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[b]Name:[/b] Robert S. Bach

[b]Gender:[/b] Male

[b]Age:[/b] 31

[b]Eyes:[/b] Dark brown

[b]Hair:[/b] Dark brown

[b]Occupation/Position:[/b] Neuro-Computer Interface Technician

[b]Background:[/b] Robert, known better as Hob to his friends, has done it all. He's been on the stage as actor and musician, worked behind the scenes in art galleries and guerrilla theatre, busked on street corners from LA to NY, chalked sidewalk scenes right out of Mary Poppins, wrote short stories from a wide variety of genres, and sculpted a wide variety of projects from countless mediums (specializing in "found art".) The only trouble is... he hasn't been particularly great at any of it. Not that he ever actually failed at any of his artistic endeavors, Hob just never reached that level of greatness where he would be recognized by anyone outside a select circle. His parents and younger siblings were encouraging but never outright proud of him; they remained living in the quiet suburbia of Portland, Oregon as he galavanted wherever he found his muse.

The onslaught of The Change brought all of that to an end. At first, people threw themselves in any entertainment they could find in an effort to distract themselves, and in a perverse twist of events Hob found himself actually making money! That rapidly changed, almost as fast as the Earth itself. As more and more of the globe was covered, panic set in. No one had time for the arts anymore, at least not ones they had to spend money on! Hob's livelihood dried up, and so did the careers of his friends and acquaintances. Down and out, he found himself sharing an apartment with six other artists in Chicago and barely making rent. Outside, the crime rates soared; society was rapidly breaking down in the law of "take what you want." 

So it came as no real surprise when, one night while trudging back from an unsuccessful gig, he was abducted by a bunch of men in suits driving a black van. Hob was almost resigned to whatever might come next: murder, rape, enslavement... What he had not been expecting was a job offer.

Taken to a quiet office in the middle of nowhere, he was informed that his imagination was needed for a special project of the government's. The requirements called for someone of extreme artistic ability and imagination, someone who could look at the world differently than the average person on the street. If that wasn't Hob in a nutshell, no one was! Only... the job in question was for a computer technician. Hob protested in honesty, fully admitting he had no experience with computers outside of using the internet from time to time and had only a vague idea of how one was even put together. He still remembered the recruiting agent sitting behind his desk dressed all the world like Mr. Smith from those old Matrix movies; the man had smiled like a jackal and uttered one word: "Perfect." It was then that it became more and more 'an offer he couldn't refuse.' Hob was bundled off to someplace he only ever heard referred to as The Mountain and enrolled in a series of training programs that made no sense whatsoever at first. At least, they didn't make sense until they came for him in the middle of the night for the surgery. Hob was never sure exactly how long it took, but in an induced coma he was forced to undergo a number of cranial surgeries in which rudimentary implants were installed. By the time he recovered, small silver disks rested on both of his temples. 

Hob went into a rage, trashing his spartan room to his utmost before a counselor was finally called in to talk with him. Surprised at Hob's ignorance of the situation, the counselor dedicated himself to explaining exactly what the hell had been going on and what was being done to him.

Neuro-computer interfacing, it was called. It was the final leap into melding the human consciousness into the digital world. One didn't need to know programming languages or structures or any of it, merely had to have the imagination and force of will to create what they wanted in their heads. By extension of the terminals that were now wired into his skull, Hob was one of the very few humans who would ever be able to do so. The computer network on the new ark, the [i]Copernicus[/i], needed every person the military could lay their hands on to interface with it. His abduction and forced training had been regrettable but necessary, he was assured. Out of the nearly seven thousand people who would be aboard the [i]Copernicus[/i], only seventeen had the mental capacity and the imagination to act as these human interfaces, and Hob would be the eighteenth and last. As foolish as it might seem to tie humanity's last hope into such new technology, the benefits were too hard too ignore for the ship's designers: the neuro system was faster and more reliable, it took up less space, energy, and resources. So long as there was at least three technicians "plugged" into the network at any given time, the ship should not have any computer issues on the software (now "wetware") end. The rest was up to the maintenance crews to deal with the hardware.

Having no real choice, Hob finally capitulated and accepted his fate. He left the Earth behind, never knowing the fate of his family or any of his friends across the States. The only personal items he had were those things he was carrying when he had been abducted, the prize of which was an accordion that no one wanted him to play. He threw himself into the training sequences then. Where he could not longer create art with his hands, he began to do so with his mind. When he was logged into the ship's neurocomputer, he was part of a pantheon of gods and goddess who bent virtual reality to their will.

Which was when he discovered the next blow. The system was not a perfect escape from reality. It could induce any number of psychosis, and team members had to subject themselves to regular counseling and psychiatric sessions in addition to monitoring each other. Worse were the ghosts. When a technician disconnected from the system, a mental imprint was left behind, an echo of that technician that the next guy or gal would have to deal with. The ghosts couldn't cause any damage, but they could be incredibly distracting! They were the residual copies of surface thoughts, emotions, and memories of the prior techs, and they floated through the system until they eventually faded away. The stronger the thought, the longer it would linger. Personality conflicts arose out of this until some technicians absolutely refused to use the same terminal as certain others. Hob and some of the other technicians also have reported to counselors the fear that these memories and impressions were somehow consolidating to form an artificial intelligence deep within the computer's core, a possibility that the designers, hardware engineers, and counselors all believe to be impossible. 

Now Hob is beginning to wonder what it means if he and the others are right... and what it means if they are wrong.