OOC - New crewmember "Lester Seventeen-Dot-Phelps"

Hi everyone, sorry for my dissapearance of late, I have been a bit
busy, and then went on holiday!
Got a new member here who has a very cool character who was involved
in the creation of the "Better than life" program. I want everyone to
say hello and play nice :-)
Welcome aboard!!!
---------------------------
Character Name Lester Seventeen-Dot-Phelps
Gender Male
Age 29
Species Cybernetically "Enhanced" Human (Drudge-class)
Nationality British/English
Department Engineering
Rank Technician 2nd Class
Character's Physical Appearance
Tall and skinny, that's the first noticable thing, lost in a baggy,
grubby, off-white labcoat. Under the labcoat are oil-marked jeans and
a T-shirt with "I 2x4J23Q you". A badge hangs off the coat with a
photograph of a twenty year-old Lester with military haircut and
massive glasses. The next thing you may spot is the glittering piece
of technology embedded in his temple.
Lester has a permanent startled expression as if the world keeps
saying "boo!" His hair is wild and while clean, has had no attempt to
place it in anything approaching a style. His right hand is a complex
gauntlet of brushed steel and on his feet he wears battered black
Converse knock-offs.
A tiny service mechanoid, the size and shape of a Jaffa Cake on four
spidery legs, is often present, usually taking up residence on his
right shoulder.
Character's Personality and Interests
Artificial life intrigues Lester Seventeen-Dot-Phelps and not a lot
else. People don't have rules or subroutines, or decision paths. He
feels the usual human need for society and companionship, but doesn't
know how the process works. He's slightly hampered by the Cybernetic
enhancements evident on his body, but more hampered by his attempts
to engage people in conversation.
"Oh, that's like the fourteen series service 'noid," he might reply
to an anecdote, "always assuming the worst of a directive and
cataloguing priorities inappropriately." In truth, he's a nice guy.
100% trustworthy, friendly, generous to a fault and kind to all. He
just suspects that there's some big devious joke out there that
everyone else gets and he doesn't. So he's a little bit suspicious of
people. He knows they probably won't understand him, same as they
don't understand the machines he tends and cares for.
He has a fondness for robotic and intelligent machines, knowing them
instinctively and taking pride in their abilities and wellbeing as a
parent might. This led to the creation of SNIDE, the Symbiotic Neural
Interface DevicE, a tiny robot spider that shares half a mind with
Lester via his implants. SNIDE has developed personality quirks
through constant contact with Lester and unfortunately has picked up
on those inhibitions and fears that Lester displays... and rejected
them. If not attached to Lester's clothing, SNIDE can be found at the
Cinema or the ladies gymnasium locker room, downloading vid files for
their shared porn collection. Lester is embarrassed to have a part of
him so open for display but since SNIDE can only communicate through
beeps, ticks and expressive dance, he hasn't the heart to deactivate
him.
Lester's other interest is virtual role-playing simulations. His
current favourite is the 1950s era vigilante sim Silver Shadow in
which he and SNIDE play masked heros, breaking up protection rackets
and solving crime in 1950s Chicago. If you wanted to sum up Lester in
a few words they would be: a specific genius, socially inept and yet
so very nice and humble.
Character's history/background story
Lester Phelps was born in England to a middle-class family. From an
early age he demonstrated aptitude for computing and studied
Artificial Intelligence development at the University of East Anglia.
Upon graduation he was headhunted by a game development company and
became a small part of the team that developed the Better Than Life
simulation.
When BTL was made illegal and taken off market Lester Phelps was
arrested and brought to trial with the rest of them. The Company's
lawyers had been executed the previous night and things did not look
good, until a government agent approached Lester with a proposition:
submit to experimentation and be spared the almost certain prison
sentence.
Along with ten other, Lester agreed and so underwent Cybernetic
Enhancement to become a second-stage programmer on the Space Corps
project to develop new forms of technology. His role was basically a
bug-fixer, trawling through the hastily created code to mend what
needed mending and re-write what needed trashing.
Three years later, the Space Corps project heads decided that it
would be more cost-effective to market the bugs as "security
features" and so the entire second-line of programmers was
decommissioned. Lester was saved from the scrap heap by the early
prototype SNIDE and left the department and signed on with the Space
Corps as a Mechanoid technician. Not batting an eyelid at his
appearance, he was duly assigned a ship. Lester asked SNIDE to write
a letter to his parents explaining what he was doing and then edited
it to remove the profanities. As we join his story, he has just
despatched the letter on the interplanetary network and is bording a
shuttle with his meagre belongings in a kit bag and SNIDE making
suggestive remarks on his shoulder.
Character's favourite phrases/sayings
"Oh that's easy. It just needs a total network registery
defragmentation followed by a complete synaptic diagnostic scan. Once
we've done that we'll be able to stop him using a collander to attack
the soux-chef."
"No SNIDE!"
"Stop it SNIDE!"
"Do that lady's bra up right now!"
"Do you have a subroutine problem? Do you? I think you do. Yes you
do! Who's a naughty skutter hey? Who's a naughty malfunctioning
little mechanoid? But we're going to fix you. Yes we are."

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