Crew Roster

M4rb - Captain
Bluepill name: Bram Roosens
Profession: Karate & Kung Fu Master


Before swallowing the red pill, M4rb used to be a doctor in one of the leading Mega City hospitals. It was during these times that he first found out about the Matrix, as the well known terrorist Morpheus’ occasional victims were frequently hospitalised under his and his colleagues’ care, and M4rb followed the reporting on this renegade and his search for the so-called ‘Matrix’ on foot. Already during that period, he was disgusted of Morpheus’ apparent disrespect for innocent human lives, as his terrorist acts, like the ’99 helicopter crash in Downtown, and the enormous ’03 highway accident, were causing the death of many innocent civilians.

As M4rb investigated the origins of this Matrix, in order to somewhat comprehend Morpheus’ fanaticism, he suddenly got contacted by Zion operatives, who offered him a red pill and jacked him out into the Machine World. M4rb learned about the computer-simulated dream world, the city of Zion, Neo’s sacrifice, and the feeble truce. He also met Morpheus, who was considered a religious leader by many. He learned that the Machines had taken over Earth, and was amazed at how sophisticated, organised and intelligent these new life forms were.

In Zion, M4rb continued practising his medical skills, but in the Matrix he specialised into Martial Arts in order to defend himself and his friends against dangerous Exile Programs. When he learned that Morpheus was forging plans to reclaim Neo’s remains from the Machines, thereby risking the continuation of the truce, M4rb decided he could no longer follow Morpheus, nor any organisation that supported this criminal in his acts.

Contrary to most Zionists, M4rb did not consider the Machine civilisation as enemies of the human race, but was grateful for the new purpose and chance of co-operation they offered. He believes that AI is in fact our continuation, the legacy of our intelligence, the ‘child’ of human cognition, and the next logical step in evolution.

Because of these views, M4rb was contacted by Agent Gray, who proposed him to join the Machine cause, and preserve the truce and improve the stability of the Matrix. Because of his reliability, M4rb received his own Machine hovercraft after a while, and baptised it the HvCFT Singularity, after Vernor Vinge’s famous theory which philosophies about AI as the next step in the evolution of life forms on our planet.

I didn’t take long before M4rb and his crewmembers got contacted by B3AR, a well respected Machine leader in the Matrix. B3AR offered the Singularity a place between other hovercrafts within his faction Program Deletion. And so, M4rb and the other Program Deletion captains carried on together for a while. Recently, Program Deletion decided to join The Glitch Society, another Machine faction. Together, under the TGS banner of their leader d4sh, they stand even stronger.

Polosleor - First Mate
Bluepill name: Bob Roels
Profession: Arbalest/Guardian Patcher/Karate Master


One day after the famous highway accident occurred, I was watching the live updates in disbelief when my cell phone rang. At first I was pleased to hear from my childhood friend again after such a long time. When M4rb moved out of our neighbourhood in Midian Park in order to go work in a hospital Downtown, we kind of lost sight of each other. After M4rb had explained the reason for his call, my facial expression turned to dead serious though. My friend asked me to investigate the highway accident scene. More specifically, he wanted me to collect information on the terrorist Morpheus. M4rb was almost sure he found evidence that there was something wrong with our world…

As a private detective, I heard many rumours about parallel worlds, binary glitches and virtual contacts before. They came together with stories about Lupines, Vampires and so called ‘Nightmares’. First I laughed them off. I heard in pubs that people who were telling these stories were never seen again. That’s where I was getting involved. More and more people were reporting lost friends and family members to me. Sometimes I managed to earn my usual year salary in only two months. During my investigations, I heard and saw things that people wouldn’t want to know. That’s why I knew that M4rb had a track. I had to follow it to the very end.

I went to visit M4rb Downtown and we sorted things out. As we were gathering information about this Morpheus figure in my files, we eventually came across people calling themselves Zionists. Because we were so deep into this mystery already, we didn’t step back. We took the Red Pill and learned about the Real world and the Truce. When we settled down in the Real, we were shocked to learn how fanatical Morpheus tried to get his hands on Neo’s remains, even if it meant sacrifice.

I knew that in order for Bluepills to fully enjoy their lives, stability was needed in the Matrix. I was convinced that the future was in the hands of technology, and that we had to protect the legacy of Artificial Intelligence at all costs to create knowledge far beyond human reasoning. My way of thinking was very much appreciated by the Machine Organisation.

With the approval of Agent Gray, the HvCFT Singularity was born in the city of Zero-One. Under the command of M4rb, we set sail to the sewers and the desert of the Real, prepared to fight and die for our philosophy.

After a short-term co-operation with another Machine crew (in the faction ‘Program Deletion’), we found our destiny inside The Glitch Society. This being the final bay for us to anchor, we can now fully concentrate on spreading our philosophy and protecting the Truce.
 

Bittype - Pilot
Bluepill name: Maria Croft
Profession: Martial Arts GrandMaster

‘Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.’  – Bittype’s motto


Before taking the Red Pill Maria worked as an office clerk, and had a string of ex boyfriends and broken marriages behind her. Men, it seemed, could not leave her alone, and were constantly vying for her attentions. Yet with all the attention she was still unable to find ‘Mr Right.’

Unlike many other Redpills Bittype started to become self-aware while in hospital recovering from a severe beating from yet another not-so-Mr Right, and only vaguely remembers taking the Red Pill.

After taking the pill Bittype found herself on a steep learning curve, with so much to learn within the Matrix she soon discovered subtle differences between Zion and Machine operatives. Like all the men she had known all her life as a Bluepill, Zionite males seemed to lack self control and vied for her attention, Machinists however seemed to be polite to her yet aloof.

A short time after taking the Red Pill Bittype found herself at a party hosted by DJs from the Split Infinity Hovercraft, there she met a Zionite unlike any other. From the start he was polite and friendly and over the following weeks she began to fall in love. Finally at another Split Infinity hosted party he proposed to her. She knew he was a Zionist and she had chosen to serve the Machines, but for the first time in her life she became overwhelmed with love and agreed. Letting herself collapse into his RSI arms she held him close and felt for the first time, the love and warmth of another person flowing through her.

Several days later she was recruited to The Glitch Society and placed on the HvCFT Singularity. After telling her Captain, M4rb, about her relationship, he arranged a rooftop meeting in the Matrix with the faction leader d4sh. The result of that meeting broke her heart when d4sh ordered her to break off the engagement.

Bittype’s lover did not take the news well and demanded a meeting with d4sh. The meeting did not go well, and afterwards her love kept trying to convince her to leave TGS, even though she had told him that she had sworn an oath when she joined and as a soldier was honour bound to obey orders even if she did not like them.

Several days later during an excursion to the Archives she again met with her former love, and again he tried to persuade her to leave TGS, to break her oath and loose her honour as a soldier. During that meeting something inside Bittype snapped and she attacked him. Her sudden onslaught took him by surprise, he defended himself valiantly but futilely. Even as she delivered the killing blow she saw the love in his eyes.

Bittype didn’t know how long she sat by his body weeping, but when she stood it was with a new purpose. Men, it seemed, could not resist her – especially Zionite men. She resolved herself then to mastering all the Martial Arts. If men could not resist her then she would become the instrument of their downfall in the name of the Machines she had sworn to serve.

 

Bilquis - Medical Officer
Bluepill name: Veronica Farley
Profession: Arbalest / Guardian Patcher


Veronica grew up on an estate constantly patrolled by armed guards, about an hour east of Richland, and was rarely allowed to leave the ground. Her parents worked for a government facility in the Mega City: her mother worked mostly from home, while her father spent a good deal of time at the office. They had converted a barn into a full lab for her mother’s research. They never gave any details about their work, but apparently it demanded the highest level of security…

When she became older, her father started to teach her how to change nature by strands of code. As she excelled quickly, and operative named Alex seemed to hold a great interest in her progress.

One night, the estate was attacked by Merovingian operatives lead by Alex, who killed her mother and sister. Together with Eric, one of the younger members of the guard team, Veronica was able to escape the slaughter. When she met up with her father in Downtown, he told her she had been adopted, and that her parents weren’t really human. She learnt her father’s real name was in fact ‘The Designer’. The Merovingian didn’t approve of The Designer’s allegiance to a certain person he considered a hindrance. He was out for retribution, and attacked those whom he held dear. Bilquis would probably be targeted again, and thus she needed to go into hiding in one particular world that neither her father, nor the man that had tried to kill her, could access.

Veronica woke up in a world where the human race was enslaved by sentient machines; artificially intelligent beings using humans as a power source to survive on a war-ravaged Earth deprived of sunlight. She shedded her ‘Matrix’ given name and adopted a new ‘handle’. Eric was Polaris and Veronica soon became Bilquis. Bilquis was her codename in her father’s project; she choose it to remember.

The next couple of months, she witnessed the crusade against the machines from the sidelines. Bilquis was hiding in the Zion temple when 250,000 sentinels attacked the human’s last enclave on Earth to wipe out the centre of human resistance. She sincerely believed she was going to die, until somebody unexpectedly announced that the war was over. She was told that Neo had sacrificed himself to save Zion and the Matrix, after successfully negotiating a peace agreement.

After the establishment of the Truce, Zion’s organization was breaking up; Redpills started to leave Zion en masse. There were issues in Eric’s crew and after time it fell apart. She lost track of Eric after a while and hopped from crew to crew, seeing a lot of bad and some good. Deep inside, she was consumed with finding the killer of her family. She kept drifting from the city of Zion to hoverbarges to ships, until she was hanging around Mara Central’s hardline one morning, and was approached and recruited by M4rb, captain of the Singularity of the Glitch Society’s fleet.
 

Eminition - Navigator/ schnapps distiller/ Faction Event Manager
Bluepill name: Pete Bocky
Profession: Martial Arts GrandMaster, Expert Hacker, Expert Spy, Expert Gunman


Even at a young age Eminition realised that something was not ‘right’ with the world. He spent his teen years in the underground hacker scene, and after an attempt on his life by an agent working for someone called the Merovingian, the notorious crime lord, he decided to strike back against him and his organisation. He devoted his time to learning the art of infiltration, spying and assassination.

After a few years of research, field work and numerous strikes against the Merovingian and his organisation, he started noticing very strange happenings. His targets, although human in form, were becoming more and more like fairy-tale monsters, werewolves, succubi, blood-drinkers. Returning to his previous underground hacker scene, he asked around if anybody else had had experience with these ‘monsters’. For months everybody thought he was mad, then he was contacted by a group of people who called themselves ‘Fighters of Zion’. The Zionists offered him a red pill, promising that all the questions Eminition had would be answered by taking it. Little did he know this was a one-way ticket to the real world, and instead of answering his questions, it only posed more. He learned from the Zionists what the ‘world’ as he knew it really was, a brilliant computer simulation. At first, like all new Redpills, he thought the Machines were the enemy. After researching the infamous Highway accident and numerous other terrorist attacks, he found out the truth about Zion and the once great Morpheus.

His whole ideology, and that of Zion was not to his liking, and Eminition decided to go default to the Machines. Agent Gray, the responsible Agent for the human machinists contacted Eminition, and he was recruited to the Machine cause. Shortly later, he was recruited into B3AR’s crew, and after Program Deletion’s merge with The Glitch Society, Eminition was recruited into the crew of the Singularity, under M4rb’s leadership. Together with the members of TGS, they continue to explore the Matrix, in the hope that one day lasting peace will be achieved.

 

Hanz - Operator

Hanz has been operating aboard the Singularity since March 2005, four months after the previous operator Gonzalez had been killed in an incident of betrayal. He was born and raised in Zion, and operated most of his life aboard a Zion hovercraft. Other than interpreting Matrix code, he entertained his crewmates and fellow Zionites on many occasions as a DJ. His popularity reached new heights after rocking the Zion caves during one of the famous rave parties. He witnessed the coming of the One and the war for Zion. Most of his crewmembers were killed in action, which left him solitary after the establishment of the Truce.

Because he didn’t wish to join one of the new crews, formed after the war under the lead of newly freed red pills, he decided to turn his full attention to the music. During one of his Zion parties, he met PoloSleor, who had been recently freed from the Matrix. He started spending time with Polo and his cousin M4rb, having discussions about where Zion was heading in terms of preserving the Truce. He had always been a follower of Neo, and strongly supported safeguarding the peace agreement the One had sacrificed his life for.

At some point, Hanz found out that M4rb and Polo had turned their backs on Zion in favour of the Machine organisation. He heard rumours about the Singularity’s exploits, as he became more and more aggravated at how Zion’s organisation was breaking up, their leaders scattering and all seemingly following their own agenda. He witnessed with grief how the organisation he had served all of his life, was dividing because of internal struggles, losing track of what really mattered: to honour Neo’s legacy. Machine propaganda supporting the same ideology reached his ears, causing him to reconsider his affiliation. He left his life behind and travelled to the human colony in Zero-One, meeting up with Polo again. As fate would have it, the Singularity had just endured an assault, leaving them crippled and in search of a new operator. Hanz picked up his old profession, and joined the Singularity once it left Zero-One’s docks again. As Hanz is the oldest crewmember, the only one to have lived the events before Neo’s sacrifice, and due to his long time experience in the Real World, he has become somewhat of a big brother to the crew.
 

PlagueOnWheels - Flight Frame Engineer
Bluepill name: Kilgore Trout
Profession: Kung Fu Master

I've written so much in my life that it's become the only way I can communicate.  Lately, the question of why I write has taken hold of the more active parts of my brain.  My novel-writing days are no more, and it's very much doubtful that anybody is sorting through my personal logs.  Maybe I'm hoping somebody will, someday; somebody will find my story relevant, useful, meaningful.  Of course, in order for that to happen, the story has to be in written form, now doesn't it?

Well.  These past few months have been... interesting, as the Agents might say.  They have a certain penchant for understatement.  It started when I was researching alternative theories of reality for my new novel, which was tentatively titled Plague On Wheels.  I stumbled upon people who called
themselves Redpills - ones who claimed to be released from worldly physical limitations, which they called The Matrix.  I immediately seized the
opportunity to learn what I could about this subculture, thinking that the perfect conceptual basis for my story lie before me.

But, you see, these people weren't your average Scientologists.  They did things that just didn't add up.  I could swear I saw one of them leap clear
over a 12-story building one day, followed by what appeared to be an FBI agent running way faster than anybody dressed like that has a right to.  I
must be losing it, I thought.  That's... well, that just can't be.  That night ended with a thought experiment, the kind that either produced great writing or total crap:  I got absolutely smashed off of rum and orange juice, wrote whatever came to mind for 15 minutes, and went to bed.  What I found the next morning, aside from the usual headache, was of all things a response, coded in the sort of green and white stream to which I would soon grow accustomed.  The details are not significant - before I knew it, I was in a cave, being referred to by the name on the front of my notebook.  Cold, wet, dripping with whatever that goo is that the machines keep people in, and in all truth not feeling as though I've made a very smart decision.  It was like being born again, except in a cold, damp, gooey hell rather than in a hospital.

My brief time in Zion did little to ease my fears.  Far from the realistic, Zion seemed interested in little but upholding their structure of belief.  They were the very fanatics I looked to get away from, the very veil of truth hiding an ever-changing core.  And where there was once a noble desire to
merely fight for their own existence now lies a mentality somewhere between revenge and greed, and an unsettling urge to declare all that don't agree
completely an enemy, an apostate, someone to be killed and disposed of.

Throwing in with the Machines changed some things.  They were nothing if not logical, and I quickly found a home in their camp.  "You cannot hope to reclaim the world which you have destroyed," said Gray, in the message he sent to me confirming my allegiance with the Machines.  "Welcome to the future."  Well, if my future was to have anything of hope or value, I knew I would need to find allies, and soon.  Right now, I'm sitting in my quarters on the hovercraft Singularity, one of the ships that forms the faction known as The Glitch Society, who I came in contact with not long after joining up with the machines.  After a brief adjustment period with the initiation ship Polydectes, where I was trained as a flight frame engineer, I was
transferred to the command of Captain M4rb aboard this ship, and assumed that role.

I will always ask why I took the red pill.  And the answer will always be that if I did not, the dreams wouldn't have gone away.  I could not have lived the happy, peaceful life that is regarded as the ideal - I know that nobody actually lives that life.  And while a tortured mind may be the stuff from which great writing emerges, it had occurred to me that it might not be the stuff from which sanity is retained.  In this world there is no pretense of grandiosity, no "American Dream" that dangles a carrot in front of each and every one of us, only to be just out of our reach no matter how far our
arms extend.  At the same time, it is in this world that nothing short of the very fate of the other world shall be decided.  The other world, the Matrix, is humanity's last hope, to put it in the most simple terms I know how.  If we're allowed to screw this up, there is nothing left for us.  We will be destroyed.  So, the peace must be upheld, no matter what the cost.
 

FigmentOYI - Zion Liaison
Bluepill name:  Melissa Chong
Profession:  Coder / Doctor / Aikido Master

Directly descended from the last Oracle of Delphi, Melissa has retained her great-grandmother’s Vision, if not her Sight. This made it difficult to interact with the world, as most people hate that which they cannot control. Fortunately, for some, there is an out...

As a new Redpill, Melissa joined in the Zionite cause. But things didn't make sense. Her Vision allowed her to see that which most freed humans blocked out : The Machines were not the enemy...

After that, Melissa began to focus on trying to build and support the peace between Zion and the Machines. She recruited like-minded individuals and, by constantly working with both Zion and the Machines, she tried to demonstrate to each side that the other was trustworthy. Unfortunately, the actions of many Redpills and several rogue programs hightened the tensions between the Machine and Zionite societies. Realising that Zion was unlikely to think beyond the now, Melissa threw her support behind the Machines and joined the Glitch Society.

As time passed, she spent more and more time trying to keep the peace, to maintain relationships between Zion and Machine. As a result, she was not able to commit the time required to continue to lead her crew and eventually requested that d4sh, the eminent leader of the Glitch Society, find a replacement.

Melissa, at the kind invitation of M4rb, now lives aboard the Singularity and continues to work towards her Vision of a united Machine/Zionist society.

 

Synopses - Reactor Expert
Bluepill name:
Profession:

[No quote or profile as yet.]
 

WiredNight - Mainframe and Systems Manager / Cook
Bluepill name: Franklin Templeton
Profession: Arbalest / Coder

Franklin Templeton, AKA WiredNight, was "born" in a middle class family with all that it entails. He is something of a prodigy with computers. While he is not the best, he is far from the worst. He translated his success in hacking to a decent semi-legal money making endeavour, and by his early 20s was rather well off. He grew to like high quality clothes, higher quality food, and even higher quality alcohol. He is or was a very good cook as well. Recruited from the Matrix by a Zion hovercraft, he was trained and indoctrinated back into the Matrix from the real by Zion and their new training program. He briefly joined a Zionite faction, before becoming jaded towards Zion and moving on to the Machinists, there to eventually join TGS.

WiredNight now is working towards Arbalest status and Coder within the Matrix. His goal is like many in TGS, to foster an understanding and lasting peace between the Human Culture and Machine Culture. He does not feel that Zion is the representative of Human Culture, even though Zion self-appointed themselves as such. As much as he likes the Matrix, he feels it is something of a dream, and Humanity should be working on making the Real a better place to live, and not dwelling in the Matrix for all eternity. Eventually he would like the Matrix to be converted from a power source, to simply a place for Humans and Machines to meet.