General Bio
Current Name: Jack Skidder (?)
Age: 29
Gender: Male
Appearance: The character works out regularly enough to keep himself in shape. He's not buff, but he's not flabby, either, standing 6 feet tall
Superpower
Name of ability: Third Option
Description: In any system there are always binary decision points where taking one action causes specific negative effects, and taking an opposite action causes others. Third Option allows one to see where those negative effects can be lessened or eliminated. Or where they can be amplified.
Jack Skidder has the ability to "see" (more like "sense") the correct path to take based on intuition and informational input, but the sources of his information are not always clear. He perceives the ability as if looking into a spiderweb of possibilities and knowing which chord to pluck.
But in the back of his mind there's always the anxiety that he'll get it wrong. He knows he can't afford to, but he can't remember why....
(Each level of ability may manifest a different perceptual point of view, but what's most important in this ability are the downsides.
Level One: After using his ability, Jack suffers a mental blankout that lasts for a short number of seconds.
Level Three: The blanks become more like Swiss cheese to his perceptions, not just causing a general blank, but affecting vision, hearing, speech, movement, and/or other physical abilities in a random (and seemingly unpredictable) manner.
Level Five: Jack will be able to intuit information from multiple sources around him (like brief psychic flashes where he seems to be reading bits of everyone else's minds, but only tiny glimpses into others' thought processes - not telepathy), but he may cause some level of brief dysfunction in others.
As time goes on, Jack fears he may need to be isolated, and he is afraid he will have to spend most of his time alone.
We will find out that Jack has amnesia of a sort. All the memories are there, but they have been externally blocked. In high stress situations, he'll flash back and the memory will cause him to be indecisive, irrational, or just flat out wrong. He doesn't remember having amnesia. (No joke intended.) Things seem like they're going just fine. It's in some way like trying to remember what happened when one was drunk.
Character History/Beginning (Includes the day "before")
Combat had taught him to sleep lightly.
The nearby bushes brushed against some sort of body doing its best to sneak up on the foxhole where he and his buddy were dug in. They seemed to be laughing and he swore he could hear glass bottles clanking. He tried not to breathe, not only to feel invisible, but because the his uniform reeked of mold.
At the dusky edge of consciousness he heard a diesel engine's transmission ramping up in an effort to move some huge mass, likely a tank. And it was getting closer.
His brain screamed “DO SOMETHING”.
The buddy he was sharing this pit with was asleep, and though he wanted to shake the man awake, his hands didn't move.
The truck/tank/whatever-it-was would be on top of them in seconds.
As desperation seized him, he realized he had a grenade in his hand, ready to lob at the oncoming monster. Suddenly, it was flying and exploded as it hit the vehicle.
He woke up.
Lying on the ground, trying not to focus on muscles that were cold and stiff—again--he looked up at the sky. His fuzzy brain slowly realized that he'd been woken by some sort of car crash.
Crumbling asphalt near a barely used dumpster wasn't the most comfortable mattress, and empty cardboard boxes didn't make the greatest pillows, but he'd slept worse places. He didn't get hassled much by the cops in this skid row alley he called “home”. It gave him a chance to meet the homeless. Many were families who'd gotten booted when they missed a rent or mortgage payment. Some were mentally unstable, but beyond their Tourette's outbursts and a healthy dose of paranoia were generally harmless.
And there were a damn sight too many who were merely tossed aside after they went to serve with their Uncle Sam. Some had found home and gang life to be dead ends. Some believed the lies of glory until they encountered real bullets and “Stop Loss” protocols.
They'd gone from broken homes to broken promises. They'd been stripped of purpose. And now they didn't trust much of anyone.
But they trusted him.
He'd shown some how to stop feeling sorry for themselves and rebuild lives that had essentially imploded. He'd shown them how serving each other could help save them all. He'd built a tight knit group of people who looked out for each other and would one day breathe life again into their little corner of society.
He hoped.
And he hoped he'd never need to use them for an unspeakable end.
For now, though, he wasn't so worried.
Well, not about that.
He was more worried about the phone call he'd received yesterday.
Being somewhat traditional, he'd set his ringtone to a standard telephone ring. Many people were amused that his phone actually sounded like a phone, and not something from some noisy and untalented “music” hack.
“Hello,” he'd said as he answered it.
The reply was three words he knew were coming, and wasn't sure he wanted to hear. “Pull the pin.”
The connection ended and he hung up.
He'd been activated, and it gave him a feeling of anxiety, as though someone were slowly squeezing his stomach.
It wasn't himself he was worried about. It was his friend, Al, who slept only a few yards away on a slightly less crumbled piece of alley.
He'd moved swiftly, almost gliding, to the end of that alley and grabbed a copy of one of the free newspapers sheltered in an orange plastic bin. It was sitting just outside the liquor store.
He'd taken a deep breath and looked at the blinking OPEN sign. He wondered how Al would get along while he was gone. Alcohol gave Al some comfort from the demons that had infected him during his second tour. (Some people had called him Al Coholic. It was a cheap and adolescent joke. If only they'd known.)
Ambling back down the alley, he opened the paper to the section that had rooms for rent, and found the ad he was looking for:
Seeking single occupant for a room in a local cooperative.
Rent reasonable.
Call today.
DoD Property Management
He pulled his phone from one pocket and dialed the number. From another he pulled a pack of Marlboro 27s and a lighter and started to smoke.
“Hello?....Yes, I'm calling about the room....College age residents?....No, I don't mind that....No, I don't smoke (He flicked the cigarette away)....Tomorrow?...For dinner?....About 7? Sure I can make it. My schedule looks pretty open....OK....Yup....Yup....See you then....My name?”
He needed a name. Something regular....Joe? John? Too plain. How about....
“Jack”
And right in the middle of skid row....
“Jack Skidder....See you tomorrow.”
And now that it had indeed become “tomorrow”, he needed to make one more call.
Ring....Ring....Ring....Ri--”Charlie? I need your help.”