App draft: Justin Warrick (Cyteen), for theskytides
EDIT: SUBMITTED!!
I think Mia's idea of putting application drafts on LJ is good. Helps keep track - and having this thing public (well, okay, friends-locked) should be at least a little motivating.
For my sanity, I really need another character. Someone who isn't a violent amoral creature, and someone who analyzes things more than a Jager is apt to do.
############# Justin Warrick application for The Sky Tides ############
# PLAYER INFORMATION:
Name/Nickname: Nika
AIM/E-mail/Contact: patena@gmail.com (email/AIM/gtalk)
LJ: schmot_gurl
# CHARACTER INFORMATION:
Canon Character and Series: Justin Warrick, Cyteen by C.J.Cherryh (AU where Ari lived a while longer)
In-Game Name: Justin Warrick, but introduces himself as Justin Walker
Age: 18
Gender: male
Position & Ship: Records Keeper or Navigator, Fiertia
### Appearance:
Handsome in a mellow, serious way, somewhere between boy-next-door and absent-minded researcher. Soft brown hair in a basic short cut. Dark brown eyes, perhaps not warm, but definitely concerned. Justin has the look of a doctor, of someone just looking for people who need help.
His build is fairly athletic, well-muscled without being too bulky or lean, but he doesn't look like a fighter. He's clearly the type who spent an hour in a good gym every day because it was the healthy thing to do.
Justin dresses so as to not stand out unless he absolutely has to. He usually wears simple turtleneck sweaters and slacks, and unlike his father, he tends towards rust or dark green colors. It would be going much too far to say he resents their similarity, but sometimes, in small things, he does purposefully try to distinguish himself from Jordan.
### Personality:
Justin is calm and reserved by nature, which serves to hide his frequent moments of self-consciousness. He thinks three times before he speaks or acts. He's very much defined by the people around him: first his father and his adopted brother Grant, then Ari. He gets pulled into relationships, and has trouble disentangling himself or leaving his prescribed role. Once he sees someone a particular way, it will take a lot to make him rethink his opinion - and even if he does, it'll be difficult for him to change their previous interaction pattern.
He's a very kind young man, and much less self-protective than he should be. He wants to help people, and he's incredibly easy to convince it's his responsibility to do it. He will work himself to death to prevent someone's suffering if he thinks he can, and he usually does think so. It was true in Reseune, but in the outside world things can be very different.
Once he left his father's protection and started dealing for himself, Reseune's difficult environment together with his altruism and lack of personal boundaries added up to an incredibly stressful existence. He still hasn't recovered from the shock. Perhaps he never will. He's less trusting now, never quite sure of anyone or anything - but he still instinctively reaches out to people. He's incapable of really hurting anyone, even known enemies.
Having grown up in Reseune, where everyone knew and tried to manipulate everyone else as a matter of course, he isn't very clear on the notion of privacy, although he'll probably like the idea once he gets used to it. For now, few things short of outright conflict register to him as impolite, and he expects anyone in authority to have much more influence over all aspects of his life than is common anywhere but on Ivonan military ships. He's been spied on, drugged, arrested without explanation - all often enough to get used to his inability to do anything about it. He avoids trouble as much as he can, but he'll only let others push him up to a certain point.
In an emergency - or something that feels like one to him, correctly or not - he panics, but he acts. Without the time to think through all his choices he's never sure if he's doing the right thing, but something will usually occur to him. Surprisingly, more to himself than others, he does a good job under pressure, in the end. But the toll it takes on him rarely makes it worth it.
### Abilities/Weapons:
He's a psych-surgeon - a trained and talented operative in the manipulation of personality, memories and values. Given a fully tranquilized subject, plenty of time and the right equipment, he could do very nearly anything: add new memories or erase old ones; block out whole parts of someone's personality just to let them reemerge under specific circumstances; strengthen or destroy their entire psychological makeup. His job was designing these treatments to remove conflicting values, heal emotional damage and aid recovery, but he could reverse the process just as well, if he was pushed far enough that he could bring himself to do it.
However, the right tools for such procedures are nothing less than a fully equipped Reseune laboratory, with a magitech sensory patch rig and one or two trained technicians, Without the full setup Justin could still try a psych modification, but the process would likely take several hours (if not days), and the extent to which the changes would integrate into the patient's mind would depend on their own cooperation. On a completely willing subject with good self-control the results could be close to full, but any conscious or subconscious reservations about the procedure would limit its effect to the surface mind, causing them to fade within a few days or hours.
Justin would be unlikely to attempt such obvious interventions outside the proper medical setting, both because of basic ethics and because he's trying to hide his identity - but even without going outside the bounds of normal conversation, he can do far too much for comfort. As a matter of reflex more than conscious thought he will analyze the psychological structure of anyone he encounters, and it won't take him long to find the hidden cracks and pressure points, the irrational linkages between seemingly unrelated concepts, the carefully unanswered questions. He can predict the behavior of individuals and groups with frightening accuracy, and will often know exactly what to say to change the direction of someone's thoughts or actions.
The same mental modification techniques, on a different level, have been used to 'deep-train' him in fighting with basic weapons and hand-to-hand. Thus, his body has the knowledge of effective combat technique, but he has never consciously spent time training or sparring, and has never had occasion to use his fighting abilities. He is unlikely to do so unless he sees no other option, but when he's threatened directly, the trained instincts will take over - and he keeps himself in good enough physical shape to be an effective fighter.
He owns a quality handgun, but he's never pointed it at any living thing, much less fired.
He has a superb scientific education with an emphasis on medicine, and has been similarly trained in basic medical procedures.
# How well can your character hack?:
Justin is certainly in the top hundred most intelligent people on the continent, and already does most of his work on difference engines. He's still learning about Reial's standard journal system, having just run away from ultra-secure Reseune and its intra-network, but he learns fast, especially when motivated by self-preservation. He can hack Medium already, and should be up to Hard soon and Very Hard within a few months.
### Weaknesses:
He cares about his father, and his adopted brother Grant, very much, and will do nearly anything not only to protect them physically, but to make sure they don't know what's been happening to him. What he's been doing to pay for their safety. He doesn't want them to worry, or do anything dangerous. As usual, he takes all the worry and danger on himself.
He's very naive in many areas. He knows the world well, in theory, but this is his first time off Reseune's sheltered island compound. The most mundane things are likely to confuse him, although he's good enough at picking up lies and behavioral patterns that he might not get taken advantage of too badly.
He's deathly afraid of Ariane Emory. With good reason, for the most part, but he has trouble being rational about it. Even a mention Ari, her people, or Reseune makes his heart pound, and any hint of actual danger will throw him into a panic.
He has flashbacks to Ari's several 'interventions', sexual and otherwise. They can be triggered by stress, pain, and especially physical contact - sometimes at the most inconvenient or downright dangerous moments. For a moment, the memories overwhelm all his defenses, and he can't deal with the emotions they bring up. (Or at least he's been trying very hard not to deal with them. He would've noticed this easily in anyone else, but in his own case the futility of this approach somehow escapes him.)
For more weaknesses, just read the whole Personality section...
### History:
First, Reseune. It's impossible to explain Justin without it.
The place started as just another one of Ivona's military research labs, at the beginning, nearly a century ago. The island outpost's research started with lie detectors, both mechanical and magical, and methods of fooling them. Then went on to implanting false memories, walling off true ones, and eventually to the possibilities of full-fledged personality modification - the full extent of which was never revealed to the government or the military. Nobody is quite sure how it happened, but at some point in the first decades after its establishment, Reseune went independent. It was a high-level deal, largely peaceful: Reseune still supplies the Ivonan military with memory-modification and retrieval services, psychological interventions, and specially trained operatives - but it does so on its own terms, and in return nobody who ever set foot within its labs is fully trusted by the government. Probably a healthy situation for both sides.
Second, Reseune's internal politics. Justin's existence is tightly interwoven with two powerful personalities: Ariane Emory, one of the most intelligent people of her time, unofficial leader and policy-maker of the last several decades - respected but rarely liked or understood, and now nearing the end of her life - And Jordan Warrick, a genius in his own right, first Ari's student and later her scientific and personal opponent.
The deteriorating situation between Ariane and Jordan was how Justin came to be born, and it wasn't an accident. Ariane, wanting to work with someone of Jordan's caliber, but thwarted by the clash of their personalities, planted the idea of Jordan having a child. Not just a child, a replicate. After their failed fling Jordan was never interested in women, and self-absorbed as he was, raising a literal copy of himself appealed to him enough that he never realized it wasn't his idea. Thus Justin, with the same intellectual potential as Jordan and better education, but raised by an overbearing father and thus much more amenable to working under someone with Ari's strong personality.
In order to have a hold on the child as well as the father, Ari asked Jordan to raise Grant, a boy Justin's age, and one of Reseune's experimental human constructs subjected to personality-shaping 'tape' since birth. This wasn't unusual: simple soldiers or workers could be, and were, tape-raised all the way to adulthood with little human involvement, but the brightest individuals needed early socialization to grow up sane. It was a mark of status for any Reseune family to be given one of such children, and Jordan, having a son of the same age, was a natural choice for Grant - inasmuch as anything Ariane Emory did was simply natural. Jordan didn't realize she had caused Grant to be born within days of Justin for this specific reason. The conflict between him and her was only starting then, so he didn't think to refuse a gift with strings attached: Grant, even though he was raised in the Warrick household, was an experiment, and thus formally forever the property of Reseune and of his creator, Ariane Emory.
Little Justin's childhood, first alone and then with his near-brother Grant, was overall happy and peaceful. His father loved him very much, and the boy worshiped him in return. "Confused him with God", Ari would say. He was turning out to be a very promising psych design student - promising enough that Ari took him into her own research wing. That was where the trouble started. Jordan was not happy with his son's placement under Ari's tutelage. In fact, he wanted out of Reseune completely, but Ari's political power made that impossible. Justin, at that point an earnest teenager who wanted the best for everyone, convinced his father not to make trouble over his work with Ari. He claimed he could deal with her.
It wasn't true, not quite - but he very much didn't want to make trouble for his father. It was in his nature to take as much pressure as possible on himself, and so even when Ari started making uncomfortable suggestions, coming too close, and eventually making straight-out sexual propositions - "this is how things are expected to work in my staff, everyone does it" - he didn't go to Jordan, not realizing she had a purpose beyond personal pleasure. The truth was that Ari didn't just want to sleep with an attractive, smart seventeen-year-old. She was running an Intervention, redirecting his psychological development to match her requirements.
When Ari upped the pressure and threatened to take Grant away for the psych experiments which theoretically were the reason he was born, Justin secretly sent his brother off the island, but didn't go with him, planning on staying on as Ariane's hostage and agreeing to do anything she wanted. It wasn't a bad plan, but Reseune Security intercepted Grant and brought him back. Still, as long as she had Justin, Ariane was perfectly happy to let both Grant and Jordan go - Grant in order to leave the boy more psychologically vulnerable, and Jordan because she didn't want him around in the first place.
Separation from his overbearing father and his beloved brother, combined with the constant stress of Ari's scientific and personal expectations, forced Justin to develop a stronger personality. But before he had enough maturity to be able to deal with the situation - if anyone his age could be expected to deal with this kind of situation, which, at Reseune, was certainly the case - Ari intentionally pushed him too hard, causing him to use his newfound determination to plan an escape. It was an integral part of her plan for him, and she ordered Security to let him go after only making the impression of a chase, although Justin is still convinced he got out on his own.
###### SAMPLES ######
### Third Person (roleplay):
It was a common misconception that knowing what to expect made difficult situations easier. Unless you knew how to deal with something, psyching yourself up for it was at least as likely to make things worse as better.
Knowing that, of course, didn't help either. But Justin thought he was doing fairly well, considering.
The bar was still mostly empty, but every time he looked out the window he saw more strangers than he had ever met in his life before this week. It was hard to get over the tingling-shoulderblade feeling of being in the presence of so many unknowns, but hell, it wasn't like he felt any safer among the people he did know. He took another sip of his drink, trying to shrug off the discomfort.
This is how he had spent the last several days - keeping himself among people, not in the most public areas, but far from the places one would go for peace and quiet. ReseuneSec was less likely to look for him in crowds - and, he hoped, less likely to do anything if they found him. He surprised himself with how long he managed to keep from running.
He was only hoping he surprised Ari as well.
### First Person (journal):
[private | really damn unhackable]
Dear brother,
I can't write you. I'm sorry. I couldn't take it any more, and stay sane. I'd rather suffer another fall trip to Boston - remember that one? - then spend another day with her. But I'm saving these letters, read-only, so even I won't be able to erase them. My one luxury. A point of attachment for the flux.
We born-men are pathetic, I know. At least I can still laugh at myself.
I wonder what Ari will tell you and Jordan about my disappearance - if anything. Perhaps she'll fake my letters and you'll never even notice. I can't assume she's not good enough, or cold enough.
Probably it'll just be another Security communication shutdown. We're used to those.
I hope not to see any Security for a long time. The continent is large, and she won't dare publicize the information about me. Ivona would snag me in a heartbeat if they knew. That may turn out to be the better option, for both of us. I will try to find out.
Take care. Trust yourself, before even Jordan. I mean that.
######### INFORMATION PERMISSIONS #########
PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE: Not much. He grew up in a quiet little Ivonan town, adopted by a scholar. Finally decided to go see the world, but is still being rather timid about it.
SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE: The existence and capabilities of Reseune are only known to very select people. It's an Ivonan military research lab gone rogue, working on human psychology structures, and with surprising success. Warrick is one of the big names there, but only people with inside contacts would be likely to know anything about the whole complicated affair between the Warricks and Ariane Emory, which ended in Justin's father and brother leaving while he stayed there as something between a prize and a hostage. And then disappeared - that would be known to even fewer people.
Ariane Emory is a member of the Damocles Club, and may have mentioned Justin to some of her more influential "unaffiliated" acquaintances, giving few details, but asking them to quietly look out for him a little. "Just make sure he doesn't die. Anything else, I can work with."
POP CULTURE PHENOMENON?: God no. Neither is Reseune, except perhaps in the urban legends of Ivona's brainwashing and reprogramming, of people supposedly lost in action reappearing entirely changed, sudden mental breakdowns weeks or months after an innocuous conversation.
######### NOTES #########
# Info
30 years difference between Jordan and Justin.
Grant joined the household when he and Justin were 3 (?)
# Quotes
"Emotions are the thing we can't give away to our jailers"
"It's no different from Reseune, here. Not really, no matter what the appearance they put on it. Nothing, for us, is different from Reseune." -p280
"The interests of all humans are interlocked ... and politics is no more than a temporal expression of social mathematics." -Ari?
"Pleasure and pain, sweet..." - Ari tape flashback, of course
"Deal with the Devil if the Devil has a constituency - and don't complain about the heat." -Ari, p123
# Description snippets
Justin is very much defined by the people around him. First his father, who brought him up alone, trained him in his own field, treated him almost like a younger version of himself. Justin used to adore the man without reservation, and only the last year's events inserted a bit of independent thinking into that relationship. About his adopted brother Grant he doesn't have even that bit of objectivity.
I think Mia's idea of putting application drafts on LJ is good. Helps keep track - and having this thing public (well, okay, friends-locked) should be at least a little motivating.
For my sanity, I really need another character. Someone who isn't a violent amoral creature, and someone who analyzes things more than a Jager is apt to do.
############# Justin Warrick application for The Sky Tides ############
# PLAYER INFORMATION:
Name/Nickname: Nika
AIM/E-mail/Contact: patena@gmail.com (email/AIM/gtalk)
LJ: schmot_gurl
# CHARACTER INFORMATION:
Canon Character and Series: Justin Warrick, Cyteen by C.J.Cherryh (AU where Ari lived a while longer)
In-Game Name: Justin Warrick, but introduces himself as Justin Walker
Age: 18
Gender: male
Position & Ship: Records Keeper or Navigator, Fiertia
### Appearance:
Handsome in a mellow, serious way, somewhere between boy-next-door and absent-minded researcher. Soft brown hair in a basic short cut. Dark brown eyes, perhaps not warm, but definitely concerned. Justin has the look of a doctor, of someone just looking for people who need help.
His build is fairly athletic, well-muscled without being too bulky or lean, but he doesn't look like a fighter. He's clearly the type who spent an hour in a good gym every day because it was the healthy thing to do.
Justin dresses so as to not stand out unless he absolutely has to. He usually wears simple turtleneck sweaters and slacks, and unlike his father, he tends towards rust or dark green colors. It would be going much too far to say he resents their similarity, but sometimes, in small things, he does purposefully try to distinguish himself from Jordan.
### Personality:
Justin is calm and reserved by nature, which serves to hide his frequent moments of self-consciousness. He thinks three times before he speaks or acts. He's very much defined by the people around him: first his father and his adopted brother Grant, then Ari. He gets pulled into relationships, and has trouble disentangling himself or leaving his prescribed role. Once he sees someone a particular way, it will take a lot to make him rethink his opinion - and even if he does, it'll be difficult for him to change their previous interaction pattern.
He's a very kind young man, and much less self-protective than he should be. He wants to help people, and he's incredibly easy to convince it's his responsibility to do it. He will work himself to death to prevent someone's suffering if he thinks he can, and he usually does think so. It was true in Reseune, but in the outside world things can be very different.
Once he left his father's protection and started dealing for himself, Reseune's difficult environment together with his altruism and lack of personal boundaries added up to an incredibly stressful existence. He still hasn't recovered from the shock. Perhaps he never will. He's less trusting now, never quite sure of anyone or anything - but he still instinctively reaches out to people. He's incapable of really hurting anyone, even known enemies.
Having grown up in Reseune, where everyone knew and tried to manipulate everyone else as a matter of course, he isn't very clear on the notion of privacy, although he'll probably like the idea once he gets used to it. For now, few things short of outright conflict register to him as impolite, and he expects anyone in authority to have much more influence over all aspects of his life than is common anywhere but on Ivonan military ships. He's been spied on, drugged, arrested without explanation - all often enough to get used to his inability to do anything about it. He avoids trouble as much as he can, but he'll only let others push him up to a certain point.
In an emergency - or something that feels like one to him, correctly or not - he panics, but he acts. Without the time to think through all his choices he's never sure if he's doing the right thing, but something will usually occur to him. Surprisingly, more to himself than others, he does a good job under pressure, in the end. But the toll it takes on him rarely makes it worth it.
### Abilities/Weapons:
He's a psych-surgeon - a trained and talented operative in the manipulation of personality, memories and values. Given a fully tranquilized subject, plenty of time and the right equipment, he could do very nearly anything: add new memories or erase old ones; block out whole parts of someone's personality just to let them reemerge under specific circumstances; strengthen or destroy their entire psychological makeup. His job was designing these treatments to remove conflicting values, heal emotional damage and aid recovery, but he could reverse the process just as well, if he was pushed far enough that he could bring himself to do it.
However, the right tools for such procedures are nothing less than a fully equipped Reseune laboratory, with a magitech sensory patch rig and one or two trained technicians, Without the full setup Justin could still try a psych modification, but the process would likely take several hours (if not days), and the extent to which the changes would integrate into the patient's mind would depend on their own cooperation. On a completely willing subject with good self-control the results could be close to full, but any conscious or subconscious reservations about the procedure would limit its effect to the surface mind, causing them to fade within a few days or hours.
Justin would be unlikely to attempt such obvious interventions outside the proper medical setting, both because of basic ethics and because he's trying to hide his identity - but even without going outside the bounds of normal conversation, he can do far too much for comfort. As a matter of reflex more than conscious thought he will analyze the psychological structure of anyone he encounters, and it won't take him long to find the hidden cracks and pressure points, the irrational linkages between seemingly unrelated concepts, the carefully unanswered questions. He can predict the behavior of individuals and groups with frightening accuracy, and will often know exactly what to say to change the direction of someone's thoughts or actions.
The same mental modification techniques, on a different level, have been used to 'deep-train' him in fighting with basic weapons and hand-to-hand. Thus, his body has the knowledge of effective combat technique, but he has never consciously spent time training or sparring, and has never had occasion to use his fighting abilities. He is unlikely to do so unless he sees no other option, but when he's threatened directly, the trained instincts will take over - and he keeps himself in good enough physical shape to be an effective fighter.
He owns a quality handgun, but he's never pointed it at any living thing, much less fired.
He has a superb scientific education with an emphasis on medicine, and has been similarly trained in basic medical procedures.
# How well can your character hack?:
Justin is certainly in the top hundred most intelligent people on the continent, and already does most of his work on difference engines. He's still learning about Reial's standard journal system, having just run away from ultra-secure Reseune and its intra-network, but he learns fast, especially when motivated by self-preservation. He can hack Medium already, and should be up to Hard soon and Very Hard within a few months.
### Weaknesses:
He cares about his father, and his adopted brother Grant, very much, and will do nearly anything not only to protect them physically, but to make sure they don't know what's been happening to him. What he's been doing to pay for their safety. He doesn't want them to worry, or do anything dangerous. As usual, he takes all the worry and danger on himself.
He's very naive in many areas. He knows the world well, in theory, but this is his first time off Reseune's sheltered island compound. The most mundane things are likely to confuse him, although he's good enough at picking up lies and behavioral patterns that he might not get taken advantage of too badly.
He's deathly afraid of Ariane Emory. With good reason, for the most part, but he has trouble being rational about it. Even a mention Ari, her people, or Reseune makes his heart pound, and any hint of actual danger will throw him into a panic.
He has flashbacks to Ari's several 'interventions', sexual and otherwise. They can be triggered by stress, pain, and especially physical contact - sometimes at the most inconvenient or downright dangerous moments. For a moment, the memories overwhelm all his defenses, and he can't deal with the emotions they bring up. (Or at least he's been trying very hard not to deal with them. He would've noticed this easily in anyone else, but in his own case the futility of this approach somehow escapes him.)
For more weaknesses, just read the whole Personality section...
### History:
First, Reseune. It's impossible to explain Justin without it.
The place started as just another one of Ivona's military research labs, at the beginning, nearly a century ago. The island outpost's research started with lie detectors, both mechanical and magical, and methods of fooling them. Then went on to implanting false memories, walling off true ones, and eventually to the possibilities of full-fledged personality modification - the full extent of which was never revealed to the government or the military. Nobody is quite sure how it happened, but at some point in the first decades after its establishment, Reseune went independent. It was a high-level deal, largely peaceful: Reseune still supplies the Ivonan military with memory-modification and retrieval services, psychological interventions, and specially trained operatives - but it does so on its own terms, and in return nobody who ever set foot within its labs is fully trusted by the government. Probably a healthy situation for both sides.
Second, Reseune's internal politics. Justin's existence is tightly interwoven with two powerful personalities: Ariane Emory, one of the most intelligent people of her time, unofficial leader and policy-maker of the last several decades - respected but rarely liked or understood, and now nearing the end of her life - And Jordan Warrick, a genius in his own right, first Ari's student and later her scientific and personal opponent.
The deteriorating situation between Ariane and Jordan was how Justin came to be born, and it wasn't an accident. Ariane, wanting to work with someone of Jordan's caliber, but thwarted by the clash of their personalities, planted the idea of Jordan having a child. Not just a child, a replicate. After their failed fling Jordan was never interested in women, and self-absorbed as he was, raising a literal copy of himself appealed to him enough that he never realized it wasn't his idea. Thus Justin, with the same intellectual potential as Jordan and better education, but raised by an overbearing father and thus much more amenable to working under someone with Ari's strong personality.
In order to have a hold on the child as well as the father, Ari asked Jordan to raise Grant, a boy Justin's age, and one of Reseune's experimental human constructs subjected to personality-shaping 'tape' since birth. This wasn't unusual: simple soldiers or workers could be, and were, tape-raised all the way to adulthood with little human involvement, but the brightest individuals needed early socialization to grow up sane. It was a mark of status for any Reseune family to be given one of such children, and Jordan, having a son of the same age, was a natural choice for Grant - inasmuch as anything Ariane Emory did was simply natural. Jordan didn't realize she had caused Grant to be born within days of Justin for this specific reason. The conflict between him and her was only starting then, so he didn't think to refuse a gift with strings attached: Grant, even though he was raised in the Warrick household, was an experiment, and thus formally forever the property of Reseune and of his creator, Ariane Emory.
Little Justin's childhood, first alone and then with his near-brother Grant, was overall happy and peaceful. His father loved him very much, and the boy worshiped him in return. "Confused him with God", Ari would say. He was turning out to be a very promising psych design student - promising enough that Ari took him into her own research wing. That was where the trouble started. Jordan was not happy with his son's placement under Ari's tutelage. In fact, he wanted out of Reseune completely, but Ari's political power made that impossible. Justin, at that point an earnest teenager who wanted the best for everyone, convinced his father not to make trouble over his work with Ari. He claimed he could deal with her.
It wasn't true, not quite - but he very much didn't want to make trouble for his father. It was in his nature to take as much pressure as possible on himself, and so even when Ari started making uncomfortable suggestions, coming too close, and eventually making straight-out sexual propositions - "this is how things are expected to work in my staff, everyone does it" - he didn't go to Jordan, not realizing she had a purpose beyond personal pleasure. The truth was that Ari didn't just want to sleep with an attractive, smart seventeen-year-old. She was running an Intervention, redirecting his psychological development to match her requirements.
When Ari upped the pressure and threatened to take Grant away for the psych experiments which theoretically were the reason he was born, Justin secretly sent his brother off the island, but didn't go with him, planning on staying on as Ariane's hostage and agreeing to do anything she wanted. It wasn't a bad plan, but Reseune Security intercepted Grant and brought him back. Still, as long as she had Justin, Ariane was perfectly happy to let both Grant and Jordan go - Grant in order to leave the boy more psychologically vulnerable, and Jordan because she didn't want him around in the first place.
Separation from his overbearing father and his beloved brother, combined with the constant stress of Ari's scientific and personal expectations, forced Justin to develop a stronger personality. But before he had enough maturity to be able to deal with the situation - if anyone his age could be expected to deal with this kind of situation, which, at Reseune, was certainly the case - Ari intentionally pushed him too hard, causing him to use his newfound determination to plan an escape. It was an integral part of her plan for him, and she ordered Security to let him go after only making the impression of a chase, although Justin is still convinced he got out on his own.
###### SAMPLES ######
### Third Person (roleplay):
It was a common misconception that knowing what to expect made difficult situations easier. Unless you knew how to deal with something, psyching yourself up for it was at least as likely to make things worse as better.
Knowing that, of course, didn't help either. But Justin thought he was doing fairly well, considering.
The bar was still mostly empty, but every time he looked out the window he saw more strangers than he had ever met in his life before this week. It was hard to get over the tingling-shoulderblade feeling of being in the presence of so many unknowns, but hell, it wasn't like he felt any safer among the people he did know. He took another sip of his drink, trying to shrug off the discomfort.
This is how he had spent the last several days - keeping himself among people, not in the most public areas, but far from the places one would go for peace and quiet. ReseuneSec was less likely to look for him in crowds - and, he hoped, less likely to do anything if they found him. He surprised himself with how long he managed to keep from running.
He was only hoping he surprised Ari as well.
### First Person (journal):
[private | really damn unhackable]
Dear brother,
I can't write you. I'm sorry. I couldn't take it any more, and stay sane. I'd rather suffer another fall trip to Boston - remember that one? - then spend another day with her. But I'm saving these letters, read-only, so even I won't be able to erase them. My one luxury. A point of attachment for the flux.
We born-men are pathetic, I know. At least I can still laugh at myself.
I wonder what Ari will tell you and Jordan about my disappearance - if anything. Perhaps she'll fake my letters and you'll never even notice. I can't assume she's not good enough, or cold enough.
Probably it'll just be another Security communication shutdown. We're used to those.
I hope not to see any Security for a long time. The continent is large, and she won't dare publicize the information about me. Ivona would snag me in a heartbeat if they knew. That may turn out to be the better option, for both of us. I will try to find out.
Take care. Trust yourself, before even Jordan. I mean that.
######### INFORMATION PERMISSIONS #########
PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE: Not much. He grew up in a quiet little Ivonan town, adopted by a scholar. Finally decided to go see the world, but is still being rather timid about it.
SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE: The existence and capabilities of Reseune are only known to very select people. It's an Ivonan military research lab gone rogue, working on human psychology structures, and with surprising success. Warrick is one of the big names there, but only people with inside contacts would be likely to know anything about the whole complicated affair between the Warricks and Ariane Emory, which ended in Justin's father and brother leaving while he stayed there as something between a prize and a hostage. And then disappeared - that would be known to even fewer people.
Ariane Emory is a member of the Damocles Club, and may have mentioned Justin to some of her more influential "unaffiliated" acquaintances, giving few details, but asking them to quietly look out for him a little. "Just make sure he doesn't die. Anything else, I can work with."
POP CULTURE PHENOMENON?: God no. Neither is Reseune, except perhaps in the urban legends of Ivona's brainwashing and reprogramming, of people supposedly lost in action reappearing entirely changed, sudden mental breakdowns weeks or months after an innocuous conversation.
######### NOTES #########
# Info
30 years difference between Jordan and Justin.
Grant joined the household when he and Justin were 3 (?)
# Quotes
"Emotions are the thing we can't give away to our jailers"
"It's no different from Reseune, here. Not really, no matter what the appearance they put on it. Nothing, for us, is different from Reseune." -p280
"The interests of all humans are interlocked ... and politics is no more than a temporal expression of social mathematics." -Ari?
"Pleasure and pain, sweet..." - Ari tape flashback, of course
"Deal with the Devil if the Devil has a constituency - and don't complain about the heat." -Ari, p123
# Description snippets
Justin is very much defined by the people around him. First his father, who brought him up alone, trained him in his own field, treated him almost like a younger version of himself. Justin used to adore the man without reservation, and only the last year's events inserted a bit of independent thinking into that relationship. About his adopted brother Grant he doesn't have even that bit of objectivity.