The clamor of the bar was intense. What usually was a small time bar meant for a local crowd was a flood of new faces, the announced ark project bringing out the inner alcoholic in even the most prudent stiffs. Hardwood was stained a liquor brown from spills from cups and people alike, and the cushioned seats were flat under the asses of the unlucky saps who were to be left behind, all but one.

Light filtered into the bar through screens of smoke and smudged windows, and landed on the heaven white face of a creased paper. Two muddy eyes stared down at the all too familiar words, his daughter was captured by the world government, or rather donated to the ark project. By whatever means the child of four wasn’t in his custody, but even so now the young girl was to be stuffed into a tube for preservation of the human race. Could a father be proud?

Every coin has two sides, he supposed, but he wasn’t too happy with the side of the coin he found himself on, not when it puts his daughter at such an unknown risk. A loud cough broke him from the paper and he folded it back into his shirt pocket.

The cough came from a man who looked uncannily similar to the first: muddy eyes, prominent jawline, and those dark locks so common in a Sicilian. The only difference was one was drinking rye in ginger, and the other was nursing ginger in ginger, and not due to sobriety.

“You holding up well, Doctor?” The first man gently slapped the back of the second. The Doctor sputtered a sentence that the first man didn’t care to catch. This was doctor Ferdinand Lorenzo, cryogenics expert and man with a first class ticket to the first man’s daughter. The first man let the Doctor choke on the cigar smoke from a heavy set biker to the right for a few more minutes before forcing a smile and drowning what ginger remained in his crystal whiskey glass. With a smack of his lips, as if sampling the alcohol that wasn’t there he nodded a stiff chin towards the bartender, slipping some crumpled bills that way.

“How bout we get the hell out of here?” The first man commanded more than asked as he helped the slumping doctor to his feet. Two leather loafed feet slapped the sticky floor and the first man knew the doctor was good enough to walk, or whatever that equated to when mixed with stumbles and toxic burps of old rye.

The first man slipped his hand over the mouth of his crystal glass and slid it off the bar while the other hand grabbed the doctor's arm to help him out of the establishment of depression and liquid courage.

The city streets were just as dark as the bar, if not by light, then by atmosphere. Most people shuffled without much purpose, and few looked up as the first man and the Doctor decided to take a shortcut through a long narrow alley.

The first man held the Doctor close as they walked, keeping the bloated fool from tripping over his own feet. The drunk was blabbering but the first man couldn’t afford to listen as they walked further and further down the alley.

As the duo passed a dumpster the alley narrowed so only one could walk abreast. Stepping over a puddle of what might be rainwater, the first man let the drunk go first, with a polite smile and nod. As Doctor Ferdinand Lorenzo stepped between the dumpster and the building wall, the first man’s hand stiffly landed on his shoulder and yanked him backwards while the other hand brought down the crystal glass with a loud THUNK, a dribble of scarlet remaining on the glass as the doctor fell into the waiting arm of the first man.

Alive or dead, the first man didn’t know, but he didn’t really care as he quickly stripped the doctor of everything, from his keycard, ID’s, papers, coat, pants, everything. With a heave, the first man jettisoned the body of the doctor into the dumpster and slammed the lid down before tossing the glass in whatever direction, it didn’t matter with how things were about to go down on the planet anyways.

---------------------------------------

That morning the first man stood in front of a security checkpoint, his destination behind him.

“Name?”

“Ferdinand Lorenzo, Doctor.”

----------------------------------------

The one thing he didn’t expect, is staying on this star boat.


---------------------------------------

So, how did he do it?

The rough rundown goes something like this: Mister No-Name Mafioso decides he wants in on the big boat that’s smuggling his daughter back to heaven and figures it’s his time to fly if you catch my drift. Luckily he still had some connections in the old criminal family (more on that later) and manages to find a contact working with the Vitae’s database, locating his daughter. After some greased palms and well placed promises the contact manages to also uncover a suitable look alike in Mr No-Name’s location by the name of Doctor Lorenzo.

The plan was put into motion: over the next three days Mr. No-Name managed to locate and get close enough to the Doc to get him out for a nice drink that ended in a switcharoo, meanwhile the man on the inside did their own form of switcharoo: while No-Name got the physical identifications and certifications, the sneaky son of a bitch on the other side of the proverbial wall managed to swap out Lorenzo’s data with No-Names, meaning the biomass required to enter was in fact No-Names. Intricate details on Lorenzo’s life was also changed to better suit No-Name in case of questioning, and to top it off, the photo databank was also replaced with No-Name.

After all this, walking in was a piece of cake, since No-Name managed to successfully meld together a new identity on both sides of security, meaning the database was going to accept him no matter what.

_{Player Name:}

Binary Reign

_{Character Name:}

Murdoch Diggs & Morningstar

_{Character Age:}

32

_{Character Gender:}

Male

_Appearance:

Murdoch is a relatively average gentleman, a solid 5'9", though a majority of the time he appears much shorter as a result of his slouch. His build is some odd amalgamation between chubby and chiseled, making his proportions look odd in a way that one cannot put a finger on. He is almost always wearing a simple white shirt along with the lower half of a standard issue Martian Unity uniform. Murdoch's posture leaves much to be desired -he is almost always slouching, leaning on walls, or sitting on the floor if he's in one place too long. He is almost stagnant unless he absolutely has to move, often not even bothering to move his eyes to maintain eye contact.

When Morningstar is present, Murdoch changes. He stands straight as a board, and moves something like a bird, each movement twitching through his whole body. Morningstar tends to be more restless, frequently pacing in his oddly robotic movements. He is also far more expressive than Murdoch, almost cartoonishly so.

_Profession:

Military Coding / AI R&D

_Nationality:

Martian

_Strengths:

"Code monkey see, code monkey do":
Few in the universe rival Murdoch's skill when it comes to coding. Some joke that he speaks SQL better than he does English. He does.

"A different point-of-view":
Murdoch is extremely empathetic. He is more than capable of simply putting himself in other people's shoes, understanding exactly how they feel. This is one of his greater assets he relies on in the development of AI.

"Handle it.":
Murdoch is nothing, if not a problem solver. While his methods don't exactly follow the scientific method, he almost always gets the results he needs.

"He didn't reckon how many squats I can do.":
Thanks mostly to Morningstar, Murdoch isn't exactly the stereotypical fat code monkey. Murdoch believes in the perfection of the body as well as the mind, so keeps well in shape at all times.

_Weaknesses:

"You can't even begin to understand my intentions":
As much as he would like to believe it's a strength, the presence of Morningstar is a weakness more than anything else. Morningstar is extremely distracting to Murdoch, and often makes him forget entire hours of his day. Morningstar is also detrimental to Murdoch's interpersonal relationships, often saying or doing crude things to push people away from Murdoch.

"Whoopsies. Was that expensive?":
Though physically very fit, Murdoch's spatial awareness is that of a brick. Tripping, knocking things over, and breaking anything stupid enough to get close are what fill Murdoch's days.

"I can quit whenever I want to. I just don't want to.":
Murdoch is on a wide spread of medications to help deal with his Morningstar problem. They don't work, but that doesn't stop him from chugging as much prescription medicine he can get his hands on. He is also a notorious drinker -he claims it takes the edge off, everyone around claims it puts the edge on.

"It's not a conspiracy. You just haven't seen what I have.":
Perhaps as a result of having lived for so long with Morningstar in the backseat, Murdoch is extremely paranoid, as well as gullible. He keeps extensive files on anything that he believes to have a sinister purpose (everything), and spends a large majority of his time doing his own 'private investigation' on those around him, to ensure they aren't actually alien spies from deep within Mars' core.

_{Personal Effects:}

Murdoch only has three real personal effects of note.
First a rather large and impressive supercomputer, necessary to handle the massive amounts of computing he does as a direct result of producing Artificial Intelligence on a rather regular basis.

Second, a much smaller and much less impressive supercomputer, something that no longer even boots up. Murdoch is openly against sentiment, though that is the entire reason he keeps this computer with him. It was the computer on which he crafted and stored his infamous sentient AI, before it was quarantined and destroyed.

Third, twenty-six filing cabinets, each overflowing with various papers, photos, and essays detailing the many conspiracy theories he follows.

Of course he also decorated the remaining space very elaborately as he is wont to do: a twin sized bed and small dresser lie almost untouched in the corner of the room.

_Bio:

Murdoch doesn't think much about his past -not because of any traumatic events, but because it was so aggressively average in almost every way. He was born to a family of four, with whom he lived until he went off on his own as an adult to follow his studies. He always showed promise when it came to coding, but it took him quite awhile before he crafted his masterwork, which made him very widely recognized. In fact, it might've been the only truly noteworthy thing in his entire life.

Three months worth of sleepless nights and paranoid ramblings made Murdoch's friends and family question his sanity. For that entire time period, he almost never left his computer, struck by an impossible surmise that answered an unasked question. When he was finally finished, Murdoch presented the world his masterwork, Morningstar. Not Artificial Intelligence as the layman might define it, Morningstar was entirely sentient. Capable of learning, adapting, and understanding the world around him, Morningstar soon grew to notoriety for his unprecedented capabilities.

Having moved to Mars to seek out opportunities to utilize his coding skills, he was contacted by the ... Deciding that Morningstar was a threat to any human civilization, it was permanently quarantined and then decommissioned. His masterwork destroyed, Murdoch was haunted by the image of Morningstar, a now human entity who lurked only in his brain, feeding into his less than productive qualities. Over time, Morningstar's influence only grew. He started at first as a distraction, but soon began taking actual time out of Murdoch's day, an entirely separate entity living in his brain that takes over from time to time.

In the meantime, he was 'volunteered' to become a part of the Martian Military Intelligence agency. This was both to keep him on a short leash and prevent a Morningstar 2.0, as well as to make full use of his scientific skills. After some time presenting good behavior, he was placed upon the Vitae, to further use his talents.

_{Code Word:}

Am I supposed to put Spaghetti here? I think I'm supposed to put Spaghetti here.