Application
So, this is a reposted (and edited) version of my application here, minus the samples. The link to the original posted application is community.livejournal.com/luceti/54494.html. The edits are mostly for clarification and to include information I stupidly forgot to include the first time around - if anything else needs to be clarified, please tell me.
All edits will be in red text.
Mun
Name : Golden Kirbichu (Call me Golden, Kirbichu, GK, whatever. It’s all good.)
Livejournal Username: goldenkirbichu
E-mail: golden_kirbichu@hotmail.com or goldenkirbichu@gmail.com
AIM/MSN: AurumKirbichu/See Hotmail e-mail
Current Characters at Luceti: N/A
Character
Name: Robert Alexander Hastings; title Professor or Doctor (though it's not necessary to refer to him by his title)
Gender: male-identified, cisgendered
Age: Twenty-four, in standard Terran years (which are more or less years as we know them, albeit adjusted for the orbital changes that occurred within the hundred years or so that passed)
Wing Color: Resembling a European magpie’s in appearance. The scapular (shoulder) feathers are white, with the main wing feathers black with a bright blue (with just a hint of turquoise-green at some angles) sheen; the primary feathers are black with white centres. (The internal side of the wing is identical.)
Physical Appearance: Robert is possibly one of the most physically unassuming people one would ever meet, and certainly one of the least intimidating. Standing at a scrawny five feet four inches (though he will insist that you include the extra .7 inch, and will most likely state it as the metric one-decimal-six-four-three-three-eight metres) and weighing in at a hundred fifty-four pounds (close to 70 kilograms), the professor seems likely to crumple at the slightest blow. His build is slender, almost frail - not the same kind of frailness that one would see from somebody ill, but rather the frailness of a person who has never done anything particularly physically exerting in zir life.
Robert has messy hair, a dull reddish-brown shade that is close to unfinished mahogany wood, which hugs closely to his vaguely square-shaped head - his bangs drop down his face and hang about the bridge of his nose when he hasn’t pushed them away. His facial features are somewhat soft, almost boyish, but he has a harried look about his face that makes him seem older despite this. His skin is a pale beige shade, which is quite rare by Terran standards; it’s probably lighter than it would be normally because of all the time he spends inside, and it isn’t a healthy colour. He has a few subtle marks (actually, not so subtle, unless one considers this subtle - and he has multiple instances of those) on his wrists and inner elbows - nothing particularly obvious, but if one were to look closely it might be easy to surmise they were made by needles. His eyes are a shade of dark, cloudy blue-gray and are nearly always darting around, looking for SOMETHING to focus on other than another person’s face. He also has surprisingly small hands and feet; not abnormally small, but definitely on the small side for an adult man (though this is probably simply just a proportional thing, as the rest of his body is small as well).
Robert is nearly always seen wearing his glasses - reinforced polymer glass lenses set in faux-tortoiseshell rectangular frames with a thin black elastic cord to hold them in place - and will seem distressed if they are not there, even though he can see perfectly fine without them. It’s also a rare day where Robert isn’t wearing his trademark lab coat - a coat he isn’t even required to wear at his job, but simply does so out of habit and of openly displaying his job type (mostly so that he avoids as much unnecessary contact with other people as possible). The coat itself isn’t particularly interesting; it’s a carbon-nanofibre-lined, chemical-treated white cotton-variant (likely a synthetic, actually) coat, with long sleeves (and black-buttoned cuffs which Robert often keeps unfolded) and a single large pocket on the left side.
History: Robert’s life is relatively uninteresting from a significance standpoint, all things considered. In fact, the fascinating thing about him really (in terms of what makes characters interesting at Luceti, anyway) is just how utterly insignificant his life is in the grand scheme of things. But before one can get a proper understanding of just how painfully ORDINARY Robert is, one has to understand the full implications of the universe Robert exists and (mostly) functions in.
The Terran universe - or rather, the universe in which Terra purportedly exists - is one of many, many millions. In quantum physics, this is normally referred to as the Many Worlds interpretation (though this particular view of it is a fairly large oversimplification of it, as I myself don’t have enough training or understanding to use the proper hypothesis). Terrans themselves refer to the resulting phenomenon as “multiversions” - i.e., there is a multitude of versions of everything, and Terra so happens to be one of the many multitudes of possible Earths, where every tiny event changes the entire history of the world in many billions of equally-fascinating ways. This particular universe has one major consequence behind it - it means that everything one does is, in itself, a whole new kind of world... that every single moment of everything has the potential to, in itself, be a whole new universe. It is a very humbling thought.
However, only one of these universes is the important one for the moment - and that is the one which contains Terra proper.
Present-day Earth, as most people are aware, is currently experiencing a phenomenon known by most as global warming (though more accurately termed climate change). Whatever your own personal convictions may be on the veracity of climate change, please consider for a moment the Many Worlds interpretation - suppose that one version of Earth did, in fact, have climate change; and that it was, in fact, anthropogenic (human-created) in nature. With these points in mind, this present-day version of Earth - proto-Terra - can now be described.
Proto-Terra was quite a mess. Around 2025 A.D., it was increasingly apparent that the populations of this Earth - both human and otherwise - were being threatened by the poor management of the planet’s resources by humanity. Localized pollution, droughts, and widespread wildfires and weather disturbances brought on by shifted temperature fronts and destruction of natural terrain were causing formerly-unprecedented amounts of damage, and the slowly-increasing average global temperature was threatening to annihilate whatever part of humanity wasn’t already starving, dehydrated, or rioting due to the resulting economic crises in trying to deal with these situations. It was clear that something dramatic would have to happen, and fast, if humanity wanted to survive. But humans are nothing if not tenacious, and so a plan was set upon by the combined powers of the world governments to prevent the wholesale destruction of the entirety of Earth.
In the typical way of governments, this involved throwing a hell of a lot of money at the problem.
However, unlike most previous attempts of just hurling money at a problem until it went away, the world governments (realizing that wealth hardly mattered if the entirety of Earth was going to rot into a pool of overly-acidified ocean) formed a giant coalition via the United Nations (which, by this point, included every self-represented country on Earth) that served as a planetary mega-government, then essentially handed the entire combined budget over to the scientific community in the hopes of finding some kind of massive, wholesale solution to the impending doom. Every scientific mind on the planet was turned fully towards this undertaking, to the point where it was nearly the sole topic of research for the next three decades - despite this, the sheer number of discoveries made as a result were mind-boggling. With unfettered access to resources and ability to co-operate on a scale never before seen, the worldwide scientific community very nearly produced a miracle, and the technological aptitude of Earth ballooned dramatically. It was as if the Age of Information had happened all over again - and not a moment too soon, at that.
Every method was tried to reverse the destruction of the planet - regardless of how expensive, regardless of how far-fetched, regardless of how unfeasible. This entire period of human history, lasting from about 2043 A.D. to about 2135 A.D., was known collectively as the Great Cleansing and represented the largest (and longest) concerted effort of humanity to battle its own failures. The planet was covered in technology of all kinds, desperately working to stop the slow onslaught of destruction even as it intensified in scope. Such technological grasping-at-straws ranged in types from air processing plants the size of a small continent - like mountains composed of air intake tunnels that filtered the atmosphere - to coating existing buildings with high-efficiency solar cells, built to mimic photosynthetic plants, in an effort to reduce the strain on the existing power grids. Hundreds of thousands of species (both flora and fauna) were lost, though their DNA was retrieved in massive genetic collection programs known as cryozoos. Millions of humans perished because of starvation or natural disasters brought on by the increasingly turbulent weather. At some points it seemed as though trying to fight this battle against the very processes that the humans had set in motion was futile, and on many occasions the world government very nearly gave up. Eventually, though, they persevered, and a state of extremely delicate equilibrium was achieved - just enough to begin a slow rebuilding.
However, the conditions that humanity had been forced to adapt to had fundamentally changed how society functioned. Former urban sprawl had been nearly totally eliminated; cities were extremely compact now and incredibly efficient, full of self-powered farm-skyscrapers and hydroponic gardens. The lack of arable farmland meant that most meat products were no longer harvested from actual animals, instead grown from cloned cells on matrices in sterile laboratory-like production plants (a process that had initially been ludicrously expensive, but had quickly become more feasible than keeping actual farm animals as the technology improved significantly and the price of farmland quadrupled). Most importantly, the huge leaps in scientific knowledge, due to the constant research during the Great Cleansing, had produced a startlingly huge array of new technologies that impacted all areas of human lives. Humans had, to borrow a clichéd phrase, matured significantly. And with this maturation came a fierce desire to never repeat the mistakes of the past (though history has a habit of repeating its mistakes).
The remaining segment of humanity, a population hovering around four billion, began to keep itself firmly in check. The majority of the population, by social consensus, maintained itself at a stable number (or at least as stable as was feasible), to reduce the strain on the still-recovering systems of the planet. During this time, the close quarters of cities worked to reduce lingering resentment and strain between segments of the human population, and robust social security nets protected needy individuals - though what with the massive number of new technological advancements, there were many hundreds of fields in which new jobs were being generated. The economy stabilized itself, no longer madly fluctuating due to the incredible amounts of spending, and the massive world coalition government found itself in the curious position of wishing to remain a coalition. Thus, on May 21st, 2138 A.D., the mega-government asked in a worldwide referendum whether the planet should simply become a single unit - a super-country. The referendum won with an almost 85% approval rating.
And so, all political boundaries, over the next few months, became officially dissolved. In a poll run by the new mega-government (which had taken to calling itself the Council), the name Terra was chosen as the most preferred name for the new planet-wide country - simply, the Latin word for “Earth”. From then, the Council assumed its new method of electorate: Composed of six primary members, one drawn from each of the continents/aggregates (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Antarctica, and Oceania), which were elected by continent-wide vote and which then chose representatives in each continent. This structure of Council has survived until the present day in Terra, undergoing only minimal changes to ensure accurate representation of the world demographics.
The next century of Terra’s growth saw slow but steady improvements in the health of the planet and the stability of the environment. The social atmosphere in Terra, becoming significantly more progressive as a result of the influence of science and critical thinking, continued to shift as the population of Terra slowly began to culturally homogenize. Although individual cultures still existed, and the data of many cultures were safely protected in accessible databanks on the immersive Internet 3.0, the majority of humans in Terra had become something of a collective. (This is why it is rare to see ethnically-specific humans in Terra anymore; Robert himself, despite being significantly paler than most humans on Terra, is still ethnically blended.) There was an almost idolization of science in the culture now, similar to our own current attitudes towards media mavens like movie stars; scientists, doctors, teachers and other purveyors of knowledge became increasingly valued. It was this attitude that fostered intellectual development and set the stage for ever more ambitious growth for the Terran population.
The next major step was the development of enhanced space technology. While humans had been busy restoring their planet to a liveable state, there hadn’t been much time to concentrate on space projects; now that the threat of self-inflicted suicide was gone, there was a genuine public interest in once again taking to the “final frontier”. With the development of sustainable muon-catalyzed fusion (a form of fusion that uses large subatomic particles called muons to lower the needed temperature of nuclear fusion significantly) and other methods of generating massive amounts of power at the beginning of 2160 A.D., the first decently-fast far-ranging spacecraft were built, intended to be robotically-piloted probes to inspect the “galactic neighbourhood” around Terra. At the same time, developments into a technological breakthrough called “transporting” were beginning to surface in the scientific community, something that would prove to revolutionize travel of long distances when the first working prototype was successfully completed in 2235 A.D.
On February 7th, 2193 A.D., Terra was pleasantly shocked to discover the first true evidence of extraterrestrial sentient life. The probe ship Quark and its companion instrument dropship Lepton, dispatched to the nearest galaxy (Andromeda), sent back undeniable readings of biological activity from a planetoid in the region. Upon closer approach to the planet, artificial satellites were discovered in orbit around it, confirming the sentience of the population. While the identity of this species is relatively inconsequential (though it’s mostly that I haven’t thought of anything for it yet), suffice it to say that this was the real birth of the astrobiology field - which happens to be the field in which Robert chose to study.
The next most major impact to Terran society was the development of transporter technology. Transporters, essentially capsules powered by fusion catalytic “engines” that allow a user to shift massive distances in spacetime, used quantum entanglement to essentially move one’s particle constituents across space. Although transporters were large, required immense amounts of energy to use, and were dangerous to use in places where the three-dimensional co-ordinates of a region were not known, they nonetheless became the tool of choice for astrobiologists, astroarchaeologists, and other jobs that required constant movement between planets. The transporter technology also allowed, for the first time, monitoring and travel between the long-hypothesized multiversions, allowing Terrans glimpses of the true complexity of their universe.
It was in this era of constant discovery and exploration that Robert was born and adopted. His adoptive parents, Akila and Frederick Hastings, were both bright, but not particularly intellectual beyond the general culture of Terra; Akila majored in immersive online accounting, whereas Frederick was concerned more with hydroponic gardening and maintained a successful farm-skyscraper in the northern district of Linden, the large megatropolis that the couple had moved into shortly after Frederick had bought the claims to the building space. (Linden was formerly named London; though it was not actually so much London anymore, as it encompassed several other former cities in the region as well).
After establishing themselves in Linden, the couple looked into adopting a single child - the most typical family set-up in Terra after optimized artificial insemination (on further thought these two things are probably reversed). Robert was simply just another infant boy there; outside of his atypically pale skin tone, there was nothing particularly special about him at the time. The fact his skin tone was paler was probably the main reason why he was one of the last babies to be adopted (Terrans made a show of no longer being prejudiced, but there were still a few subtle social pressures towards having children that were closer to your own skin tone).
Major addendum: As with all Terran children, Robert was medically screened around a year of age. The screening (in addition to analyzing his physical and mental make-up) revealed early traces of some fairly fundamental possible mental differences with Robert - including symptoms that were similar to, and could potentially tie in to, Asperger's Syndrome - as well as obsessive-compulsive tendencies and social anxiety. (Like all screening attempts, it was known that these tests weren't necessarily entirely accurate [after all, the myriad complexities of the conditions are difficult to simulate] - but they tended to be taken as such in practise.) Most of these traits were maintained throughout his life, and he never really allowed himself to get any help for them - instead ignoring them.
Robert’s childhood was filled with constant mental growth. Precocious and bright, he quickly took to learning, to a degree where his parents were sometimes lost on what more they could give him to satisfy his voracious intellectual appetite. Many times they would bring him to the local institutes of science, including the prestigious Randi Institute (the Linden branch of the Head Institute of Science, the most esteemed scientific academy in the whole of Terra), only for him to clamour for them to return the next day... Robert seemed to want to be a scientist ever since the first moment he could fathom the concept. Eventually his parents gave him free reign of the database terminal in their household, helping to satiate his need to learn. Despite his intellectual slant, though, it took Robert longer than most children to learn to express himself properly (possibly due to Asperger-like symptoms; this may be when he started developing his stuttering habits out of anxiety), and he seemed to dislike the company of other children, preferring instead to immerse himself in holoprojections or spend hours in a virtual universe.
During his formative educational years, Robert consistently impressed his teachers with his willingness to learn and his aptitude for many branches of science and math. However, he showed alarming tendencies as well; he was easily engrossed in things to the point of obsession, he continued to neglect social spheres entirely, and outside of his parents and the few children he contacted at school, he had very little contact with other people. It was noted he often took pains to avoid others in any kind of situation that was not explicitly academic; although his teachers considered remedial cognitive therapy for Robert to try to conquer his social anxiety, Robert insisted he didn’t need it. This aversion to cognitive therapy - both specifically for social anxiety, and in general - led to Robert's conditions being unchecked when they could have been successfully managed.
The later years of schooling were less lonely for Robert. He established a few friends in school; nobody particularly close, but close enough that he had somebody he could feel semi-comfortable talking to when he wasn’t engrossed in something else. It was during this time (when Robert was around eleven years old) that Robert first became aware of his orientation; the other boys in school, despite being more or less uneducated to Robert, were still physically appealing to him. Like most youth in Terran society, he did experiment outside of this, but he never entered a relationship with any of the girls he knew, as he was cognizant of not having much interest in them. However, despite having a few friends around, Robert still preferred to remain mostly distant from his peers; he spent much of his free time reading about the Randi Institute and dreaming of growing up to research there.
This all changed when Robert met Benjamin Prieto around fourteen years of age. Despite Benjamin and Robert being totally different people, somehow they managed to hit it off through a shared love of science, and Robert entered his first real relationship with another person. It was difficult for him at first; Robert was awkward, and for the first year of their partnership they mostly dated on and off, spending little time actually together. However, they were initially positive influences on each other; Robert encouraged Benjamin to invest himself more in his studies, while Benjamin gave Robert a safe haven from which he could try to make friendships with others. Both Benjamin’s and Robert’s parents approved of their sons’ relationship at first, and it seemed as though it would be idyllic. The situation only continued to improve over the following year...
... Until Benjamin invited Robert into the local drug culture.
To be fair, Benjamin wasn’t really an irresponsible drug user. Though he was into the partying scene, enjoying the various intoxicants commonly used by youth (most of them rigidly controlled and monitored by medical overseeing groups), he didn’t allow them to take over his life. However, Robert did, because the drugs were an escape to him. For the first time in his life, Robert felt truly comfortable with other people; he could be open and happy and social, and feel accepted by others - those were things he had never had when he was sober. Robert began to merge his identity with the drug culture; slowly but surely, he became trapped in it because of this need to feel like he belonged to something. Benjamin welcomed this, not recognizing the damage it was doing to Robert’s educational life (or failing to realize the importance that this had to Robert) as it gave him more time with his lover and seemed to strengthen their relationship.
However, Robert’s mental state continued to degrade as he became both addicted to the constant stimulus of the drug and obsessively attached to Benjamin as the anchor in his life and the sole person he felt comfortable revealing his drug use to. It was obvious to others that something was constantly troubling Robert, and after his parents discovered puncture marks in his arms (Robert rarely used intravenous drugs, but he had been particularly desperate for a high that day), they got Robert immediate counselling. Robert was nearly nineteen at this point, and his drug addiction was severely impairing his chances to get into post-secondary schooling because they were hampering his ability to concentrate on his schoolwork. So Robert was forced to make a difficult decision - he cut himself off from the drug scene entirely, and in the process cut off Benjamin as well.
Understandably hurt by this total rejection, Benjamin pressured Robert to make a decision - choosing between his schooling and his relationship.
Pushed to the emotional limit, reeling from the effects of dependency and desperate to reclaim the dream of becoming a respected researcher which was rapidly slipping from his grasp, Robert chose his schooling.
Benjamin broke up with Robert soon after, ending their five-year relationship with painful abruptness. It was the decision that Robert still regrets most in his life, and it haunts him even to the present day. He keeps an artifact from this time - an alcohol dependency that strikes him hardest when he is depressed.
Spurned from the one relationship he was ever able to maintain, Robert withdrew even more from others, throwing himself into work to mask the pain. Because of his ferocious work ethic, he graduated with the highest honours from the courses he took; success went some way towards comforting him, and Robert took some solace from displaying his intelligence, helping to cultivate an unconscious (to him) sense of arrogance he had developed.
Robert’s high level of success at his studies was such a prodigious accomplishment that it even attracted attention from the Randi Institute. After completing his certification courses for astrobiology at the age of twenty-two, Robert was formally invited by the Head Scientist of the Randi Institute, Professor Brooke Garcia, to join the astrobiological staff already present there. Robert gladly complied; it gave him a chance to get away from the people who had known him before, to start over fresh and to get away from his parents, who he perceived as being overly pitiful of him.
After moving to a residential area in the eastern district of Linden, where the Randi Institute was located, Robert formally accepted the position as one of the junior scientists at the Institute. It was not long before his aptitude for the position had him climbing ranks - even though he was less than popular amongst the staff, regarded as cold and mechanical when he wasn’t being insufferably arrogant about his achievements. Though Robert managed to develop something of a cordial relationship with fellow scientist Professor Tobias Gangestad and the Head Scientist Professor Garcia, it was still a far cry from the closeness that most of the researchers had with each other - Robert was still a notable outcast, even though he was “in his element”.
Despite this, the Head Institute showed interest in Robert’s remarkable achievements, and some time before Robert’s entry into Luceti they had been planning to give him an interview in the hopes of perhaps accepting him into the ranks of the top scientists of Terra. Robert had, understandably, been looking forward to this opportunity. (How irritating for him that he was captured just before he could have that interview, right?)
Personality: Robert is nothing if not logical. He thrives on - indeed, he craves - order and structure, and will try to create it if none exists. This extends even to physical orderliness - Robert is quite clean and neat, and will express frustration if the cleanliness of an area isn’t up to his standards (or will just clean it himself out of irritation). He is most comfortable when he has something intellectual to involve himself in; it doesn’t matter whether this is anything from an idle thought experiment to perusing a database - if it’s something he can mentally devote his time to, he enjoys it. He loves to learn (though he doesn’t like admitting that he doesn’t know something) and can often be seen seeking out knowledge to add to his accumulated stores in his mind. Being an astrobiologist by profession means that he is almost constantly exposed to new knowledge, both from his own culture and from others.
However - and this is a big problem with not just Robert, but with Terrans in general - Robert is quite a xenophobe. Embodying the pacifistic, rational-minded, scientifically-inclined rhetoric of Terra, Robert finds anybody who doesn’t fit these extremes to be wallowing in the utmost of barbarism. (And that’s going to be the vast majority of Luceti.) He’s outright dismissive of most who fall outside his idea of intelligence or those that seem to embrace irrational thought, considering them incapable of grasping anything other than simple concepts. Though Robert prides himself on being open-minded and accepting, this is only true up until he meets somebody truly DIFFERENT from himself (and it’s no surprise that he’s rarely sent on diplomatic missions because of this attitude towards those who are different). Hell, even when people are rather similar to him, he tends to be cordial towards them at best; he tolerates people as long as he needs to professionally, and then excuses himself at the first opportunity.
Really, Robert’s dealings with other people are less than positive most of the time. Robert has a lot of trouble understanding and interpreting other people’s emotions, because they are often irrational to him, or at the least too abstract for him to comfortably grasp. When he does understand others’ feelings, he often lacks the ability to seem empathetic, instead sounding as if he’s treating their feelings as a hypothesis that needs to be tested. Not clarified well at all originally, but these traits are supposed to evoke Asperger's-like symptoms... Because of this, Robert doesn’t try to involve himself in emotional problems often - this includes his own, since he’s reluctant to address the buried (and not-so-buried) feelings that he still struggles with.
Despite all this, Robert is achingly lonely. He may not seem like it - indeed, he prefers to be by himself most of the time, engaged in some form of mental stimulus - but what he really hungers for is the kind of companionship that he used to have with Benjamin. Losing that hurt Robert badly, and Robert doesn’t think he can ever have anything like that with anybody ever again, so he’s stopped trying. However, it’s clear that his job and the occasional alcohol binge can’t entirely repress - much less replace - his desire for a lover, or a close friend. Or even somebody who’d be willing to give him the time of day. (He knows that it would help if he stopped deliberately avoiding people, but it’s just EASIER to avoid people... rather than risk being hurt like that yet again.)
In that sense, Robert is something of a coward. He avoids things that he knows he will fail at - he flees from difficult situations. He is acutely aware of his own weakness, both physically and mentally; although he does have his intellectual strength, and can put on a fairly convincing facade of cold emotionlessness in almost any situation, he is utterly powerless when faced with more troublesome things. Robert hates to be in a position where he knows he is at the mercy of somebody else; he dislikes working with others, both because he resents the idea of them failing him, and because he fears the idea of failing them in turn. This is part of what motivated him to leave his family and former friends behind - he had the sickening feeling of knowing that he had failed them in some way, and he needed to flee from that.
Robert has a very addictive personality; it’s hard for him not to become obsessively attached, whether it is to objects, people or states. His tic-like behaviour concerning his attachment to objects (most notably his glasses and lab coat) is also supposed to be an Asperger's reference. This is likely due to the fact that he feels he doesn’t have much else to rely on, so instead he becomes dangerously fixated on a single thing and tries to gain all his sustenance from that (clearly not a healthy situation to be in).
Though Robert doesn’t mind change very much, he resents having things forcibly taken from him - freedom, especially personal freedom, is an extremely important concept in Terra. He also resents feeling like he isn’t in control of himself, and that often leads to him putting up defensive walls against others to make sure that he maintains a semblance of control over his own life.
On that note, Robert is prone to using his job and various protocols as an excuse to keep distance from people to protect him. He insists on “professionalism” at all times, which is generally code for “not interacting with people beyond learning just enough to figure out what I need to do”, and he is extremely anxious about physical contact. Though he won’t scream and run if touched, he’d definitely flinch if a strange person was to give him a hug, and he wouldn’t know how to respond in kind. Due to his lingering shame and sadness over Benjamin, it’s very unlikely that he will seek out romantic relationships (at least, not for quite awhile) until somebody can get close to him - assuming anybody even wants to. Handsome men may still catch his attention in a shallow sort of way, but he isn’t the type to be led around by seduction, and he won’t make his feelings very obvious most of the time.
Robert is also a little self-conscious of his body, particularly of his chest. It’s not likely that this will come into play at any point (he’s not SO uncomfortable that it would stop him from doing anything, and he will supersede his own discomfort if it means doing something for the sake of research or his health) but it’s worth noting... especially considering the fact that Robert will probably be unconsciously comparing himself physically to most of the men at Luceti - and finding himself lacking.
If you do manage to convince Robert to let his guard down and admit his own loneliness and fear, he becomes a much more sympathetic figure - sort of a departure from the high-ivory-towers picture that he tries to project. Robert really wants to be able to do this with somebody; he’s just reluctant to take that first step because of the high-percentile chance of failure. But it’s not that Robert is secretive about himself - indeed, he’s fairly open about most aspects of his life, if directly asked - it’s just that he avoids people enough that he rarely finds himself in the position of having to share anything.
Besides, not everything about Robert’s personality is bad. Despite having some difficulty comprehending emotions, when he DOES manage to have genuine understanding, he can be a great person to get advice from, as he’s skilled at looking at situations objectively and comparing solutions to each other; he can be surprisingly sweet and gentle with people that he deeply cares about. He does genuinely try to be a good person, despite his coldness towards others; most of it is simply fear of screwing up again preventing him from getting truly close to anyone.
Robert’s dedication to pacifism is admirable; he always looks for non-violent diplomatic solutions to any problem, calling others to work out their differences in debate. (Of course, this has its bad sides; he won’t stand up for himself or others if it means attacking them, even if he’s in a position where he would be killed otherwise, or would allow someone else to die.) Robert also acts as a sort of referee, involving himself in conflicts and trying to defuse the situation. Sometimes he ends up making it worse or redirecting anger towards himself by accident, though...
Being in Luceti may force Robert to open up a little more as well - when he’s stressed or wanting information, a lot of his discomfort with talking to others goes out the window, and he’ll certainly be desperate for information for awhile. Despite his discomfort going out the window, though, his anxiety doesn't - he still stutters fearfully and in general sounds uncomfortable, though the fact he talks at all is an improvement.
A rather insignificant detail - Robert has a slight pseudo-accent, which he occasionally lapses into. It’s almost like a heavily derived version of Queen’s English, though it’s very situational, as most of the accent has been blended into the homogenized culture of Linden. Regardless, it will sometimes show with Robert’s word choice.
Addendum about Robert's stuttering: Robert's social anxiety, general discomfort with speaking to people (especially people he doesn't know well), and his constant judgment of himself - combined with his inability to read social cues - tend to make him stutter when he speaks. He doesn't always do so - if he's comfortable with someone, his stuttering, as well as his pretentious diction speaking tic, happens less often - but it's common, especially when he's speaking to somebody new or in-person instead of in some indirect sense.
Strengths:
Physical:
Robert... has no real physical fortitude of any kind to speak of. He’s so physically weak that he needs mechanical assistance to do more than lift a couple of boxes around, and he’s frail enough that most heavy strain would be enough to cause serious injury to him. He’s small and slender, so maybe he has a fairly decent chance of evading most blows - but he’s not very fast. However, he has fairly good reflexes, having sharpened them from virtual games, and he’s very dexterous with his hands, so that might be helpful in some cases. As well, his small hands and fingers, and slender limbs, may aid him in reaching into areas or grabbing objects that beefier characters can’t get to.
Mental:
This is the only area in which Robert truly excels. He’s highly intelligent and logical, able to quickly deduce and come to conclusions from the information he’s given. He’s intellectually driven and focused, and will work diligently at a problem until he solves it. He has a massive amount of knowledge, both specific and trivial, and can easily recall any of it (though he will most likely recall his astrobiological and genetics training first and foremost). His memory is sharp (sometimes too much for its own good); he rarely has difficulty remembering things. He also has some mechanical knowledge with objects he uses on a regular basis - though he won’t be seeing much of those at Luceti, if there’s something similar enough to technology he knows, he might be able to do something to repair or build it. He’s also a decent cook - not spectacular, but good enough that what he makes is usually palatable. He credits his skill with this to cooking’s similarity to chemistry.
Emotional:
Robert doesn’t have much in the way of strength here, but he does have his ability to control his aggression VERY well - in fact, he rarely channels aggression through any means other than debate; raising his ire is extremely difficult. His ability to stay calm in a non-violent crisis can be very helpful; he will keep his cool even when everybody else is succumbing to panic. He isn’t normally able to offer sympathy, but in rare moments when he really connects with a person, he’s quite genuinely sweet under his cold exterior.
Weaknesses:
Physical:
It’s easier to say what ISN’T a weakness for Robert, physically. He’s just... pathetic when it comes to anything physical, and he’s well-aware of it. He’s scrawny enough that his bones are easy targets to break, he can’t lift even half his body weight, and he’s not resilient to any kind of blows due to the fact he lacks any sort of resistance training... He doesn’t even have enough stamina to run without gasping after more than a few minutes, so fleeing is usually out of the question. Also, being a pacifist means that even if Robert wasn’t as weak as a wet tissue, he still wouldn’t be willingly participating in any fights - and forced into one, he won’t really know what to do. (It’s possible that, after some time in Luceti, he’ll find himself becoming a better strategist - whether he likes that fact or not - but that won’t be true for awhile.)
Mental:
Robert is overconfident in his abilities. Sure, he’s legitimately intelligent - he isn’t just bragging when he says he’s well-learned - but he isn’t omniscient, and in a strange place like Luceti, most of what he knows and takes for granted as true is going to be turned on its head. He also isn’t very good at adapting to new situations in a short period of time, so he will struggle with Luceti at first. Without his technology, he will be at a total loss of what to do in some situations. (For example, he’ll be absolutely flabbergasted by the lack of solar panels or high-speed personal transport pods.) One could argue that his various mental differences - his social anxiety, his near-Asperger's, and his compulsive behaviours - could also be weaknesses in and of themselves.
Emotional:
Unable to express himself well, Robert has trouble communicating his emotions to anybody, and will often inadvertently come off as a sarcastic know-it-all because of the way he tends to talk down to people. This is mostly due to him not understanding both his own social cues and others'. He’s also quite emotionally unstable at times, masking it with his usual coldness or by withdrawing from people. It’s easy to hurt Robert if you know to target his loneliness, so this is quite easily exploited by somebody who can figure out how he’s feeling.
All edits will be in red text.
Mun
Name : Golden Kirbichu (Call me Golden, Kirbichu, GK, whatever. It’s all good.)
Livejournal Username: goldenkirbichu
E-mail: golden_kirbichu@hotmail.com or goldenkirbichu@gmail.com
AIM/MSN: AurumKirbichu/See Hotmail e-mail
Current Characters at Luceti: N/A
Character
Name: Robert Alexander Hastings; title Professor or Doctor (though it's not necessary to refer to him by his title)
Gender: male-identified, cisgendered
Age: Twenty-four, in standard Terran years (which are more or less years as we know them, albeit adjusted for the orbital changes that occurred within the hundred years or so that passed)
Wing Color: Resembling a European magpie’s in appearance. The scapular (shoulder) feathers are white, with the main wing feathers black with a bright blue (with just a hint of turquoise-green at some angles) sheen; the primary feathers are black with white centres. (The internal side of the wing is identical.)
Physical Appearance: Robert is possibly one of the most physically unassuming people one would ever meet, and certainly one of the least intimidating. Standing at a scrawny five feet four inches (though he will insist that you include the extra .7 inch, and will most likely state it as the metric one-decimal-six-four-three-three-eight metres) and weighing in at a hundred fifty-four pounds (close to 70 kilograms), the professor seems likely to crumple at the slightest blow. His build is slender, almost frail - not the same kind of frailness that one would see from somebody ill, but rather the frailness of a person who has never done anything particularly physically exerting in zir life.
Robert has messy hair, a dull reddish-brown shade that is close to unfinished mahogany wood, which hugs closely to his vaguely square-shaped head - his bangs drop down his face and hang about the bridge of his nose when he hasn’t pushed them away. His facial features are somewhat soft, almost boyish, but he has a harried look about his face that makes him seem older despite this. His skin is a pale beige shade, which is quite rare by Terran standards; it’s probably lighter than it would be normally because of all the time he spends inside, and it isn’t a healthy colour. He has a few subtle marks (actually, not so subtle, unless one considers this subtle - and he has multiple instances of those) on his wrists and inner elbows - nothing particularly obvious, but if one were to look closely it might be easy to surmise they were made by needles. His eyes are a shade of dark, cloudy blue-gray and are nearly always darting around, looking for SOMETHING to focus on other than another person’s face. He also has surprisingly small hands and feet; not abnormally small, but definitely on the small side for an adult man (though this is probably simply just a proportional thing, as the rest of his body is small as well).
Robert is nearly always seen wearing his glasses - reinforced polymer glass lenses set in faux-tortoiseshell rectangular frames with a thin black elastic cord to hold them in place - and will seem distressed if they are not there, even though he can see perfectly fine without them. It’s also a rare day where Robert isn’t wearing his trademark lab coat - a coat he isn’t even required to wear at his job, but simply does so out of habit and of openly displaying his job type (mostly so that he avoids as much unnecessary contact with other people as possible). The coat itself isn’t particularly interesting; it’s a carbon-nanofibre-lined, chemical-treated white cotton-variant (likely a synthetic, actually) coat, with long sleeves (and black-buttoned cuffs which Robert often keeps unfolded) and a single large pocket on the left side.
History: Robert’s life is relatively uninteresting from a significance standpoint, all things considered. In fact, the fascinating thing about him really (in terms of what makes characters interesting at Luceti, anyway) is just how utterly insignificant his life is in the grand scheme of things. But before one can get a proper understanding of just how painfully ORDINARY Robert is, one has to understand the full implications of the universe Robert exists and (mostly) functions in.
The Terran universe - or rather, the universe in which Terra purportedly exists - is one of many, many millions. In quantum physics, this is normally referred to as the Many Worlds interpretation (though this particular view of it is a fairly large oversimplification of it, as I myself don’t have enough training or understanding to use the proper hypothesis). Terrans themselves refer to the resulting phenomenon as “multiversions” - i.e., there is a multitude of versions of everything, and Terra so happens to be one of the many multitudes of possible Earths, where every tiny event changes the entire history of the world in many billions of equally-fascinating ways. This particular universe has one major consequence behind it - it means that everything one does is, in itself, a whole new kind of world... that every single moment of everything has the potential to, in itself, be a whole new universe. It is a very humbling thought.
However, only one of these universes is the important one for the moment - and that is the one which contains Terra proper.
Present-day Earth, as most people are aware, is currently experiencing a phenomenon known by most as global warming (though more accurately termed climate change). Whatever your own personal convictions may be on the veracity of climate change, please consider for a moment the Many Worlds interpretation - suppose that one version of Earth did, in fact, have climate change; and that it was, in fact, anthropogenic (human-created) in nature. With these points in mind, this present-day version of Earth - proto-Terra - can now be described.
Proto-Terra was quite a mess. Around 2025 A.D., it was increasingly apparent that the populations of this Earth - both human and otherwise - were being threatened by the poor management of the planet’s resources by humanity. Localized pollution, droughts, and widespread wildfires and weather disturbances brought on by shifted temperature fronts and destruction of natural terrain were causing formerly-unprecedented amounts of damage, and the slowly-increasing average global temperature was threatening to annihilate whatever part of humanity wasn’t already starving, dehydrated, or rioting due to the resulting economic crises in trying to deal with these situations. It was clear that something dramatic would have to happen, and fast, if humanity wanted to survive. But humans are nothing if not tenacious, and so a plan was set upon by the combined powers of the world governments to prevent the wholesale destruction of the entirety of Earth.
In the typical way of governments, this involved throwing a hell of a lot of money at the problem.
However, unlike most previous attempts of just hurling money at a problem until it went away, the world governments (realizing that wealth hardly mattered if the entirety of Earth was going to rot into a pool of overly-acidified ocean) formed a giant coalition via the United Nations (which, by this point, included every self-represented country on Earth) that served as a planetary mega-government, then essentially handed the entire combined budget over to the scientific community in the hopes of finding some kind of massive, wholesale solution to the impending doom. Every scientific mind on the planet was turned fully towards this undertaking, to the point where it was nearly the sole topic of research for the next three decades - despite this, the sheer number of discoveries made as a result were mind-boggling. With unfettered access to resources and ability to co-operate on a scale never before seen, the worldwide scientific community very nearly produced a miracle, and the technological aptitude of Earth ballooned dramatically. It was as if the Age of Information had happened all over again - and not a moment too soon, at that.
Every method was tried to reverse the destruction of the planet - regardless of how expensive, regardless of how far-fetched, regardless of how unfeasible. This entire period of human history, lasting from about 2043 A.D. to about 2135 A.D., was known collectively as the Great Cleansing and represented the largest (and longest) concerted effort of humanity to battle its own failures. The planet was covered in technology of all kinds, desperately working to stop the slow onslaught of destruction even as it intensified in scope. Such technological grasping-at-straws ranged in types from air processing plants the size of a small continent - like mountains composed of air intake tunnels that filtered the atmosphere - to coating existing buildings with high-efficiency solar cells, built to mimic photosynthetic plants, in an effort to reduce the strain on the existing power grids. Hundreds of thousands of species (both flora and fauna) were lost, though their DNA was retrieved in massive genetic collection programs known as cryozoos. Millions of humans perished because of starvation or natural disasters brought on by the increasingly turbulent weather. At some points it seemed as though trying to fight this battle against the very processes that the humans had set in motion was futile, and on many occasions the world government very nearly gave up. Eventually, though, they persevered, and a state of extremely delicate equilibrium was achieved - just enough to begin a slow rebuilding.
However, the conditions that humanity had been forced to adapt to had fundamentally changed how society functioned. Former urban sprawl had been nearly totally eliminated; cities were extremely compact now and incredibly efficient, full of self-powered farm-skyscrapers and hydroponic gardens. The lack of arable farmland meant that most meat products were no longer harvested from actual animals, instead grown from cloned cells on matrices in sterile laboratory-like production plants (a process that had initially been ludicrously expensive, but had quickly become more feasible than keeping actual farm animals as the technology improved significantly and the price of farmland quadrupled). Most importantly, the huge leaps in scientific knowledge, due to the constant research during the Great Cleansing, had produced a startlingly huge array of new technologies that impacted all areas of human lives. Humans had, to borrow a clichéd phrase, matured significantly. And with this maturation came a fierce desire to never repeat the mistakes of the past (though history has a habit of repeating its mistakes).
The remaining segment of humanity, a population hovering around four billion, began to keep itself firmly in check. The majority of the population, by social consensus, maintained itself at a stable number (or at least as stable as was feasible), to reduce the strain on the still-recovering systems of the planet. During this time, the close quarters of cities worked to reduce lingering resentment and strain between segments of the human population, and robust social security nets protected needy individuals - though what with the massive number of new technological advancements, there were many hundreds of fields in which new jobs were being generated. The economy stabilized itself, no longer madly fluctuating due to the incredible amounts of spending, and the massive world coalition government found itself in the curious position of wishing to remain a coalition. Thus, on May 21st, 2138 A.D., the mega-government asked in a worldwide referendum whether the planet should simply become a single unit - a super-country. The referendum won with an almost 85% approval rating.
And so, all political boundaries, over the next few months, became officially dissolved. In a poll run by the new mega-government (which had taken to calling itself the Council), the name Terra was chosen as the most preferred name for the new planet-wide country - simply, the Latin word for “Earth”. From then, the Council assumed its new method of electorate: Composed of six primary members, one drawn from each of the continents/aggregates (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Antarctica, and Oceania), which were elected by continent-wide vote and which then chose representatives in each continent. This structure of Council has survived until the present day in Terra, undergoing only minimal changes to ensure accurate representation of the world demographics.
The next century of Terra’s growth saw slow but steady improvements in the health of the planet and the stability of the environment. The social atmosphere in Terra, becoming significantly more progressive as a result of the influence of science and critical thinking, continued to shift as the population of Terra slowly began to culturally homogenize. Although individual cultures still existed, and the data of many cultures were safely protected in accessible databanks on the immersive Internet 3.0, the majority of humans in Terra had become something of a collective. (This is why it is rare to see ethnically-specific humans in Terra anymore; Robert himself, despite being significantly paler than most humans on Terra, is still ethnically blended.) There was an almost idolization of science in the culture now, similar to our own current attitudes towards media mavens like movie stars; scientists, doctors, teachers and other purveyors of knowledge became increasingly valued. It was this attitude that fostered intellectual development and set the stage for ever more ambitious growth for the Terran population.
The next major step was the development of enhanced space technology. While humans had been busy restoring their planet to a liveable state, there hadn’t been much time to concentrate on space projects; now that the threat of self-inflicted suicide was gone, there was a genuine public interest in once again taking to the “final frontier”. With the development of sustainable muon-catalyzed fusion (a form of fusion that uses large subatomic particles called muons to lower the needed temperature of nuclear fusion significantly) and other methods of generating massive amounts of power at the beginning of 2160 A.D., the first decently-fast far-ranging spacecraft were built, intended to be robotically-piloted probes to inspect the “galactic neighbourhood” around Terra. At the same time, developments into a technological breakthrough called “transporting” were beginning to surface in the scientific community, something that would prove to revolutionize travel of long distances when the first working prototype was successfully completed in 2235 A.D.
On February 7th, 2193 A.D., Terra was pleasantly shocked to discover the first true evidence of extraterrestrial sentient life. The probe ship Quark and its companion instrument dropship Lepton, dispatched to the nearest galaxy (Andromeda), sent back undeniable readings of biological activity from a planetoid in the region. Upon closer approach to the planet, artificial satellites were discovered in orbit around it, confirming the sentience of the population. While the identity of this species is relatively inconsequential (though it’s mostly that I haven’t thought of anything for it yet), suffice it to say that this was the real birth of the astrobiology field - which happens to be the field in which Robert chose to study.
The next most major impact to Terran society was the development of transporter technology. Transporters, essentially capsules powered by fusion catalytic “engines” that allow a user to shift massive distances in spacetime, used quantum entanglement to essentially move one’s particle constituents across space. Although transporters were large, required immense amounts of energy to use, and were dangerous to use in places where the three-dimensional co-ordinates of a region were not known, they nonetheless became the tool of choice for astrobiologists, astroarchaeologists, and other jobs that required constant movement between planets. The transporter technology also allowed, for the first time, monitoring and travel between the long-hypothesized multiversions, allowing Terrans glimpses of the true complexity of their universe.
It was in this era of constant discovery and exploration that Robert was born and adopted. His adoptive parents, Akila and Frederick Hastings, were both bright, but not particularly intellectual beyond the general culture of Terra; Akila majored in immersive online accounting, whereas Frederick was concerned more with hydroponic gardening and maintained a successful farm-skyscraper in the northern district of Linden, the large megatropolis that the couple had moved into shortly after Frederick had bought the claims to the building space. (Linden was formerly named London; though it was not actually so much London anymore, as it encompassed several other former cities in the region as well).
After establishing themselves in Linden, the couple looked into adopting a single child - the most typical family set-up in Terra after optimized artificial insemination (on further thought these two things are probably reversed). Robert was simply just another infant boy there; outside of his atypically pale skin tone, there was nothing particularly special about him at the time. The fact his skin tone was paler was probably the main reason why he was one of the last babies to be adopted (Terrans made a show of no longer being prejudiced, but there were still a few subtle social pressures towards having children that were closer to your own skin tone).
Major addendum: As with all Terran children, Robert was medically screened around a year of age. The screening (in addition to analyzing his physical and mental make-up) revealed early traces of some fairly fundamental possible mental differences with Robert - including symptoms that were similar to, and could potentially tie in to, Asperger's Syndrome - as well as obsessive-compulsive tendencies and social anxiety. (Like all screening attempts, it was known that these tests weren't necessarily entirely accurate [after all, the myriad complexities of the conditions are difficult to simulate] - but they tended to be taken as such in practise.) Most of these traits were maintained throughout his life, and he never really allowed himself to get any help for them - instead ignoring them.
Robert’s childhood was filled with constant mental growth. Precocious and bright, he quickly took to learning, to a degree where his parents were sometimes lost on what more they could give him to satisfy his voracious intellectual appetite. Many times they would bring him to the local institutes of science, including the prestigious Randi Institute (the Linden branch of the Head Institute of Science, the most esteemed scientific academy in the whole of Terra), only for him to clamour for them to return the next day... Robert seemed to want to be a scientist ever since the first moment he could fathom the concept. Eventually his parents gave him free reign of the database terminal in their household, helping to satiate his need to learn. Despite his intellectual slant, though, it took Robert longer than most children to learn to express himself properly (possibly due to Asperger-like symptoms; this may be when he started developing his stuttering habits out of anxiety), and he seemed to dislike the company of other children, preferring instead to immerse himself in holoprojections or spend hours in a virtual universe.
During his formative educational years, Robert consistently impressed his teachers with his willingness to learn and his aptitude for many branches of science and math. However, he showed alarming tendencies as well; he was easily engrossed in things to the point of obsession, he continued to neglect social spheres entirely, and outside of his parents and the few children he contacted at school, he had very little contact with other people. It was noted he often took pains to avoid others in any kind of situation that was not explicitly academic; although his teachers considered remedial cognitive therapy for Robert to try to conquer his social anxiety, Robert insisted he didn’t need it. This aversion to cognitive therapy - both specifically for social anxiety, and in general - led to Robert's conditions being unchecked when they could have been successfully managed.
The later years of schooling were less lonely for Robert. He established a few friends in school; nobody particularly close, but close enough that he had somebody he could feel semi-comfortable talking to when he wasn’t engrossed in something else. It was during this time (when Robert was around eleven years old) that Robert first became aware of his orientation; the other boys in school, despite being more or less uneducated to Robert, were still physically appealing to him. Like most youth in Terran society, he did experiment outside of this, but he never entered a relationship with any of the girls he knew, as he was cognizant of not having much interest in them. However, despite having a few friends around, Robert still preferred to remain mostly distant from his peers; he spent much of his free time reading about the Randi Institute and dreaming of growing up to research there.
This all changed when Robert met Benjamin Prieto around fourteen years of age. Despite Benjamin and Robert being totally different people, somehow they managed to hit it off through a shared love of science, and Robert entered his first real relationship with another person. It was difficult for him at first; Robert was awkward, and for the first year of their partnership they mostly dated on and off, spending little time actually together. However, they were initially positive influences on each other; Robert encouraged Benjamin to invest himself more in his studies, while Benjamin gave Robert a safe haven from which he could try to make friendships with others. Both Benjamin’s and Robert’s parents approved of their sons’ relationship at first, and it seemed as though it would be idyllic. The situation only continued to improve over the following year...
... Until Benjamin invited Robert into the local drug culture.
To be fair, Benjamin wasn’t really an irresponsible drug user. Though he was into the partying scene, enjoying the various intoxicants commonly used by youth (most of them rigidly controlled and monitored by medical overseeing groups), he didn’t allow them to take over his life. However, Robert did, because the drugs were an escape to him. For the first time in his life, Robert felt truly comfortable with other people; he could be open and happy and social, and feel accepted by others - those were things he had never had when he was sober. Robert began to merge his identity with the drug culture; slowly but surely, he became trapped in it because of this need to feel like he belonged to something. Benjamin welcomed this, not recognizing the damage it was doing to Robert’s educational life (or failing to realize the importance that this had to Robert) as it gave him more time with his lover and seemed to strengthen their relationship.
However, Robert’s mental state continued to degrade as he became both addicted to the constant stimulus of the drug and obsessively attached to Benjamin as the anchor in his life and the sole person he felt comfortable revealing his drug use to. It was obvious to others that something was constantly troubling Robert, and after his parents discovered puncture marks in his arms (Robert rarely used intravenous drugs, but he had been particularly desperate for a high that day), they got Robert immediate counselling. Robert was nearly nineteen at this point, and his drug addiction was severely impairing his chances to get into post-secondary schooling because they were hampering his ability to concentrate on his schoolwork. So Robert was forced to make a difficult decision - he cut himself off from the drug scene entirely, and in the process cut off Benjamin as well.
Understandably hurt by this total rejection, Benjamin pressured Robert to make a decision - choosing between his schooling and his relationship.
Pushed to the emotional limit, reeling from the effects of dependency and desperate to reclaim the dream of becoming a respected researcher which was rapidly slipping from his grasp, Robert chose his schooling.
Benjamin broke up with Robert soon after, ending their five-year relationship with painful abruptness. It was the decision that Robert still regrets most in his life, and it haunts him even to the present day. He keeps an artifact from this time - an alcohol dependency that strikes him hardest when he is depressed.
Spurned from the one relationship he was ever able to maintain, Robert withdrew even more from others, throwing himself into work to mask the pain. Because of his ferocious work ethic, he graduated with the highest honours from the courses he took; success went some way towards comforting him, and Robert took some solace from displaying his intelligence, helping to cultivate an unconscious (to him) sense of arrogance he had developed.
Robert’s high level of success at his studies was such a prodigious accomplishment that it even attracted attention from the Randi Institute. After completing his certification courses for astrobiology at the age of twenty-two, Robert was formally invited by the Head Scientist of the Randi Institute, Professor Brooke Garcia, to join the astrobiological staff already present there. Robert gladly complied; it gave him a chance to get away from the people who had known him before, to start over fresh and to get away from his parents, who he perceived as being overly pitiful of him.
After moving to a residential area in the eastern district of Linden, where the Randi Institute was located, Robert formally accepted the position as one of the junior scientists at the Institute. It was not long before his aptitude for the position had him climbing ranks - even though he was less than popular amongst the staff, regarded as cold and mechanical when he wasn’t being insufferably arrogant about his achievements. Though Robert managed to develop something of a cordial relationship with fellow scientist Professor Tobias Gangestad and the Head Scientist Professor Garcia, it was still a far cry from the closeness that most of the researchers had with each other - Robert was still a notable outcast, even though he was “in his element”.
Despite this, the Head Institute showed interest in Robert’s remarkable achievements, and some time before Robert’s entry into Luceti they had been planning to give him an interview in the hopes of perhaps accepting him into the ranks of the top scientists of Terra. Robert had, understandably, been looking forward to this opportunity. (How irritating for him that he was captured just before he could have that interview, right?)
Personality: Robert is nothing if not logical. He thrives on - indeed, he craves - order and structure, and will try to create it if none exists. This extends even to physical orderliness - Robert is quite clean and neat, and will express frustration if the cleanliness of an area isn’t up to his standards (or will just clean it himself out of irritation). He is most comfortable when he has something intellectual to involve himself in; it doesn’t matter whether this is anything from an idle thought experiment to perusing a database - if it’s something he can mentally devote his time to, he enjoys it. He loves to learn (though he doesn’t like admitting that he doesn’t know something) and can often be seen seeking out knowledge to add to his accumulated stores in his mind. Being an astrobiologist by profession means that he is almost constantly exposed to new knowledge, both from his own culture and from others.
However - and this is a big problem with not just Robert, but with Terrans in general - Robert is quite a xenophobe. Embodying the pacifistic, rational-minded, scientifically-inclined rhetoric of Terra, Robert finds anybody who doesn’t fit these extremes to be wallowing in the utmost of barbarism. (And that’s going to be the vast majority of Luceti.) He’s outright dismissive of most who fall outside his idea of intelligence or those that seem to embrace irrational thought, considering them incapable of grasping anything other than simple concepts. Though Robert prides himself on being open-minded and accepting, this is only true up until he meets somebody truly DIFFERENT from himself (and it’s no surprise that he’s rarely sent on diplomatic missions because of this attitude towards those who are different). Hell, even when people are rather similar to him, he tends to be cordial towards them at best; he tolerates people as long as he needs to professionally, and then excuses himself at the first opportunity.
Really, Robert’s dealings with other people are less than positive most of the time. Robert has a lot of trouble understanding and interpreting other people’s emotions, because they are often irrational to him, or at the least too abstract for him to comfortably grasp. When he does understand others’ feelings, he often lacks the ability to seem empathetic, instead sounding as if he’s treating their feelings as a hypothesis that needs to be tested. Not clarified well at all originally, but these traits are supposed to evoke Asperger's-like symptoms... Because of this, Robert doesn’t try to involve himself in emotional problems often - this includes his own, since he’s reluctant to address the buried (and not-so-buried) feelings that he still struggles with.
Despite all this, Robert is achingly lonely. He may not seem like it - indeed, he prefers to be by himself most of the time, engaged in some form of mental stimulus - but what he really hungers for is the kind of companionship that he used to have with Benjamin. Losing that hurt Robert badly, and Robert doesn’t think he can ever have anything like that with anybody ever again, so he’s stopped trying. However, it’s clear that his job and the occasional alcohol binge can’t entirely repress - much less replace - his desire for a lover, or a close friend. Or even somebody who’d be willing to give him the time of day. (He knows that it would help if he stopped deliberately avoiding people, but it’s just EASIER to avoid people... rather than risk being hurt like that yet again.)
In that sense, Robert is something of a coward. He avoids things that he knows he will fail at - he flees from difficult situations. He is acutely aware of his own weakness, both physically and mentally; although he does have his intellectual strength, and can put on a fairly convincing facade of cold emotionlessness in almost any situation, he is utterly powerless when faced with more troublesome things. Robert hates to be in a position where he knows he is at the mercy of somebody else; he dislikes working with others, both because he resents the idea of them failing him, and because he fears the idea of failing them in turn. This is part of what motivated him to leave his family and former friends behind - he had the sickening feeling of knowing that he had failed them in some way, and he needed to flee from that.
Robert has a very addictive personality; it’s hard for him not to become obsessively attached, whether it is to objects, people or states. His tic-like behaviour concerning his attachment to objects (most notably his glasses and lab coat) is also supposed to be an Asperger's reference. This is likely due to the fact that he feels he doesn’t have much else to rely on, so instead he becomes dangerously fixated on a single thing and tries to gain all his sustenance from that (clearly not a healthy situation to be in).
Though Robert doesn’t mind change very much, he resents having things forcibly taken from him - freedom, especially personal freedom, is an extremely important concept in Terra. He also resents feeling like he isn’t in control of himself, and that often leads to him putting up defensive walls against others to make sure that he maintains a semblance of control over his own life.
On that note, Robert is prone to using his job and various protocols as an excuse to keep distance from people to protect him. He insists on “professionalism” at all times, which is generally code for “not interacting with people beyond learning just enough to figure out what I need to do”, and he is extremely anxious about physical contact. Though he won’t scream and run if touched, he’d definitely flinch if a strange person was to give him a hug, and he wouldn’t know how to respond in kind. Due to his lingering shame and sadness over Benjamin, it’s very unlikely that he will seek out romantic relationships (at least, not for quite awhile) until somebody can get close to him - assuming anybody even wants to. Handsome men may still catch his attention in a shallow sort of way, but he isn’t the type to be led around by seduction, and he won’t make his feelings very obvious most of the time.
Robert is also a little self-conscious of his body, particularly of his chest. It’s not likely that this will come into play at any point (he’s not SO uncomfortable that it would stop him from doing anything, and he will supersede his own discomfort if it means doing something for the sake of research or his health) but it’s worth noting... especially considering the fact that Robert will probably be unconsciously comparing himself physically to most of the men at Luceti - and finding himself lacking.
If you do manage to convince Robert to let his guard down and admit his own loneliness and fear, he becomes a much more sympathetic figure - sort of a departure from the high-ivory-towers picture that he tries to project. Robert really wants to be able to do this with somebody; he’s just reluctant to take that first step because of the high-percentile chance of failure. But it’s not that Robert is secretive about himself - indeed, he’s fairly open about most aspects of his life, if directly asked - it’s just that he avoids people enough that he rarely finds himself in the position of having to share anything.
Besides, not everything about Robert’s personality is bad. Despite having some difficulty comprehending emotions, when he DOES manage to have genuine understanding, he can be a great person to get advice from, as he’s skilled at looking at situations objectively and comparing solutions to each other; he can be surprisingly sweet and gentle with people that he deeply cares about. He does genuinely try to be a good person, despite his coldness towards others; most of it is simply fear of screwing up again preventing him from getting truly close to anyone.
Robert’s dedication to pacifism is admirable; he always looks for non-violent diplomatic solutions to any problem, calling others to work out their differences in debate. (Of course, this has its bad sides; he won’t stand up for himself or others if it means attacking them, even if he’s in a position where he would be killed otherwise, or would allow someone else to die.) Robert also acts as a sort of referee, involving himself in conflicts and trying to defuse the situation. Sometimes he ends up making it worse or redirecting anger towards himself by accident, though...
Being in Luceti may force Robert to open up a little more as well - when he’s stressed or wanting information, a lot of his discomfort with talking to others goes out the window, and he’ll certainly be desperate for information for awhile. Despite his discomfort going out the window, though, his anxiety doesn't - he still stutters fearfully and in general sounds uncomfortable, though the fact he talks at all is an improvement.
A rather insignificant detail - Robert has a slight pseudo-accent, which he occasionally lapses into. It’s almost like a heavily derived version of Queen’s English, though it’s very situational, as most of the accent has been blended into the homogenized culture of Linden. Regardless, it will sometimes show with Robert’s word choice.
Addendum about Robert's stuttering: Robert's social anxiety, general discomfort with speaking to people (especially people he doesn't know well), and his constant judgment of himself - combined with his inability to read social cues - tend to make him stutter when he speaks. He doesn't always do so - if he's comfortable with someone, his stuttering, as well as his pretentious diction speaking tic, happens less often - but it's common, especially when he's speaking to somebody new or in-person instead of in some indirect sense.
Strengths:
Physical:
Robert... has no real physical fortitude of any kind to speak of. He’s so physically weak that he needs mechanical assistance to do more than lift a couple of boxes around, and he’s frail enough that most heavy strain would be enough to cause serious injury to him. He’s small and slender, so maybe he has a fairly decent chance of evading most blows - but he’s not very fast. However, he has fairly good reflexes, having sharpened them from virtual games, and he’s very dexterous with his hands, so that might be helpful in some cases. As well, his small hands and fingers, and slender limbs, may aid him in reaching into areas or grabbing objects that beefier characters can’t get to.
Mental:
This is the only area in which Robert truly excels. He’s highly intelligent and logical, able to quickly deduce and come to conclusions from the information he’s given. He’s intellectually driven and focused, and will work diligently at a problem until he solves it. He has a massive amount of knowledge, both specific and trivial, and can easily recall any of it (though he will most likely recall his astrobiological and genetics training first and foremost). His memory is sharp (sometimes too much for its own good); he rarely has difficulty remembering things. He also has some mechanical knowledge with objects he uses on a regular basis - though he won’t be seeing much of those at Luceti, if there’s something similar enough to technology he knows, he might be able to do something to repair or build it. He’s also a decent cook - not spectacular, but good enough that what he makes is usually palatable. He credits his skill with this to cooking’s similarity to chemistry.
Emotional:
Robert doesn’t have much in the way of strength here, but he does have his ability to control his aggression VERY well - in fact, he rarely channels aggression through any means other than debate; raising his ire is extremely difficult. His ability to stay calm in a non-violent crisis can be very helpful; he will keep his cool even when everybody else is succumbing to panic. He isn’t normally able to offer sympathy, but in rare moments when he really connects with a person, he’s quite genuinely sweet under his cold exterior.
Weaknesses:
Physical:
It’s easier to say what ISN’T a weakness for Robert, physically. He’s just... pathetic when it comes to anything physical, and he’s well-aware of it. He’s scrawny enough that his bones are easy targets to break, he can’t lift even half his body weight, and he’s not resilient to any kind of blows due to the fact he lacks any sort of resistance training... He doesn’t even have enough stamina to run without gasping after more than a few minutes, so fleeing is usually out of the question. Also, being a pacifist means that even if Robert wasn’t as weak as a wet tissue, he still wouldn’t be willingly participating in any fights - and forced into one, he won’t really know what to do. (It’s possible that, after some time in Luceti, he’ll find himself becoming a better strategist - whether he likes that fact or not - but that won’t be true for awhile.)
Mental:
Robert is overconfident in his abilities. Sure, he’s legitimately intelligent - he isn’t just bragging when he says he’s well-learned - but he isn’t omniscient, and in a strange place like Luceti, most of what he knows and takes for granted as true is going to be turned on its head. He also isn’t very good at adapting to new situations in a short period of time, so he will struggle with Luceti at first. Without his technology, he will be at a total loss of what to do in some situations. (For example, he’ll be absolutely flabbergasted by the lack of solar panels or high-speed personal transport pods.) One could argue that his various mental differences - his social anxiety, his near-Asperger's, and his compulsive behaviours - could also be weaknesses in and of themselves.
Emotional:
Unable to express himself well, Robert has trouble communicating his emotions to anybody, and will often inadvertently come off as a sarcastic know-it-all because of the way he tends to talk down to people. This is mostly due to him not understanding both his own social cues and others'. He’s also quite emotionally unstable at times, masking it with his usual coldness or by withdrawing from people. It’s easy to hurt Robert if you know to target his loneliness, so this is quite easily exploited by somebody who can figure out how he’s feeling.