Ives

Species: Artificial Human (Enlightened Scientist)

Affiliation: Formerly Iteration X

Age: 5 (Artificially aged to early 20s)

Demeanor: Misfit

Avatar: The Pattern

A Brief History of Ives
Ives was created roughly five years ago in a Progenitor lab, slated for delivery to Iteration X. In typical Technocratic manner, she was designed by committee and assigned most of her significant features by committee vote. As a consequence she bears the same indistinct features and ethnic background of most clones. The artificial human was 'decanted', to use her words, already fully grown as an adult, and with a pre-programmed degree of knowledge equivalent to a college graduate. That knowledge, however, does not include the emotional maturity or experience of a naturally developed adult, and so she can be somewhat childish at times.

Even when 'young' Ives displayed unusual behaviors for an artificial human. She found her Genius early, and with that Enlightenment came vivid, unreal dreams of a bygone era. Her dreams were of a man named Dorian, a Craftmason from the mythic ages who was eventually purged by the Order of Reason. Eventually she began hallucinating during waking hours--seeing things that were not there, hearing voices that didn't exist, feeling the stares of ghostly apparitions at her back. The technocrat kept it hidden from her Supervisor for many months, but eventually broke down mentally under her Avatar's continual assault. She screamed loud enough to wake the facility that she was a human, and more than a machine. This, of course, triggered a harsh response by her Supervisor. That night she was sent to the interrogation room. For reasons best left to the imagination, she claims--even to herself--that she does not remember what happened, or how long she was there. The end result was the implantation of an ADEI for monitoring purposes. She constituted a significant investment, and mere mental problems weren't going to justify ending it prematurely.

Her ADEI suppressed the visions and kept her Avatar at bay, but also stunted her growth towards enlightenment and her emotional development. She grew to rely on the cold, calculating machine for everything, from writing out her homework to keeping her balance straight, or even basic autonomic functions like breathing. Her early development was, however, enough to qualify her for advancement within Iteration X. With her mental issues apparently solved by the ADEI, she began advancing up through the ranks again, eventually reaching the rank of Armature within Iteration X, as part of the Statistician methodology. She was never fully trusted, however, and was often sent as an observer on field missions to collect data for the other, more trusted Statisticians. As an artificial human, the naturally born Statisticians never really valued her life the same as they would someone who had lived longer. As such, her field assignments were often dangerous. This harsh environment led her to develop within some of the more practical and martial sciences, like Forces, Mind, and Entropy. Her development in the more strategic sciences, like Correspondence and Time, lagged behind what one might usually expect from a Statistician.

Eventually she proved her worth enough to get moved out of front-line Amalgams and into a more sedate research amalgam in Oakland. There she first began to encounter 'reality deviants' on friendly terms, accidentally stumbling into the Missed Cue and finding the company interesting and the minor rebellion to be refreshing. When the timelines merged, she maintained much of her memories of the 'other' Ives, as her ADEI processed and stored the information that others would forget. This event drew her closer to the Mages of the Cue, as she began to remember them and adopt some of the same perspectives as the other Ives from the other timeline. Unfortunately, she was to be assigned to a project in Arizona not longer after the shift of timelines.

Technocratic Defection
It was in this climate that she made her decision to defect from the Technocracy. Shortly after she received news of her impending transfer, one of her colleagues approached her with a risky offer. This colleague had apparently noticed and been inspired by her little rebellion at the Cue, and saw this as a sign that she wasn't a lost cause after all. He handed her a copy of the 'Kirtab al-Alacir', the same book used by the Sons of Ether to inspire Awakening. Her colleague turned out to be a deep cover Son of Ether looking for exactly these sort of prospects for conversion. He took a grave risk in making such overtures to Ives, but his trust was rewarded well in the end. With some circumspect advice from Alexi and other Mages at the Cue, she made the decision to leave the Technocracy. Her outward reasoning was based mainly on the absurdity of having to hide one's own reading materials from their employer--though the actual motivation stemmed more from her alternate self's decision to reject the Technocracy, as well as the subtle urging of her Avatar against the Technocratic paradigm in general. As one of the artificial humans of the Technocracy, such a decision earned her a place on the Technocracy's black list. The immediate response was an assassination team sent to simply kill her. Thanks to the timely intervention of Jason Rhode, Alexi and Luke, she managed to survive their immediate response and secure something of a life away from the Technocracy.

Subsequent Developments
Ives has since drifted without much purpose after her defection from the Technocracy. The structure of the Clockwork Convention had driven her in the past, but now she was forced to find her own reasons for action, and her own causes to fight for. She found herself woefully unprepared for this challenge in the wake of her departure from the Technocracy. Since her departure from the Technocracy, however, her visions have begun to return, and she's started attracting the attention of various spirits and ghosts, despite her firm insistence that they do not actually exist. She's even come into conflict with various wraiths, leaving a blackened scar mark on one arm, and a wraith itself stuck in her ADEI. She regularly converses with the wraith in her ADEI, at first insisting that it was little more than an Artificial Intelligence someone had created to think it was living. She has since changed her mind on the matter, after encountering a much more angry and demonic sort of spirit in a building near Luke's clinic. These experiences with the various spirits and ghosts of the World of Darkness prompted her Avatar to break through her ADEI's protections and reveal itself again through a Seeking. She confronted the memory of her former life manifest through her Avatar, and learned to accept some precepts of the Craftmason's early form of Enlightened Science. The ramifications of this acceptance will be profound, but as yet unspecified.

Relationships
Ives has numerous friendly relations with the crowd that has arisen around the Cue. First and foremost is her semi-romantic relationship with Luke, though it is at times cold and awkward. She also views Alexi as something of a father figure due to their close ties in the other timeline, however the Alexi of this timeline is much more busy and is rather more distant. She, along with Luke and Draka, also assisted Jack in rescuing Lindar the Virtual Adept from a Technocratic prison in Oakland's Museum of Human History. Ives was instrumental in organizing and planning the raid, though it brought further Technocratic attention upon both her and the Cue in the process. Her strangest friendship, however, is probably the friendship between her and a werewolf named Draka. Normally Technocrats and Werewolves get along like oil and water, but the two can seem to stand each other's company.