Characters / Technobabylon

Characters from the video game series Technobabylon.

Protagonists

Charles Regis

Dr. Charles "Charlie" Regis is a CEL Case Specialist. He is partnered with Dr. Max Lao. Originally from Texas, Regis immigrated to Newton in order to make better use of his gengineering talents. One of the three main POV characters.

• Dark and Troubled Past: Regis. Even before his wife was murdered, he was forced by Texan warlords to biologically engineer child suicide bombers before he finally made it to Newton.
• Foil: Between him and Max, he's the snarky old Technophobe who's incredibly skeptical of Central's methods.
• Genius Bruiser: Regis is a cop with a degree in gengineering.
• The Lost Lenore: The death of his wife Vicky still bears heavily on his mind.
• My Greatest Failure: Regis regrets helping create Action Bombs for Texan warlords, even though it was under duress.
• Old Cop, Young Cop: The "old" part of this dynamic, even though he's only 49.
• Prematurely Grey-Haired: Despite being only 49, Regis is already showing some grey at the temples. Given everything he's seen in his life, this makes some sense.
• Technophobia: A mild example. Despite being an experienced gengineer, Regis distrusts wetware and refuses to get wired for direct Trance access. It's later revealed that at least a part of his resentment towards Central stems from the fact that Central is a bitter reminder of his wife's murder at Adam Baxter's hands.

Max Lao

Dr. Max Lao is a CEL Case Specialist. She is partnered with Dr. Charles Regis. Lao is a tech specialist. One of the three main POV characters.

• Easy Sex Change: Got one years ago thanks to the setting's highly advanced biotechnology. She reveals this to Regis in exchange for him opening up about his late wife and his previous work.
• Foil: Between her and Regis, she's the upbeat hacker with a love for technology and more apologetic of Central's dubious methods of keeping order.
• Old Cop, Young Cop: The "young" and more tech-savvy part of this dynamic.
• Reformed Criminal: Apparently had a multi-gigabyte-long criminal record until she was caught by Regis, only to become a CEL agent afterwards.
• The Runaway: Lao ran away from home at 16, after undergoing an Easy Sex Change from male to female. She keeps receiving messages from her brother, urging her to reconnect with family and leave Newton, which he considers a Wretched Hive.
• When I Was Your Age...: Annoyedly remarks about "kids these days" upon discovery of an intern using wetware to simulate symptoms of various diseases and neurological disorders (which is part of an entire counterculture movement.) She's then horrified when she realizes she's sounding like Regis.

Latha Sesame

Latha Sesame is a 19-year-old unemployed Trance addict, whose Trance alter ego is named Mandala.

• Barefoot Poverty: Latha wears cheap blue overalls with no shoes, a fact lampshaded twice. At the end of the game, Lao even mentions that they should get her to a hospital, considering how she's been walking around for a day with no footwear. Latha notes that she shut off her pain receptors to deal with it.
• Foster Kid: She was raised by the city as a refugee from a war-torn region. She meets a fellow "city kid" as one of the CEL corpsmen. He admits to having guessed that she was one too based on the fact that her last name (Sesame) is a plant. Apparently, it's common for "city kids" to receive nature-based last names. It turns out that she's not a refugee at all, but a lab-grown genetically-modified embryo, and is the genetic daughter of Charlie and Viksha Regis.
• Functional Addict: Despite constantly claiming that she NEEDS to be in the Trance and freely admitting her Trance addiction, she actually spends very little game time in the Trance and is able to live just fine. Possibly a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation, supported by Central's statement that she has logged 7.5 collective years in the Trance.
• Jerkass: She can be frequently self-centered (usually when it involves getting her Trance fix,) and while she does end up helping out a few people, she screws over so many more.
• The Slacker: Latha doesn't even make an attempt at finding a job, preferring to stay on the dole and spend as much time as possible in the Trance. Her apartment is a tiny one-room place with a bed, a table, a cheap food synthesizer, and a toilet which she has converted into a wetware still. Her entire life revolves around the Trance and the freedom to do anything she wants there, so the "meatworld" doesn't really concern her much.

CEL

Central

Central is a powerful AI that runs the Newton infrastructure and acts as the city's executive.

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Downplayed. Central is coldly logical and pragmatic, which often makes some of its actions seem morally ambiguous at best and outright cruel at worst. Another issue is, as explained by a member of the City Council who is in on the conspiracy to take down Central, is that Central, while supposed to be a neutral entity that obeys the wishes of the democratically-elected Council, has developed its own opinions on governing over time, which causes some problems with its usefulness as a controller of the city. The problem isn't that Central is disobeying or attempting to subvert the orders the Council gives it, because its programming effectively prevents it from this, but rather that it has taken to deliberately delay and stall the implementation of certain policies and edicts for as long as possible.
• Big Brother Is Watching: The omnipresent Central can access and monitor virtually everything in Newton. Apparently, other cities have implemented similar systems, such as Archimedes in many Eurofed cities, although Central is much more sophisticated.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: It's eventually revealed that Central's advanced enough to have developed its own opinions on how Newton should be run, and while it's hardwired so that it can't directly Turn Against Its Masters, it does engage in Obstructive Bureaucracy with policies it doesn't like.
• Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Averted. Central is one of a kind. Other infrastructure AIs exist in other cities, but they're not nearly as sophisticated as Central. Even so, Dr. Vargas has designed Central to learn as it accumulates more data, the same way as any person. Galatea doesn't want to wait and tries to force Central to reach its full potential immediately by dumping a gestalt of dozens of brilliant minds into it.
• Lie Detector: Central can easily detect if you lie to him.
• Ludicrous Precision: According to Central, there is a 21.4% chance of Regis killing Latha.
• Pragmatic Hero: Has no room for moral concerns. Regis is tasked with "neutralizing" a suicide bomber who, due to genetic engineering, has his bones laced with explosive materials. Regis has the option of talking him down and convincing him to turn himself in instead, but if he does Central has the bomber euthanized while Regis is out on another assignment, citing the high rate of such bombers blowing themselves up while in custody when Regis confronts it.
• Wetware CPU: Central's central processing core is composed of specially-grown neural tissue, coupled with wetware nanotech. The neural tissue came from the clone of one of the Regis' embryos.

Eduardo Vargas

Dr. Eduardo Vargas is Central's coordinator and one of its creators. Originally from Argentina, he moved to Newton to work on the Central project.

Galatea Vargas

Galatea Vargas is Dr. Eduardo Vargas's daughter and personal assistant.

• Chekhov's Gunman: Is swiftly introduced early on but her plot-relevance is only revealed later.
• Evil Twin: She is this to Latha, given that they were both cloned from the same embryo. While Galatea may be considered a Well-Intentioned Extremist, she is perfectly willing to get her genetic sister killed in order to achieve her goals. Strangely enough, Latha and Galatea are voiced by different actresses, probably to keep The Reveal a secret.
• The Reveal: Galatea is the real Big Bad, and she can also be considered Regis's genetic daughter and Latha's sister.
• The Starscream: Disagreements on how to handle Central's development eventually resulted in Galatea going behind Dr. Vargas' back to enact her own plans for Central.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Galatea believes that Central needs to reach its full potential right now instead of the years her father planned. She hired the Mindjacker to steal the thoughts of great minds across the globe in order to upload the resulting gestalt consciousness into Central.

Viksha Regis

Dr. Viksha "Vicky" Regis (née Perera) was the wife of Charlie Regis and a brilliant scientist before she was murdered by Adam Baxter. She moved to Newton from Sri Lanka.

• The Maiden Name Debate: After marrying Charlie Regis, Viksha decides to take his name, even though this custom no longer exists in most of the world. When asked by her colleagues, one of the options is to say it's because Charlie is old-fashioned that way, having grown up in Texas.
• Posthumous Character: Viksha has been dead for 20 years by the time the game starts, but Flashback sequences allow the player to control her for a brief time.

Nina Jeong

Dr. Nina Jeong is a Korean scientist, who used to work with Charlie and Viksha Regis.

• The Conspiracy: Nina is a part of a conspiracy to "liberate" Central by releasing it into the global net.
• I Am a Humanitarian: Nina frequents a high-class restaurant that serves cloned human meat. She doesn't see anything wrong with it, since the cadavers are cloned without functioning brains.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Nina has few moral scruples as far as her work is concerned. After Viksha's murder, Regis takes all of their embryos and leaves the project. Nina secretly clones one of the embryos and uses the clones to continue the project with Dr. Vargas.
• Mysterious Benefactor: She helps Regis in the abandoned factory without giving away her identity.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: She manages to buy herself out of trouble using her connections.

Zvidzai Chigwa

Dr. Zvidzai Chigwa is a gengineer from the Federated South African States. She used to work with Charlie and Viksha Regis.

• Sassy Black Woman

Adam Baxter

Dr. Adam Baxter is a scientist and a convicted murderer, who has a history with Regis.

• Asshole Victim: Becomes one of the victims of the Mindjacker. No one expresses any amount of grief over his murder, and one person who knew him even remarks that she's glad he's dead. Galatea also meets a horrible fate in one of the endings, but seeing as how all the bad things during the game were more-or-less her fault...
• Freudian Excuse: His obsession with the Central project and murder of Viksha were out of desperation, noting in his introduction that the Central project is his last chance to salvage his career after some kind of "accident" in his past. When Viksha and Regis decide at the last second to not use their embryos for the project, putting the whole project in jeopardy, Baxter knocks out Regis and strangles Viksha to death, screaming that they've ended him. Notably, the Virtual Ghost version of him comes across as a whole lot calmer and even quite personable when compared to what we see of the real Baxter, and it's implied that it is exactly because he has no memories of his flesh-and-blood counterpart's past.
• Never My Fault: Baxter is quick to blame others for his mistakes. He murders Viksha Regis in a fit of rage, when her morality threatens the Central project, then spends 20 years blaming Charlie Regis for getting him convicted and imprisoned.
• Restraining Bolt: As a condition of his parole, Baxter is implanted with a Governor chip that makes him physically ill if he so much as thinks about doing something violent.
• Virtual Ghost: Latha encounters a fragment of Baxter's personality after connecting to Central's core processor. This version of Baxter doesn't remember anything about his childhood or the past 20 years, including his murder of Viksha. He admits that he does feel animosity towards Regis, but can't figure out why. He helps Latha hold off the other "ghosts".

The Conspiracy

Ran Shu-Man

• Asshole Victim: Is innocent in the restaurant scene, but he's generally insufferable and hugely corrupt. You can finger him instead of the actual murderer, a generally more sympathetic personality whose crime had some pretty awful people as the targets. Nobody bats an eyelid if you do and Ran gets unceremoniously tossed out the window, to no ill consequences on the plot.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Is a heartless capitalist with no morals.
• For the Evulz: Ran Shou-Man is a completely unrepentant asshole who deeply enjoys being evil for the hell of it, even mentioning that he'd much rather be engaging in actual cannibalism — instead of the watered-down version where you only eat human meat from non-conscious purpose-grown bodies — because it would emphasise his power over the common folk.
• Hate Sink: Ran Shu-Man exists for no other reason than being a totally unrepentant asshole, so you don't feel bad if you choose to frame him for the restaurant bombing and he gets tossed out a window.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Tries to buy himself out of trouble by offering Regis money.
• Yellow Peril: Ran Shou-man is an unscrupulous businessman from the Greater Han Republic, who is probably the only truly evil character in the game.

Councilman Deane

• Cannot Tell a Lie: Because of the Governor chip installed in his head. However, he is quite skilled at wording his statements and answers in ways that makes them technically true, yet at the same time misleading.
• Exact Words: The voluntarily installed governor in his head prevents him from lying, but does not prevent him from telling the truth in very specific ways. He uses this to deny hiring the bomber that attacked the secret meeting: technically, his secretary did that.

Liam Stepford

Liam Stepford is an executive of Stepford & Sons, a company specializing in custom-made synths. He remotely assists Regis and Lao during their investigation and also appears later in person.

• The Conspiracy: He is a part of Nina's conspiracy to "release" Central.
• Eating Optional: We learn that he has no quarrels eating human meat but he doesn't need to.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Appears to be an homage to Frank Nelson and Kenneth Williams.
• Uncanny Valley: Lampshaded. Regis quickly notes that something about Stepford is unnatural. Stepford confirms that he is himself a synth.
• Verbal Tic: "Oh my, yes."

Imogen Natalia Revilla-Quintanilla de Florez

A celebrity and good friend of Nina.

• The Conspiracy: Another member of Nina's conspiratorial circle. She's most notable for having nothing to gain from Nina's conspiracy, and merely helping her out because she's a good friend.
• Famous for Being Famous: She's effectively a Kardashian-style celebrity who's famous for being rich and making various public appearances.
• Overly Long Name: Just look at that thing! Regis doesn't even bother remembering anything past her first name.
• Sacrificial Lamb: She basically exists so that Nina's dinner meeting has a casualty when the bomber attacks, setting up that chapter's murder mystery.

Van der Waal

• Ambiguously Bi: While they were a gay couple, they liked to have threesomes involving an "anatomically correct" female sexbot, which would make them this, or at least robosexuals.]]
• One Last Job: Geil Van der Waal had been trying for years to cut his ties with the criminal underworld, but a string of "last jobs" kept him from it. His last last job finally did him in.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: Van der Waal sees demons when ingesting a toxin.

Antagonists

The Mindjacker

The Mindjacker is a serial killer being tracked by CEL, as well as law enforcement all over the world. He uses wetware to forcibly break into other people's brains and steal their memories. His real name is Jayam Kreisel.

• Assimilation Backfire: Adam Baxter's desire for revenge ends up slowly taking over Kreisel's desires. He finds this desire extremely addictive.
• Brain Uploading: "Mindjacking" involves tapping into a person's neural network and forcibly extracting their memories. The process is destructive and leaves the victim a vegetable.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The lethal method of dispatching him at the end of the game involves him falling into a turbine and getting ground into paste.
• Evil Gloating: Does it at the aircraft when he has Regis at his mercy.
• For the Evulz: Some of the Mindjacker's actions, especially towards Regis. This is all under the influence of Adam Baxter's "jacked" memories.
• Serial Killer: Since all of the Mindjacker's victims end up dead or brain-dead, he can be considered a serial killer. He is actually a mercenary, hired to steal the minds of certain people across the world by the real Big Bad.
• Stupid Evil: The game starts with him trying to kill Latha despite the fact that that would throw a wrench in Galatea's plan. He later reveals that it's because he was infected with Baxter's intense grudge against Regis, making him eager to destroy Regis in every way he can even if it goes against the master plan.

The Bomber Kids

• Action Bomb: He is a product of gengineering, having been designed to produce nitrates in his bones which make him a living bomb. It's terrible for his health, of course, since nitrate-filled bones are pretty weak, but he wasn't designed with longevity in mind. The restaurant bomber is another one of these. Worse, Regis was the one to create many of them during his time working for the warlords in Texas.
• Beneath Notice: The bomber at the restaurant disguised himself as a waiter to get close to the group without raising suspicion.
• Kill and Replace: The bomber at the restaurant killed the original waiter and took his place.
• Tyke Bomb: Was raised for the sole purpose of committing a suicide attack.

Other

Chantelle

Chantelle is a Robot Maid purchased by the Van der Waal couple. She is convinced that she is human.

• Androids and Detectives: Lao "deputizes" Chantelle for a part of the game.
• French Maid: Chantelle is programmed to think of herself that way and is dressed the part.
• Literal-Minded: Ended up killing her master by interpreting his plea to remove something "inside him" too literally and ripping out his insides.
• Robot Girl: The robotic French maid, who believes that she is a real human being.
• Sexbot: Was this to the Van der Waal couple. When programmed with the right personality, she will boast that she is "anatomically correct".

Cheffie

The interactive guide at T.H.E. food generators.

• Jingle: Her memorable T.H.E-Foods jingle.
• Kawaiiko: Her obnoxious appearance and personality has been designed by committee with heavy overtones of this. At least she'll do anything to help.