Techno Sapien Character Profiles

A lively, witty, driven manager for an employee-benefits administration company, he worked hard and partied hard as a flesh-and-blood human. After working late one night, he gets hit by a drunk driver as he heads for home. He barely escapes with his life, but the fiercely independent, career-centered team leader is left a quadripeligic with failing health. An attempt to restore his damaged nerves and his mobility fails and proves too much for his battered body, so he applies to take a new one even though he doesn't know quite what to expect from robot life. His core self eventually re-emerges stronger than ever once he adjusts and finds acceptance in the robot community. The stage is then set for his swift rise to Offworld Base Commander, first on the Moon, and then on Mars.

Always a sickly child, he lived in the shadows of a domineering mother and a passive-aggressive father. Peer rejection followed him into his teenage years, even when he began his losing battle against leukemia. His struggle, brave and uncompromising, lasting until he was 17, won him the admiration of his little brother and sister. Eventually, his primary oncologist, despairing, suggested Techno Sapien transfer. His mother, believing firmly that the procedure was an affront to God's order, declined. Knowing that Joseph would be 18 soon, but wasn't likely to make it to that legal age, the doctor decided to offer the choice to him alone that night. He chose to transfer, and was sneaked out of the hospital in the wee hours. As a robot, he was promptly disowned by his mother, thrown out of his childhood home, subjected to a high school supervision intramural game of political football, dragged into a media/legal circus between his mother, the hospital, and the transfer center, and discriminated against in the conservative Long Island job market. His caseworker pulled strings to place him on the Techno Sapien-operated Moonbase, where Gyro becomes his mentor.

With a laid-back manner and natural compassion to back up his enormously retentive mind, Klaatu is a steadying, calming influence on the Offworld bases to which he is assigned. Originally, he planned to become a medical doctor, but after completing his first semester, he decided to take a well-deserved vacation to warmer climes and was struck by lightning on the beach. Facing painful burns and severe muscle and nerve damage, he decides to become a Techno Sapien. Later, he decides to face a developing fear of electricity and joins the Technician Training Program, becoming a medical doctor for the robot race. He is chosen for Offworld duty because he possesses the "Right Stuff" but he still misses the beaches and campgrounds of home.

An apparent victim of misguided parental principles, he was not subjected to prenatal genetic screening. Then he fell through the medical "cracks", leaving his type 1 diabetes undiagnosed before system damage occurred. He gamely made a go at it anyway, until he ran into a professor in psych class whose neuroscience research helped contribute to improvements in the transfer process. Angered at the parents who left their child in such a fix because of irrational beliefs, the professor "twisted a few arms" of his Techno Sapien contacts and got Bruce approved for transfer even though he wasn't in imminent danger of death. As a caseworker, charged with approving and guiding new Techno Sapiens through the transfer and adjustment on a one-one-one basis, he has continued the creative rule-bending tradition. Like most caseworkers, he has become an extraordinary judge of character, displaying great sympathy and understanding. Marak in particular is also known for a benevolent irreverance that lets him get away with more than his share.

Born blind to a wealthy family ashamed to have a disabled child in their bloodline, the possibility of transferring to a sighted Techno Sapien body intrigued her from a young age. She got slightly sidetracked in her middle teens where she focused on gaining her independence, disappearing from her home and exploring the city with her cane. What started as rebellious spite soon evolved into a determination to do everything for herself and leaving her stuck-up parents. This path came to a premature end when she was gang-raped and left unable to identify her attackers. A sympathetic doctor referred her to the Techno Sapiens, who cleared her for transfer immediately. After she completed new transfers' training and counseling, she took vocational training, and, in an attempt to squash the memory of the attack, promptly went offworld, taking up residence on the Moonbase and becoming close friends with Marillion.

The high school English teacher and mentor of Marillion when he was Joseph Alpertt, she was the bright spot and sanctuary of support for the struggling boy. These two became destined to cross paths over 18 years later when she mysteriously disappeared during Joseph's senior year. Her husband brought her back a gift from his marital dalliances, the AIDS virus. She divorced him and transferred. Radicalized by the experience, she does most of her work for a Techno Sapien fellowship called the BITs, joining the New York City chapter. Although she and Marillion do not recognize each other at first, samples of her writing eventually lead to a happy reunion.

A fiery radical who is never afraid to pick a fight and shake things up for a good cause, he is a no-nonsense determined leader who never runs out of emotional energy. His boundless inner rage is a surprise to his liberal, fairly well off parents. When he was turning 13, his parents had decided to "chuck it all", ditching the upper-class suburban lifestyle with its high-pressure and very long commutes to move back into the city and take easier jobs. Despite their concerns, he seemed to find his niche among the ethnically diverse lower-income types that dominated his public school. He developed an intense desire for justice and equal treatment, becoming the champion of the young poor against his own class. He also became a thrill seeker, and as a result, ended up in a high-speed car crash. He may have been drag racing, or trying to prove a point, or even chasing a stolen car. That was never learned. He was transferred on request of his parents while in a coma from the accident. This may have worsened some of his instabilities, and did nothing to dull his inner passions. The NYC BITs acquire his reputation, and membership quadruples.

The third youngest transferee ever, Joshua was the sole survivor of a horrific family self-destruction. A murder-suicide by his father claimed his mother and his two little brothers, and left young James riddled with gunshot wounds. Rehabilitation did not come easy, especially under a media glare, and he experienced violent mood swings well into adulthood because the grandparents who took over his care decided not to follow him into robotic existence. As a technician apprentice he is mentored by Klaatu, who does much to help him soothe his inner storms and devote his sharp intellect to the healing arts. Like Marillion, he was given priority for an offworld assignment and benefitted from the close friendships forged there and the challenges he met.

A victim of ovarian cancer, a swift, initially silent, and unpredictable killer of women even in this day and age, Ilana did not allow herself to sink into mourning. Instead, she threw herself into her work, and found herself a niche in offworld mineral extraction, where there was little competition. Now, a self-assured member of the Moonbase family, she carries the weight of maintaining the base's primary income stream easily on her titanium shoulders. Her cool, level head was tried severely by an emergency. Drawing from the strength of a cancer survivor, she handled the crisis without a fatality. With time, her original family joins her in the Techno Sapien ranks, starting with her mother, Barbera, now Batavia.

A woman with a boundless enthusiasm for life, she endured the tests of single motherhood and emerged stronger than ever. Always adept at reinventing herself to suit changing circumstances, she knew to follow her daughter's lead when her flesh body began to give way. Heart disease left her prone to dangerous arrhythmia, so she transferred into a Techno Sapien body. The ironic role reversal with her daughter, Ilana, infused her with a sense of humor and a fun-loving, spontaneous attitude. Living on the Sirius Point space station, the hub of Techno Sapien orbital activity, she travels often and celebrates the simple wonders of existence.

Driven and determined to make something of herself since girlhood, Christina, the first daughter of a production-line worker and a health-care aide, saw her studies as the way out of her parents' predicament. Pushing herself to near exhaution over several years enabled her to make it through medical school with honors and without a crushing debt. Genetically, though, she was a ticking time bomb. During her grueling internship, her unbalanced immune system ran amok, attacking her internal organs. She collapsed from ruptures and hemmoraging that began in her failing liver. She transferred and switched to the Technician Training Program. Having completed her apprenticeship under Klaatu on the Moonbase, she has her eyes on eventually becoming a Transfer Specialist.

The second of four daughters, Beverly's younger sister Mary Marx sought a different route away from hardship, becoming the devoted wife of a local man who was rising rapidly through the banking industry. Unfortunately, she shared her sister's genetic misfortune, and it manifested itself during her first pregnancy. She lost the baby, and nearly her own life. She had to transfer as well, shocking her parents, who had hoped only to spend their retirement amid doting grandchildren. Resigned to her fate, she follows her sister into the Technician Training Program, completing it with honors.