Chuck

Description

Charles Johnson – Chuck, to whom he is familiar – is a study in contrasts.  He is neither too Elf, nor too Human with attached earlobes and high, sculpted cheekbones yet his ear tips are rounded and further hidden by a mop of chestnut-colored hair. He has a noticeable layer of baby fat around his effortlessly clean-shaven face, yet his consistently pained and perhaps guarded expression is that much more appealing due to his genetic heritage.

Chuck has embraced technology, though some would say possibly a little overmuch.  His eyes have been replaced by cyber, though he kept his brown irises (not literally, just the color) in the same shade of his hair for just a few nuyen more. The telltale chrome of a Universal Data Port-enabled datajack gleams in his right temple and is matched by his cybernetic right arm. Less obvious, perhaps (unless you’re one of the lucky few to catch him undressed) is the synthetic flesh covering his right leg and even his torso.  As half of him has been replaced, chrome and synthetic cyberware is chiseled, perhaps even sculpted while his flesh and bone is loose as if he’d succeeded with a rapid weight loss program.

A studied (if not anachronistic) intellectual, Chuck prefers comfort and utility over the snappy first impressions that are the hallmarks of the Approved Corporate Style.  A pair of beige cargo pants hides his unmentionables, such as his cyberdeck and his commlink. Evidence of a thin white T-shirt peeks out from beneath a a baggy, scarlet hoodie advertising the previous expansion of political back stab simulator Seelie Court, and one could find a shirt of honest-to-Dog chain mail sandwiched between those layers.  Completing his quest for comfortable familiarity, Chuck wears a battered pair of slip-ons with the custom gel insoles – a perfect shoe for an assistant teaching classes all day.

Background

Born to David and Eva Johnson in Seattle, Chuck and his older sister Lillie Anne took more after their Elven mother, a middle manager for a United Oil subsidiary based in Everett while their father (a human)  ran a warehouse for Federated Boeing.

David’s outlook was decidedly more blue-collar than the elegant and perhaps superior office setting that Mother represented, and Eva’s viewpoint rose ascendant when both of her children expressed Elven metatype traits on birth. Both Chuck and Lillie Anne were weaned on the Puritan work ethic that both parents represented and worked hard to make their parents proud.  Lillie Anne was a wunderkind, a master of her studies and a virtuoso flautist.

By comparison, Chuck (already interested in the concrete rules of math) faltered a scant percentage point behind his sister’s record and Eva panicked.  Managing the boy as Lofwyr would manage anyone under his wing, Chuck was enrolled in three separate after-school programs to bring his grades up and strongly encouraged via veiled threats to find extracurricular activities that didn’t involve Matrix games.  Simmering with annoyance yet feeling guilty for these emotions, Chuck acquiesced to this and found an unusual joy in baking – which is easy once treated as a math problem. Input variables into the correct equation, and the answer is cupcakes. Mistakes were to be eaten, and as the gulf widened between Chuck and Lillie Anne as siblings (and perhaps he and Eva as mother and son), Chuck made plenty of mistakes.

In an unfortunate and perhaps cruel twist of fate, Chuck’s grades remained inferior to his sister who had already been accepted to a business program at an Ivy-league university at the tender age of sixteen.  While still the pride of any public schooling system, Eva (and by extension Lillie Anne) thought little of Chuck’s efforts, his sister especially growing colder and more smug at her proven superiority over her brother.  David, meanwhile, simply shook his head and told his son to be strong and work through it. Chuck, perhaps, took the wrong lesson from this.

It wasn’t long after his fifteenth birthday (the day after, in fact) that he was taken to the local Universal Omnitech boutique for a suite of augmentations to help him in school.  Brought on by a disastrous grade of 92% in honors biology, Chuck’s genetic structure was taken to grow a bespoke mass of brain tissue to augment his cerebral cortex. As part of the Triple-G (Good Grades, Guaranteed) cyberware and bioware suite, Eva had a Datajack and a Math Subprocessing Unit installed to improve Chuck’s already superior mathematical ability.  His eyes were replaced, though the color selected to perfectly match his hair (a must for future corporate interviews), and taste bud replacements installed to improve his ability to further impress executives at the wine tastings. It was perhaps the last that bothered Chuck the least as it allowed him to further fine-tune his baking – and he was baking a lot.

Surrounded by blessed silence, Chuck’s first months at college were enjoyable and he applied himself diligently to his studies.  He was not the most social of butterflies and missed several opportunities to expand his circle of friends in favor of more Matrix gaming and the occasional baking jag.  He attended a campus ‘historical reenactor’ event that was attached to a larger organization, and there he found an enjoyment for – and training with – the sword.

It did not take long for the casual racism of the day to rear its ugly head.  Already being somewhat chubby for a metahuman and definitely fat for an Elf, he endured endless ridicule from humans and elves alike.  Neither could figure out which metatype he was, and so they both ragged on him for it.  Such cruelty began to wear Chuck down, and he quietly started to look at programs other than the business-focused curriculum that his mother had set up for him at a private school.

His swordsmanship classes took a turn for the worse when he was invited on an excursion with a larger group of elves and humans to a large re-enactment of a siege on an allied stronghold by an orkish horde.  The leaders proclaimed it was great fun every year and it would be a chance to see his bladework in a large melee, the ork ‘volunteers’ wouldn’t pose much of a threat, and at the end of the day, lunch was provided by local food trucks – all paid for by the local re-enactment organization.  Chuck was intrigued, and said he would attend.

Keeping in time with Chuck’s upbringing, things did not go as planned.  Scurrilous charlatans within the ork community had found a way to cheat and sent a seasoned team of combat veterans into the fight in order to wreak havoc on the opposition. Chuck himself was one such victim when an ork that was more chrome and muscle than man bashed a divot in Chuck’s helmet with a single blow so vicious that it ruptured Chuck’s eardrum.  The orks ‘won’ the re-enactment siege, and the organization planners quietly announced they would cover the medical fees of all injured attendees – of which Chuck was one.

Before going under the knife, Chuck made a quiet change to his surgical schedule.  In addition to repairing the damage, hearing enhancements would also be added while they were in there, and they would finish the work by rounding his ears to appear more human looking.  This was the easy part, as the difficulty would come in telling his family that his plans were changing and he would not be following in his sister’s footsteps. While Lillie Anne had graduated cum laude and found a respectable entry-level position for Telestrian Industries, he instead decided he would attend the local university’s Applied Mathematics program (rated one of the best in the UCAS for a public university) and continue on the education track to eventually achieve a PhD, a quiet office, and tenure.  This was, perhaps, the last straw for Eva, who declared that unless Chuck do as she demanded, he would be cut off from family support and written out of the will entirely.

To his surprise, Chuck received a message from his father as he was unpacking his things at the dorms of Seattle U.  It simply said, “I’m proud of you.”

Unburdened now by filial ties, Chuck graduated with a bachelor’s in Mathematics and a minor in Computer Science, stepping directly into the Master’s program for Mathematics as well.  He took on teaching for the professors at the university and supplemented his income by tutoring students – some of whom became friends.

One day, Chuck was on the way to swordsmanship practice with the local club and decided to step into a Stuffer Shack for some snacks.  It was but fickle chance that he ran into an old acquaintance and set off a series of events that would change his life, and his body, forevermore.

Never trust an Elf, they say.  Especially one who has your best interests in mind.