Tolkien Xerox is a Republicker male who appears in Worlds Apart Book 01: Meridian and Worlds Apart Book 09; Gethsemane
Backstory[]
Running away from home at age 14, Tolkien stowed away on a transport and disembarked at the Archon Ice Station. He soon became involved in a sex-clone-piracy ring, which involved the production and smuggling of sex clones (illegal bio-replicants with six year life spans). One of the replicants became self-aware as part of an experiment by a mad technologist named Kroger. The sex clone helped him steal a spaceship and escape Archon. They were attempting to reach the Sapphire System, but instead were captured by space pirates. The sex clone convinced the space pirate captain to spare their lives by agreeing to become her concubine and by teaching her the Panrovian Rope Trick. Xerox became the only man on an all-woman piracy and smuggling crew.
The two stayed on with the pirates for three years, during which the sex clone reached the end of her allotted life span. Unhinged by her death, Tolkien became addicted to the synthetic narcotics the pirates were smuggling and the pirate captain dropped him off at Collossus Orbital Station B, where he was found and arrested by Republic Authorities and sent to the City of Rehabilitation on Republic; returning to his home-world for the first time in seventeen years.
After five years in the Rehabilitation Colony, he was assigned work as an Ice Miner on Archon. While at the Archon Orbital Station, he ran into a former member of the pirate crew who had gone semi-legit and had purchased a holographic strip bar on the Mining Guild Station on the fourth moon of Colossus. Instead of proceeding to the Ice Mine, violated his probation and went to work as a bartender and bouncer.
It was at this bar that Xerox got involved with the knife fight that resulted in his being fitted with a prosthetic eye.
Unfortunately, the former pirate was not an astute manager of the bar's financial resources, which is to say, she skimmed the profits, stiffed the Mining Guild on their cut, and Xerox showed up one night to find the bar shut down and some MG Goons eager to have a conversation with him; with their fists.
As a result of the pirate-woman's debts, Xerox became indentured to the Mining Guild and put to work as a Maintenance Worker in the Chemical Processing Complex that orbited Collossus. He soon realized he could never hope to pay off his employer's debts on his meager salary.
However, awkward fortune soon smiled upon him again. He was offered a large sum of money and a means of escape in return for helping sabotage the security grid and permitting a daring heist of thousands of liters of Tritium fuel. Xerox earned the trust of the charming rogue who led the operation and on the night of the heist turned him in to the Guild Station Manager; rightly figuring the charming rogue was setting him up as a patsy. In return, the Mining Guild forgave his debt. Xerox recognized that he would have to get off the station in a hurry; nobody liked a snitch, and it was only a matter of time before the conspirators managed to get revenge on him; which was likely to involve slow torture and an the wrong side of an airlock door. Returning to Republic was not an option; he would just end up in a Rehabilitation Center. And he was as good as dead at any MIning Guild facility he remained on for too long.
Sapphire was his only option, but with his record, it was doubtful he could legally arrange to emigrate there, and he had no money for the emigration fee in any case. He stowed away on a civilian transport and made his way to Hyperion spaceport. Bluffing his way to a seat on a trans-orbital shuttle, he found himself in the city of New Cleveland, where he attempted to pass himself off as a visiting professor from the City of Progress State University on Republic. Before his credentials could be verified, he was invited out for a night of drinking and debauchery with a popular history professor named William Randolph Keeler. He assumed “drinking and debauchery” was just playful banter for a night out with colleagues at a university function. While details of the actual night’s events are subject to multiple conflicting police statements, some events are a matter of record.
- A piece of public sculpture representing “Wisdom and Progress; a Gift from the People of Republic” was dragged across Lake of the Loons in a speedboat and deposited at a migratory bird sanctuary.
- A group of very inebriated people were ejected from the Glass Penthouse (a skybar located on top of one of New Cleveland’s tallest building featuring panoramic views of the city) for playing a most disrespectful game of “Coed Buttball” –that apparently involved people passing a ball from one to another using only buttcheeks with their pants around their ankles.
- An outdoor concert of the University of New Cleveland’s Men’s Chorus was disrupted by a loud and inebriated group of people repeatedly demanding the group sing raunchy sea chanties and unhappy that they only knew three of them.
- An entire crop of potatoes was somehow planted in the front yard of the Panrovian Trade Mission.
It was during a routine background check at the New Cleveland Constabulary that his background was discovered. He was on the verge of being expedited back to Republic. Then, he was hired as the personal assistant/butler/lackey to Professor William Keeler of Sapphire, and his life became much more interesting. Because the Government of Republic refused to sponsor him for the Odyssey Project, he remained behind after Bill Keeler left. He continued to look after the Keeler Estate for the remainder of his days. Six years after Keeler left, he married Rosalind, the Chief Cook and Kitchen Staff Supervisor of the Keeler estate. They had nine children together.