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Crew of the Theseus
Siri Keeton
The protagonist, a "Synthesist" sent as part of the crew aboard the Theseus in response to an alien transmission codenamed Burns-Caulfield. As a child he suffered from epilepsy, which his parents chose to treat through a procedure which cut out half of his brain. Though his condition was cured, the operation left him with a radically altered mind, lacking normal emotion but capable of expertly interpreting the subconscious thoughts of others. Now, he works as a translator of sorts who uses his abilities to understand the post-human thinking of minds even more advanced than his own and communicates this information to baseline humans.
- Empty Shell: He calls himself a Chinese Room, and his social interactions are usually reduced to flow charts. That being said, even he acknowledges by the end that he's not as empty as he'd like to believe.
- No Social Skills: A complicated example. Though virtually autistic due to his operation, he has an exceptional talent for analyzing the intentions of others. Vampires are beyond his capabilities, though.
- An example of his worldview: he considers telling other people what his birthday is to be a "lose-lose" situation based on game theory. If they don't celebrate it after finding out, he will be hurt; if they do, he might've just inadvertently guilted them into doing so even though they don't really care. On the other hand, if no one knows, there's no risk of either bad situation, and if they find out on their own, they must like him.
- Not So Above It All: Invoked. Sarasti calls Siri out on this, claiming that for all his talk of detachment and objectivity, Siri is still human, and thus incapable of both.
- Uncertain Doom: Blindsight is told from Siri’s perspective as he is drifting back towards Earth following the events of the novel, so it would seem obvious he survived, even if he wishes he hadn’t. The sequel, however, calls into question whether this record is even really Siri’s and if any of it can be believed. At least one character is convinced he perished and that someone or something else is impersonating him.
- Unreliable Narrator: Siri can't separate himself from his observations, as much as he believes otherwise. Early on, his fear of Sarasti leads him to speculate on the vampire's past, which in most stories would be little more than an aside, but here it is the earliest hint that his perspective cannot be trusted. His description of Sarasti's predatory nature are likewise hints of his compromised viewpoint. Taken to new heights in Echopraxia, where new evidence suggests Siri may be dead and the transmissions are a surviving Rorschach/Portia trying to impersonate him.
Isaac Szpindel
The crew's biologist and doctor.
- Boom, Headshot!: Theseus can repair a lot of physical damage, but the brain has to be intact. Szpindel sadly is not that lucky.
- Jewish and Nerdy: There are various hints towards this throughout. He's only confirmed to be Jewish when Cunningham recites the Kaddish for Szpindel.
- Verbal Tic: He constantly ends his dialogue with "eh."
Susan James
The crew's linguist, a woman who possesses four distinct personalities, collectively known as "The Gang":
- The original, Susan James
- Michelle, who is in a relationship with Szpindel
- Sascha
- "Cruncher"
- Split Personality: In four. The trauma from Rorschach gives it the opportunity to insert a 5th one in her mind.
- Split-Personality Team: The four personalities know about one another, and each cooperate to facilitate Susan's linguistic work. The fifth, however, actively sabotages the mission.
Amanda Bates
The crew's combat specialist.
- The Starscream: Subverted. Siri believes she is plotting to mutiny against Sarasti, but when he raises this concern, Sarasti corrects him: Bates doesn't believe he is unfit for command. Siri does.
Robert Cunningham
One of the four back-up members of the crew, a replacement brought out of hibernation to replace Szpindel.
- Verbal Tic: He has problems with pronouns due to a botched operation.
Jukka Sarasti
The crew's leader, a vampire - that is, a member of a formerly extinct subspecies of early hominid whose predation of humans gave rise to the myth of vampires, and now called that for convenience. His high-level intellect makes him inscrutable even to Siri and his behavior puts him at odds with the rest of the crew.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: They're just on a completely different wavelength than humans.
- Sociopathic Hero: Well, he's a vampire. Szpindel actually argues that vampires need to be sociopaths in order to hunt humans, given how close it comes to cannibalism.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: A common trait among vampires, as they only care about what's relevant to their immediate focus. When Sarasti decides to take a more active role in events, he dismisses Rorschach's vast incomprehensible architecture with one word.
- "Boring".
- Verbal Tic: Because vampires usually deal with time in a different way than humans, they have no concept of conjugating verbs in past tense.
Characters on Earth
Robert Paglino
Siri's best and only friend since childhood.
- Affectionate Nickname: "Pag", by Siri.
- Badass Normal: The closest anyone gets in the
Blindopraxia series. It's mentioned that, despite being born baseline - indeed, being born with several handicaps - Pag managed to carve out a successful science career for himself through using technology to compensate, dilligent study, and "sheer bloodymindedness." - Friendless Background: He was a baseline human kid suffering from some kind of developmental disorder which his religious parents refused to fix.
Chelsea
Siri's former girlfriend from before his time on the Theseus.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: She dies of a virus that calcifies her body in a matter of days, and days without Siri being able to say goodbye to her.
- Post Humous Character: We only know about her thru Siri's flashbacks.
Jim Moore
Siri's father, a colonel working in planetary defense.
- Action Dad: Being a soldier, and more importantly a prototype Super-Soldier.
- Ascended Extra: In the sequel, Jim Moore is one of the characters present on Icarus.
- Domestic Abuse: After discovering that Helen has been drugging Siri without his knowledge to make him more pliant to her, Jim chokes her, and contemplates crushing her neck to prevent her from doing any further damage to him.
- Henpecked Husband: For being quite the badass he is, he lets Helen walk all over him, even after she's reduced to a Brain in a Jar, something that confuses Siri to no end.
Helen Keeton
Siri's mother, who has chosen to transfer her consciousness into a virtual world known as Heaven.
- Abusive Parents: She's psychologically abusive to Siri. It causes issues when it comes to his relationship with Chelsea.
- Brain in a Jar: It is suspected that people that go to "Heaven" eventually get most of their body parts removed so as to save physical storage space.
- Parental Neglect: Siri is convinced she chose to enter Heaven out of resentment for his mental state post-operation.
Characters on Rorschach
Scramblers
The aliens encountered by the team in the Outer Solar System.
- Aliens Are Bastards: Subverted. While they're intent on destroying Earth, the Scramblers are, by their very nature, incapable of true hostility.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: They're starfish-like creatures with skin made of organic plastic, they're capable of squid-like camouflage, and live in and feed on intensely powerful electromagnetic fields. They also have cloacae that they can seal shut and briefly survive in vacuum, much like how whales and dolphins can make brief trips to the deep ocean. They also do not possess a central brain, but each of their sensory organs is independently controlled by a nerve cluster.
- Bizarre Alien Psychology: They're highly intelligent, clearly capable of building spaceships, but they have no wiring devoted to monitoring themselves outside of their need to survive or for considering the abstract. All of their actions are purely instinctive, which is speculated to be the norm for life in the universe, while humanity is an evolutionary anomaly.
- Bizarre Alien Senses: They can perceive electromagnetic signals through eyespots and setae all over their bodies, all functioning together like a distributed telescopic array. This setup grants them the ability to literally see the signals inside a human nervous system.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Scramblers see humanity as a threat because without any sense of self, concepts like morality, reason and empathy are completely alien to them. They see humanity' signals about art, philosophy and politics as containing no useful information, yet too structured to be a natural phenomenon. To them, all of our attempts to communicate come across as a dangerous virus designed to waste mental resources.
- Chameleon Camouflage: Thanks to their sensory organs, Super-Reflexes and camouflage abilities, Scramblers can hide in-between the saccades of the human eye; because the brain isn't processing visual information here, it makes them nearly invisible. Cunningham also speculates that this was completely improvised; they only had to encounter Bates' robot once to understand how mammalian eyes work.
- Inscrutable Aliens: A variant. Their ship does make contact, but for hours talks in circles without revealing any useful information. The crew of Theseus come to the conclusion that they're talking to a Chinese room
. This proves to be the first sign that the Scramblers don't think in any way that we could understand. - Starfish Aliens: Quite literally, as they were based off of starfish.
- Super-Reflexes: Their nerves utilize superconducting materials, allowing signals to move fast.
- Walking Spoiler: Their true nature proves to be part of the biggest revelations in the story.
