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Felix Antol
Age: 24.
HISTORY:
It's the future, and humanity has learned to pick up and move outward, into the distant unknown, long before the beginning of this little story; centuries and centuries ago, astronauts perfected their shuttles, took people from a depleted Earth and carried on with their lives among the more appropriate planets. It wasn't easy pickings, that's for damn sure; the planet Felix's descendants ended up on was about the same size as Old Earth, and far more water than land, but it was something. One of the most unfortunate problems was... well. A major loss in information and technology. The ship had been all but destroyed (allegedly) after the safety pods launched, and what remained of Earth's past had been left to be told orally, or with what little property survived the fall, among everyone's personal belongings in their sleeping pods. Tragically, a large percentage of animals included.
Not long into the fall, the orderlies took over. Or at least, that's what the kiddos call 'em. If you want to get technical, they're officers who work under the Refounding Fathers. Yeah, lame and stupidly American-centric namesake, but you know how it is. They were lead operators of the SS King Kong's departure from Earth, all as old as dirt and with all the smugness of a petty scientist gone half-loony from being in space for so long. Generations passed, those smug old men died, and life carried on. People integrated, kept as much of their cultures and memories alive as possible. Little things became heirlooms. Felix's dad owned an 8-track player past down the line, hidden from orderlies; apparently, his great-great-great-great-whatever really loved the 70's, you know. Sometimes Felix'd pop it on after a long day working on his uncle's farm. The Beatles are pretty cool.
Technology got set back, but it still continued on. It wasn't like they didn't have the capacity to do it all over again, albeit slower. Electricity got back running, and cities — real cities — cropped up. Centuries later, and there was a little corruption in the ranks. Refounding Fathers, they're not so nice about the whole 'democracy' thing. In fact, they snatch that right up. Rules start forming. And then more rules. And then more. Curfews, surveillance, illegal confinement. Severe penalties for littering, cars made illegal, technology severely limited in households (strict, very strict).
So it stands to reason some secret communities cropped up. So on, so forth.
Felix's parents weren't involved in that, not at all. They were archeologists who worked on behalf of the Refounding Fathers. As in, they traveled their small but homely world and tracked down the debris from the SS King Kong. Felix usually didn't follow; just stayed on his uncle Jannick's farm and hung out with friends. Sometimes he'd join in on the traveling, if the place was sunny and the people were fun, but really, his parents were kind of addicts. Their small apartment would be covered in drawings from his mother of things from Earth; animals were apparently varied, like... crazy varied — not just dogs and cats and what few livestock bred and survived from That Fateful First Day. His mother loved to tell him stories of incredible beasts and the things people could do before Earth fell on its head. Notes everywhere, pinned to cork-boards.
His father had a piece of scrap metal from the original ship, but... well, that's some of the only stuff permitted to be kept. Working for the government can kind of suck; strict people, you know. Shitty people.
There aren't prison systems here, not exactly. There are hush-hush places people go into and don't really come back out of. That's the penalty for breaking the law; you lose the right to free will, in steps. First step's the nice one, and usually it's reserved for small rule-breaking. Cute little slaps on the wrist to make people not freak out at the potential for what's worse: federal law breaking. Basically, becoming something of a zombie. You can't disobey, your memory gets wiped, and... you might as well be dead. It's not like you're not a person anymore, but... you have no reason to fight, and even if you wanted to, they'd just re-wipe you and start over. You're their worker bees. You do what they say, no questions. And yeah, that's only the severest of punishments suited for the worst offenders, but the government is quite good at bending the truth to get who they want.
Nobody knows how they can do it: the mind-wipes, the obey method, getting zombied. Nobody dares screw with that system.
(Mostly.)
Theo and Mila Antol weren't one to fight it, anyway. They had really gotten more heated in their work when Felix's young sister Margot passed away as a child due to a typical and untreatable ailment that effects the young and sometimes the old, attacking the tissue around their heart; many kids get it, and the survival rate... well, it's low. They had started work with the government in the hopes that they could one day find irreplaceable files from the SS King Kong that may hold keys to disease and illness research from Earth. Then perhaps, someday, CHD would be stopped altogether.
His father was always kind of a wimp and his mother was always too busy with life to even consider screwing around with rebellious folks. But this is where things got crazy really damn fast — his parents were intercepted and charged with conspiracy to withhold from the government during one of their major excavations. Apparently, they'd found something too important to just hand over, or learned something big; for that, they were given the most severe punishment beside death. Memory wipes, forced servitude, and work in one of their larger institutions.
Felix used secret savings to pay off one of the transporters and sneaked a ride, having not heard from his parents in years. Tonight was perfect; he'd learned from the deep underground web of chitter-chat that the rebels were planning an attack on the west wing of the place and had hoped to use it as a cover to enter and exit the place unscathed.
The place was strange, far more advanced than the outside world; given a disguise by the guard he'd befriended who disagreed with his work, he quickly made his way into the innermost walls of the compound. When he did find his mother and father in the labs, however they had no clue who he was. Or any clue who his uncle was. Their names had been replaced with new ones, ones Felix had never heard of. Imprisoned without cells, they were well and truly trapped inside the inner workings of the organization, 'zombified' as they call it. Felix attempted to have them come back with him, but was met with resistance. It's when he attempted to leave the compound again that he was caught mid-flee, and for that, he was given the penalty of being turned into a zombie like them.
Some asshole they only referred to as 'captain' took him to The Interrogation Room. Probably with a capital T, I, and R. It looked it. They'd strapped him down in a room with terrifyingly new technology he'd never seen before in his life, and started the process of turning him into what they called "appropriate slave labor" when he wouldn't tell them anything they wanted to know (who are you, why are you here, who sent you). After all, he's a sturdy guy. He worked on a farm. He would be great for manual work. That's what they demoted the guy he paid off to, anyway. "And I know ways to get you to tell me what you're doing here anyway. Much easier than physical violence."
But lucky for Felix (... or maybe not so lucky), the conversion was interrupted mid-process, something he'd been hoping for earlier: the hush-hush crew of rebels — The Historians, they called themselves (always sounded pretentious to Felix, but boy was he glad they were out there), determined to uncover what was being held back from the general populace — had launched a surprise attack on supplies in one of the cargo bays.
Felix made a run for it when everyone was too overwhelmed by the alarms and stench of gun smoke, crawling into a room after a harrowing sprint and finding himself collapsing in an area full of carefully housed things.
Not just normal things.
Felix sat breathing in a panic among what he realized must've been his parent's work — what they were digging for, looking into oceans for. There was a small box with game pieces, and the head of a wooden horse, and a nearly unreadable comic book, mostly scorched. AT-M-N. There was binders full of book pages. 'ENCYCLOPEDIAS'. Information he'd never, ever seen before, some dated from years and years ago. Collected fragments of time from another world. His parents had helped find all this stuff. Broken dolls, shoes without companions, decorated bowls and clocks with too many numbers.
He crawled through the ventilation shaft and was able to see from his position another room, huge; if he'd fallen through the vent, he would have surely died from the fall. Instead the alarmingly large room... a huge piece of ship, with the word KONG in black lettering on the side. The SS King Kong. Thought to have been long lost, or at least that's what the Refounding Fathers had said. Despite his every compulsion to stay and both save his family and learn more about the things kept in the dark, Felix continued out of the vents and into the forest, crawling over fencing that had been blessedly electricity-free.
Returning home, he learned too quickly there were... complications, to being processed as a prisoner. While they couldn't turn him into a zombie, they sure did succeed in making him... obey every order he's given, and he lacked the ability to give orders himself. He'd started to figure it out on the streets in his attempts to try and track down the Historians to tell them what he saw, and to help his parents. Receding into his apartment, he loses contact with worried friends, collecting his parents' drawings, whatever notes they may have, and a suitcase. There was little option here in a smaller city; he had decided to make a break for the heavily populated City of Angels.
To find the Historians, he'd have to get into the grittier world. Not stay in farming areas.
Maybe then he'd get a real shot at undoing what happened to his parents.
Maybe.
PERSONALITY:
Felix: Don't do the thing.
Felix again: I'm gonna do the thing.
Hyperbolic, a bit dramatic, but playful. He's always been the humorous one; not quite a jokester who causes trouble, but just one of those dudes who lazes about when he's not working and soaks up the atmosphere. He enjoys... not lying, per se, but bending the truth, especially after The Obey Method. In moments of frustration he gets a bit too snarky sharp-tongued, and his frustration sometimes comes a little easily. He has to apologize to his elders a lot, that much is for sure. With his particular condition, he usually has to rely on snark to mask the fact that he's actually pretty freaking nervous all the time with regards to what people say to him. He's what you'd call a "20 questions man". But really, it's the best way to circumvent his issue. He can't give anyone direct orders, and he can't help but utterly follow ones given to him. He has to be careful.
He is a determined sort of spirit, who is self-aware in his tendency to launch into things without any decent sort of plan for how anything ends. But then again, he also is the kind of person who starts a project but never finishes it, much to his parents' frustrations (as they're quite the opposite). He's not too far gone from berating himself or chiding his stupidity, albeit with a usually mellow aura even then. Fast talking, he's a bit prone to talking out loud to himself, rambling because for as often as he is chillin', his mind is always working in overdrive.
His imagination is a terrible creature that makes him paranoid and worried about ghosts in the closet. In that way, he can be quite a childish sort, though he'll argue up and down that there's nothing childish about fearing the unknown... However, cowardice is not quite the word for him and said paranoia/fear. He's the weird guy who worries about all this, but will go look into something anyway. Curiosity killed the cat. And quite often, despite being plenty smart (though he would comment he didn't inherit his family intelligence by any stretch), he leaps into things without thinking long enough about it. Compulsive, this one.
He's not particularly bookish, and relies more on tricks and street smarts. Despite that, though, he minds his own business and isn't one for overtly crazy stunts like some fellas his age, unless... y'know, the stunt is sneaking into government facilities. He of course will have his often laid-back and mellow personality challenged severely by his newest condition (mind-washing, basically, eh), and he'll have moments where he is overwhelmed by his place in life, or depressed at the sudden shift in his world, which had been relatively peaceful before his parents vanished.
He had also experienced loss at an early age, with the death of his young sister, so he often found himself supremely protective of younger kids; he misses that sibling connection and feels guilty that it had been her and not him, especially when she had been so creative and more 'capable of greater things' in his opinion.
Age: 24.
HISTORY:
It's the future, and humanity has learned to pick up and move outward, into the distant unknown, long before the beginning of this little story; centuries and centuries ago, astronauts perfected their shuttles, took people from a depleted Earth and carried on with their lives among the more appropriate planets. It wasn't easy pickings, that's for damn sure; the planet Felix's descendants ended up on was about the same size as Old Earth, and far more water than land, but it was something. One of the most unfortunate problems was... well. A major loss in information and technology. The ship had been all but destroyed (allegedly) after the safety pods launched, and what remained of Earth's past had been left to be told orally, or with what little property survived the fall, among everyone's personal belongings in their sleeping pods. Tragically, a large percentage of animals included.
Not long into the fall, the orderlies took over. Or at least, that's what the kiddos call 'em. If you want to get technical, they're officers who work under the Refounding Fathers. Yeah, lame and stupidly American-centric namesake, but you know how it is. They were lead operators of the SS King Kong's departure from Earth, all as old as dirt and with all the smugness of a petty scientist gone half-loony from being in space for so long. Generations passed, those smug old men died, and life carried on. People integrated, kept as much of their cultures and memories alive as possible. Little things became heirlooms. Felix's dad owned an 8-track player past down the line, hidden from orderlies; apparently, his great-great-great-great-whatever really loved the 70's, you know. Sometimes Felix'd pop it on after a long day working on his uncle's farm. The Beatles are pretty cool.
Technology got set back, but it still continued on. It wasn't like they didn't have the capacity to do it all over again, albeit slower. Electricity got back running, and cities — real cities — cropped up. Centuries later, and there was a little corruption in the ranks. Refounding Fathers, they're not so nice about the whole 'democracy' thing. In fact, they snatch that right up. Rules start forming. And then more rules. And then more. Curfews, surveillance, illegal confinement. Severe penalties for littering, cars made illegal, technology severely limited in households (strict, very strict).
So it stands to reason some secret communities cropped up. So on, so forth.
Felix's parents weren't involved in that, not at all. They were archeologists who worked on behalf of the Refounding Fathers. As in, they traveled their small but homely world and tracked down the debris from the SS King Kong. Felix usually didn't follow; just stayed on his uncle Jannick's farm and hung out with friends. Sometimes he'd join in on the traveling, if the place was sunny and the people were fun, but really, his parents were kind of addicts. Their small apartment would be covered in drawings from his mother of things from Earth; animals were apparently varied, like... crazy varied — not just dogs and cats and what few livestock bred and survived from That Fateful First Day. His mother loved to tell him stories of incredible beasts and the things people could do before Earth fell on its head. Notes everywhere, pinned to cork-boards.
His father had a piece of scrap metal from the original ship, but... well, that's some of the only stuff permitted to be kept. Working for the government can kind of suck; strict people, you know. Shitty people.
There aren't prison systems here, not exactly. There are hush-hush places people go into and don't really come back out of. That's the penalty for breaking the law; you lose the right to free will, in steps. First step's the nice one, and usually it's reserved for small rule-breaking. Cute little slaps on the wrist to make people not freak out at the potential for what's worse: federal law breaking. Basically, becoming something of a zombie. You can't disobey, your memory gets wiped, and... you might as well be dead. It's not like you're not a person anymore, but... you have no reason to fight, and even if you wanted to, they'd just re-wipe you and start over. You're their worker bees. You do what they say, no questions. And yeah, that's only the severest of punishments suited for the worst offenders, but the government is quite good at bending the truth to get who they want.
Nobody knows how they can do it: the mind-wipes, the obey method, getting zombied. Nobody dares screw with that system.
(Mostly.)
Theo and Mila Antol weren't one to fight it, anyway. They had really gotten more heated in their work when Felix's young sister Margot passed away as a child due to a typical and untreatable ailment that effects the young and sometimes the old, attacking the tissue around their heart; many kids get it, and the survival rate... well, it's low. They had started work with the government in the hopes that they could one day find irreplaceable files from the SS King Kong that may hold keys to disease and illness research from Earth. Then perhaps, someday, CHD would be stopped altogether.
His father was always kind of a wimp and his mother was always too busy with life to even consider screwing around with rebellious folks. But this is where things got crazy really damn fast — his parents were intercepted and charged with conspiracy to withhold from the government during one of their major excavations. Apparently, they'd found something too important to just hand over, or learned something big; for that, they were given the most severe punishment beside death. Memory wipes, forced servitude, and work in one of their larger institutions.
Felix used secret savings to pay off one of the transporters and sneaked a ride, having not heard from his parents in years. Tonight was perfect; he'd learned from the deep underground web of chitter-chat that the rebels were planning an attack on the west wing of the place and had hoped to use it as a cover to enter and exit the place unscathed.
The place was strange, far more advanced than the outside world; given a disguise by the guard he'd befriended who disagreed with his work, he quickly made his way into the innermost walls of the compound. When he did find his mother and father in the labs, however they had no clue who he was. Or any clue who his uncle was. Their names had been replaced with new ones, ones Felix had never heard of. Imprisoned without cells, they were well and truly trapped inside the inner workings of the organization, 'zombified' as they call it. Felix attempted to have them come back with him, but was met with resistance. It's when he attempted to leave the compound again that he was caught mid-flee, and for that, he was given the penalty of being turned into a zombie like them.
Some asshole they only referred to as 'captain' took him to The Interrogation Room. Probably with a capital T, I, and R. It looked it. They'd strapped him down in a room with terrifyingly new technology he'd never seen before in his life, and started the process of turning him into what they called "appropriate slave labor" when he wouldn't tell them anything they wanted to know (who are you, why are you here, who sent you). After all, he's a sturdy guy. He worked on a farm. He would be great for manual work. That's what they demoted the guy he paid off to, anyway. "And I know ways to get you to tell me what you're doing here anyway. Much easier than physical violence."
But lucky for Felix (... or maybe not so lucky), the conversion was interrupted mid-process, something he'd been hoping for earlier: the hush-hush crew of rebels — The Historians, they called themselves (always sounded pretentious to Felix, but boy was he glad they were out there), determined to uncover what was being held back from the general populace — had launched a surprise attack on supplies in one of the cargo bays.
Felix made a run for it when everyone was too overwhelmed by the alarms and stench of gun smoke, crawling into a room after a harrowing sprint and finding himself collapsing in an area full of carefully housed things.
Not just normal things.
Felix sat breathing in a panic among what he realized must've been his parent's work — what they were digging for, looking into oceans for. There was a small box with game pieces, and the head of a wooden horse, and a nearly unreadable comic book, mostly scorched. AT-M-N. There was binders full of book pages. 'ENCYCLOPEDIAS'. Information he'd never, ever seen before, some dated from years and years ago. Collected fragments of time from another world. His parents had helped find all this stuff. Broken dolls, shoes without companions, decorated bowls and clocks with too many numbers.
He crawled through the ventilation shaft and was able to see from his position another room, huge; if he'd fallen through the vent, he would have surely died from the fall. Instead the alarmingly large room... a huge piece of ship, with the word KONG in black lettering on the side. The SS King Kong. Thought to have been long lost, or at least that's what the Refounding Fathers had said. Despite his every compulsion to stay and both save his family and learn more about the things kept in the dark, Felix continued out of the vents and into the forest, crawling over fencing that had been blessedly electricity-free.
Returning home, he learned too quickly there were... complications, to being processed as a prisoner. While they couldn't turn him into a zombie, they sure did succeed in making him... obey every order he's given, and he lacked the ability to give orders himself. He'd started to figure it out on the streets in his attempts to try and track down the Historians to tell them what he saw, and to help his parents. Receding into his apartment, he loses contact with worried friends, collecting his parents' drawings, whatever notes they may have, and a suitcase. There was little option here in a smaller city; he had decided to make a break for the heavily populated City of Angels.
To find the Historians, he'd have to get into the grittier world. Not stay in farming areas.
Maybe then he'd get a real shot at undoing what happened to his parents.
Maybe.
PERSONALITY:
Felix: Don't do the thing.
Felix again: I'm gonna do the thing.
Hyperbolic, a bit dramatic, but playful. He's always been the humorous one; not quite a jokester who causes trouble, but just one of those dudes who lazes about when he's not working and soaks up the atmosphere. He enjoys... not lying, per se, but bending the truth, especially after The Obey Method. In moments of frustration he gets a bit too snarky sharp-tongued, and his frustration sometimes comes a little easily. He has to apologize to his elders a lot, that much is for sure. With his particular condition, he usually has to rely on snark to mask the fact that he's actually pretty freaking nervous all the time with regards to what people say to him. He's what you'd call a "20 questions man". But really, it's the best way to circumvent his issue. He can't give anyone direct orders, and he can't help but utterly follow ones given to him. He has to be careful.
He is a determined sort of spirit, who is self-aware in his tendency to launch into things without any decent sort of plan for how anything ends. But then again, he also is the kind of person who starts a project but never finishes it, much to his parents' frustrations (as they're quite the opposite). He's not too far gone from berating himself or chiding his stupidity, albeit with a usually mellow aura even then. Fast talking, he's a bit prone to talking out loud to himself, rambling because for as often as he is chillin', his mind is always working in overdrive.
His imagination is a terrible creature that makes him paranoid and worried about ghosts in the closet. In that way, he can be quite a childish sort, though he'll argue up and down that there's nothing childish about fearing the unknown... However, cowardice is not quite the word for him and said paranoia/fear. He's the weird guy who worries about all this, but will go look into something anyway. Curiosity killed the cat. And quite often, despite being plenty smart (though he would comment he didn't inherit his family intelligence by any stretch), he leaps into things without thinking long enough about it. Compulsive, this one.
He's not particularly bookish, and relies more on tricks and street smarts. Despite that, though, he minds his own business and isn't one for overtly crazy stunts like some fellas his age, unless... y'know, the stunt is sneaking into government facilities. He of course will have his often laid-back and mellow personality challenged severely by his newest condition (mind-washing, basically, eh), and he'll have moments where he is overwhelmed by his place in life, or depressed at the sudden shift in his world, which had been relatively peaceful before his parents vanished.
He had also experienced loss at an early age, with the death of his young sister, so he often found himself supremely protective of younger kids; he misses that sibling connection and feels guilty that it had been her and not him, especially when she had been so creative and more 'capable of greater things' in his opinion.
