crew of orcs for awhile,
going throughout the three galaxies.
One day, while on Eden, Zach got
a call that a badly damaged Dante was arriving. He rushed down to the
checkpoint to help one of the many incarnations of his comrade. They were
teleported to Rifts Earth, on a beach. Dante used the last of his energy to
inform Julia and Marten what planet they were on before going offline.
Zach spent a few months with a
group of strange adventurers on a high-seas quest. Dante was finally repaired,
and they managed to find a pre-rifts submarine to travel in. They journeyed on,
until the group got caught in a time loop.
Zach, who could sense the
passing of time, was one of only two people who realized the loop was going on.
For three years he was stuck, and found that his mind was changing even though
his body wasn’t. He, for lack of a better word, healed. He found out about an
ancient crashed spaceship, but couldn’t do anything about it yet.
Finally the loop was broken, and
Zach was rescued by Julia and Marten. He went to go find the ancient and
crashed spaceship, and was able to repair it. However, once it was repaired he
left it, the ship was downright depressing, constantly insisting that everyone
was doomed, and all actions were futile.
Afterwards, Zach and his friends
left to resume their journey through the stars.
