Registry of the Evolved Database
File #12 Sep 2010 04:47
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 Josh Hutcherson |
Brand was born as the first child to a relatively normal set of third-generation German-immigrant parents in the East Village. His great-great grandparents had arrived on the American shores at the turn of the century, and embedded themselves in the still tight-knit Germanic community in the East Village, finding work and pursuing the American Dream. The fruits of their efforts were carried into their children, who married the children of other immigrants. Their children were likewise successful. This pattern continued to Brand's parents, Kurt and Sylvia. Both of them have well-paying and respectable jobs. Kurt is a skilled accountant, and has many clients in the East Village that keep his own accounts well in the black. Sylvia helps her sister run the family boutique that had come from their parents. It is no surprise that with two flexible jobs and the fresh love of a young marriage that they would have children.
Brand was born in 1994, a good year for the Wolf family. He inherited his father's black hair and square jaw, and his mother's eyes and nose - along with the Suresh Linkage Complex. That becomes important later. Fortunately the pregnancy and delivery all went off smoothly, and though a baby did put something of a dent in their previously unrestrained lifestyle, both parents came shortly to feel the fulfillment of parenthood. Thanks to their flexible schedules and the help of extended family, Brand did not go neglected in his infancy. Three generations helped raise him up, and he was a good kid. So good that when he was five and starting school, his parents decided to have a second child.
In a year, they succeeded. Christoph came into the household when Brand was six year old. Two young children, six and a newborn, is generally quite a challenge for a family. Two factors decreased this difficulty. First was the extended family, which resulted in a lower workload for everyone involved. Secondly, Brand did not suffer from severe jealousy or other nascent rivalry issues with his baby brother, most likely because of the large social net that had surrounded him. He didn't feel the need to compete for attention or affection. In fact, the good old fashioned method of raising children had worked rather well with Brand. At the age of six he was a well-rounded little boy, more or less approaching the ideal of childhood.
Until 2006, things went pretty swimmingly for Brand. He loved his little brother, and no awkward gap existed between them. His teenage years with all those travails were still around the bend. His parents were happy and successful - in 2005 the whole family moved across the street and up a floor to new, more spacious digs. In school he brought home B's and some As, mostly in math. His father had gotten him involved in after-school wrestling, where he was popular and successful. Everything was sunshine and roses. Until The Bomb.
At only twelve years old, Brand did not have the sophisticated means to truly understand and cope with the destruction and death. It was a truly scarring event for him, as it was for many other children in New York. He became withdrawn, slightly paranoid, and fearful. After all, who knew what the terrorists would have done next? Things might have ended up badly for the previously happy Brand - but children can be resilient. His great-granma had passed, but he still had a big family to help him cope. He had a little brother he had to be brave for. So Brand grew up a little earlier than maybe he should have, but in the scheme of things it may have been for the best. He understood, after much coaching with his father, that what happened was just the work of men. Not gods, not fate.
Terrorists was something even a boy can understand, even if the understanding is a small comfort in a world without heroes. So when the hammer blow came just a year later at the Unveiling, all comfort was stolen. It was done by something close enough to a god, or a superman. Evolved. A fine way of saying Übermensch. Though he had spent some of his idle childhood thinking about caped crusaders saving the day, the idea of a real-world spandex superman sent chills to his bone. Brand was just old and just sophisticated enough by now to grasp the edges of the adult implications of the Evolved.
Though Brand tried to adjust, and damn all if his family didn't try to all pitch in as a group for each other's sake, a dark seed had planted firmly in the boy's psyche. As he grew a little older, a little more mature, he seemed well adjusted. Good looking, smart, well behaved, a junior athlete, the world seemed at his feet. Yet, sometimes at night he tossed and turned, not with visions of tests or classmates, but faceless men and women ripping his family apart with fire. The frequent turmoil and more than occasional flareup of Evolved Activity did not help him rest easy.
In 2009, when he was 15, something happened that changed Brand's life completely. It was a Saturday afternoon, sunny and clear. He had finished with wrestling practice earlier that morning, and on the way home had stopped to browse at a small jewelry store for a trinket his mother might like. Fate interceded. An armed robbery occurred, which was very horribly botched. The owner, his wife, his daughter, three customers and Brand were hustled to the back, where the robbers tied up and executed everyone in their drug-fueled panic. Except Brand. When he was forced to the back, and the duct tape came out, a sudden horrific realization blasted through his young mind. He was about to die. His fight or flight mechanism went full bore. His vision tunneled. He pissed all over himself. He tried to hide under a desk in the shoving and pistol-whipping confusion. In all that, somewhere, inside his brain, a chemical pathway ignited in the rich fuel of hormones and adrenaline to awaken a dormant complex of proteins that had never before so much as twitched. As the last, most desperate defense, his Ability blossomed into his full power.
After the robbers left the back room abattoir, he quaked and cowered in the blood and gunsmoke. He went a little catatonic for a while there, to be honest. Who could blame him, seeing half a dozen men and women bound and executed before his eyes? The slow responding police had to pull him out and sedate him after it was all over. The robbers were quickly tracked and died evading capture by the police. It was all over but the paperwork for the police. For Brand, the event was his own personal Bomb. He might have bounced back to his normally sunny self, but his Ability worked in concert to alienate himself from his friends and family.
Before the robbery, Brand was vice captain of the junior varsity wrestling squad, on the academic math squad, and closely involved with his family. After, the sullen depression and hypervigilance of his borderline PSTD interfered with his efforts. Nightmares kept him up at night. All the while, his Memetic Crypsis made it all the harder to get noticed or taken seriously. The realization that he, Brand, all-american teenager, was an Evolved, was the final nail in his mental coffin. In the year since the robbery, Brand has been drifting slowly on a spiral of depression and withdrawal. He is on the knife-edge of quitting his extracurriculars, dropping from the squad, and just retreating. Separated and isolated, he has to reach out to a city, hoping like a drowning man for even a casket.
Brand is at his heart a good kid. He was raised by loving parents, with a loving extended family and in tight knit neighborhood. Brand is open and personable, though the terms affable and goofy are probably better descriptors. He tends to be a hard worker, at least when it comes to things that will interest him or that are required of him. As a younger boy, his father was his hero, and he still admires the man that raised him for his moral strength. Brand wouldn't steal, or lie about anything serious, except maybe to take the heat for his little brother. A bit of a dreamer, maybe even a romantic, Brand is a wholesome kid. You could take him home to mother.
Or at least he was. After the shocking events in his life, the turning point, he has suffered under the very personal trauma of nearly being brutally executed. The trauma woke up the dark panic seeded by the Bomb when he was a child, and crippled Brand in cruel ways. His mind is heavy with fear of being cornered and trapped or made helpless, his nights are sleepless. He finds himself unable to really capture what he perceives as carefree joy - his smile is a wary one. A part of him wants to hide, to feel safe, and that has drawn a veil over his normally very engaging personality.
A sick codependency exists between his unhappy feelings of paranoid isolation and his Ability. He feels subconsciously afraid, and wants to hide, and so his Ability provides a kind of comfort through involuntary action. At the same time, he wishes to reach out to his network of friends and family for the support he needs to heal the wounds in his psyche. His Ability interferes with this, and slows his ability to heal, which keeps him wary, which keeps him isolated, which keeps him wary. It is a vicious cycle.
*NOTE*
When he was Registered, no one inquired about his Ability. Therefore his entry in the database is blank.
*End Note*
Brand's ability is Memetic Crypsis. To break the term down, starting with the core, Crypsis. Crypsis is is the ability of an organism to avoid observation or detection by other organisms. A form of antipredator adaptation, methods range from camouflage, nocturnality, subterranean lifestyle, transparency, or mimicry. In Brand's case, the method is Memetics, which could be loosely described as a telepathic mind-virus that renders him inconspicuous or 'safe' from other sentient creatures.
Memetic Crypsis functions by interfering with the ability of others to perceive or recall the subject, to varying degrees. At the lower end of the spectrum, the subject seems merely bland or uninteresting. They may be easily overlooked in a crowd, or in a quiet corner, and can be easily put out of mind. As the Crypsis intensity increases, the subject becomes increasingly unobtrusive, and is functionally invisible in a crowd or cluttered environment with ease. Persons that directly interact with the subject generally suffer very poor recall as to the subject's description, actions, and conversations. At the extreme spectrum end, unless the subject is being actively obtrusive through direct interaction, violence, or excessive spectacle, he could be sitting in the center of an otherwise empty well-lit room and go unnoticed. Post-interaction, others generally have no recall of subject in totality, and may present with amnesia, confusion, and denial.
The interesting distinction between Memetic Crypsis and some other telepathic Ability is that the effects linger even after the subject has gone in the minds and media that were exposed to him. People affected often present with subconscious behaviors that prevent them from realizing they have been affected by the memetic ability still lurking in their minds. Passively they may present with denial and defensive coping mechanisms if their recall of events is challenged.
Memetic Crypsis is powerful, but an unpredictable and dangerous Ability. Its side effects on the user can be psychologically devastating, and the isolation it engenders can be just as fatal as any bullet. A tight rein on panic and iron control of stress are the only things can truly tame it, and turn it to the advantage in the long run. Unfortunately for Brand, due to his trauma the Cypsis defaults to an always on, low end effect that can make his life difficult as he blends in so well. In the year since it manifested, he's developed the control needed to suppress it fully, or to crank it to the other end. The latter is much easier, as his Ability will respond very easily and powerfully to his emotional cues. If Brand feels frightened and threatened, subconsciously the Crypsis effect will grow in intensity.