Pericles Jones got his unfortunate first name because his mother was a classics Ph.D. who never got a job doing more than teaching high school history in Bangor, Maine. Still, she raised Pericles (whom she always called by his full name) to have a sense of the greatness of the ancients, a belief in the importance of heroism and personal excellence, as well as accepting your destiny, however tragic. She also taught him about stoic philosophy, something that, to a boy cum young man, sounded like an eloquent version of 'no pain, no gain' and 'suck it up, walk it off'.
So he dedicated his life to discipline for discipline's sake. He performed very well in school, but didn't have many friends. He had no romantic relationships to speak of, basically kept to himself. In short, he was sort of a loser, dressed like a square, but didn't really give anyone a reason to dislike him so he just coasted through. He ended up in an electrical engineering program because he was good at it, and he liked it, for the most part.
Free of parental oversight, however, Perry (he was known mostly as Perry by then) he was left to his own devices, or lackthereof. And this didn't go well, initially. He started sinking into late-coming existential angst, a feeling of directionlessness, a sort of mild but color draining depression that didn't stop him from coming to class and focusing on his work, but stopped him from eating much, doing anything recreational, doing much besides lying in bed and reading the copy of the Republic that his mother gave him as a graduation gift. More and more the words made less and less sense. The world itself didn't make any sense. He decided to try and find himself, and took two courses: one on philosophy, one on political science. The successes for him were his realizations of the failures of both. The philosophy was cold, unapplied, logical, analytical. It had nothing of a soul. The political science was bland, observational, not directed towards a meaningful philosophy. That is how he discovered fascist thought.
Perry is now a happier man, but one looking for a cause to dedicate himself entirely to. The ideas of fascism appeal to him, their root principles of personal excellence, heroism, strength through struggle, intense discipline. It's just their application that's been, in his eyes, totally bungled, made ineffective and inefficient due to irrational prejudices and murderous excesses. And while he believes in extreme nationalism… he can't find a nation that embodies the qualities he could totally commit himself to. So, when the Bomb hit, and the world changed, he decided he wanted to be present for the very fulcrum of those changes: he moved to New York and enrolled in an electrical engineering Masters Program. It may seem like a crazy response, but Perry is convinced that the effects of the Bomb, with registration and Evolved violence, mark the sort of instability that could generate a movement he could really dedicate himself to. Until then, he just rebuilds computers out of old parts, sells them at a profit, and lives in a dingy apartment lined with all sorts of odd books.
