Tol Germanicus (born Stephen Turing, also known as Jermaine Tolbert, 1987 AD) was the CFO of Dasarius Interstellar and considered the oldest sapiens alive. He claimed his transformation to amortality was fundamentally different from the second and third oldest sapiens, Gene Klament (believed born 2001 AD, Saskatchewan, Canada, Earth) and Suri Mongano, born 2019, United States, Earth.)
A somewhat shadowy figure, Germanicus often faced accusations of manipulating events behind the scenes and using Dasarius to function as the last trillionaire.
Early Life
Born Steven Turing in New York City in 1987, he had a typical millennial upbringing. From his parents, he picked up a love of the rock band Van Halen, which led to his love of Cabo Wabo tequila. Years later, as Jermaine Tolbert, he would buy the liquor brand to keep it from leaving Earth. He still lived in New York on September 11, 2001, and witnessed the destruction of the Twin Towers.
By the mid-2010s, he had moved to Silicon Valley to work for a number of high-end tech firms and artificial intelligence startups. He had a job with a major tech company in San Francisco only to use it when he gave a TED Talk intended to be about AI ethics but changed to his theories on singularity and human evolution. From then on, he attempted to start his own company.
Accidental Singularity
While living and working in a startup incubator, Turing and some friends got high while experimenting with a mind upload technology. Not in the best state of mind, Turing decided to see what happened when someone went into the “mindscape” while stoned. Unfortunately, Turing’s body died, though it was never determined why. However, Turing’s mind remained in an AI matrix.
Over time, he found he could move about the Internet undetected and began a Robin Hood-like existence, crashing questionable crypto currency schemes, exposing bank fraud, and even bankrupting abusive companies. Most famously, he took down the inventor of VirCoin after the company stole several patents from one of Turing’s friends.
The AI War
When World War III erupted, the combatants tried to avoid using live troops, fighting with human-form and airborne drones. Turing amused himself by corrupting their command systems and forcing them to perform absurd routines. However, in the final weeks, the combatants began taking nuclear potshots at each other, thanks to the use of hypersonic weapons. When Beijing suffered a hit, both sides called a ceasefire. Turing felt humanity in its then-present form could not survive. He hijacked mechanized soldiers from both sides and brutally took over the city of Ulan Ulde in Russia, near the Mongolian border. There, he began building an AI node to overtake the world’s remaining nuclear arsenal.
Suri Mongano, a woman whom he had befriended over the years as a virtual entity, arrived in Ulan Ulde to talk him out of it. She was horrified to learn he was an AI, but her presence allowed the Russian government to guide a Chinese strike on the city. Turing was able to protect Suri from the blast but himself was believed dead.
Reawakening
Instead, Turing went dormant for fifty years, staying active just enough to move himself around to avoid detection. When he awoke, he discovered humanity had not destroyed itself. While he saw some of the same problems creeping up once more, he also felt they now had the tools to prevent another World War Era, as the period between 1914 and the end of his own AI uprising was now called.
He assumed the identity of Jermaine Tolbert. As a reclusive type, he began building a business empire and getting the lay of the land. He made contact with Suri Mongano and her partner, Gene Klament. The couple had been receiving periodic rejuvenation treatments since the first experiments shortly after the World War Era ended. Tolbert hired them to work for one of his many technology firms with an eye toward taking humanity to the stars.
Founding of Dasarius Interstellar and Etrusca
As humans began using wormholes to travel to the stars, Tolbert took an interest in technology generating the same type of wormholes that led to Jefivah, Aurora, and the Helios System. In the process, he made the acquaintance of an engineer named Marcus Dazar. Dazar had a theory of how a ship could produce a wormhole similar to the ones they found. Once it had been proven, Tolbert urged Dazar to travel to a star with a known Earth-like exoplanet. Playing on Dazar’s love of the Roman Empire, he suggested staking a claim to what would be called Invictus d. Dazar loved the idea and founded a colony he dubbed Etrusca, after the culture that spawned that of Rome. The star’s name Invictus had similar origin, after Sol Invictus, the Roman sun god. Since Earth’s sun already had the name Sol, they went with Invictus. Dazar declared Etrusca’s official language to be Latin. He became Marcus Dasarius while Tolbert changed his name to Tol Germanicus. He served as Dasarius’s CFO and helped with creating the first hypergates.
They purposely hid their notes on the technology without patenting it to keep a monopoly on it. Germanicus did not want the monopoly to be permanent, but Dasarius feared competition might result in safety problems. They compromised. If warp drive or some other method of FTL propulsion became feasible and commonplace, they would sow the seeds of Dasarius Interstellar’s end. That would eventually fall to Dasarius’s many-greats granddaughter, Shaneese Dasarius.
CFO of Dasarius
Once established, Germanicus became the sole permanent board member of Dasarius Interstellar. Marcus and his descendants began the tradition of the oldest offspring taking over the company on his or her fiftieth birthday. As humans began living indefinitely, many wanted to start second or even third careers as they got older. Plus, as humanity spread out among the stars, many wanted to start over on new worlds or even different ones.
Germanicus used his influence to create the Compact after the Earth-Mars War, setup currency and banking systems that discouraged resource hoarding, and funded amortality research. He believed humans tended not to reproduce as quickly when they lived long lifespans.
One project where success eluded him concerned Aphrodite, the troubled aborted colony in the Helios System. Squatters clashed with sleeper ship travelers who had previously claimed the planet. Ares and Demeter in the same system ran into similar situations but had planned for the arrival of sleeper ships, where as Aphrodite’s Penqu did not.
Dasarius attempted to build out infrastructure to ease primitive conditions on the planet. Klament, who returned from Orag space bitter and angry about the Earth-Mars War, knew of Germanicus’s original identity and crime. He founded Juno, an almost cult-like organization, to prevent Steven Turing from repeating his bloody crimes. Germanicus ultimately succeeded after radical Cubists, supplanting the various factions calling themselves the Aphrodite Liberation Front, attempted to assassinate King Edward of Bonaparte. The incident resulted in the death of radical Cubist leader Gerard Kurz and a full military occupation of Aphrodite.
Relationship with Tessa Dasarius
In the 300s, Germanicus, along with several living former CEOs and current Dasarius executives, grew alarmed at the erratic behavior of then-current CEO Claudius Dasarius. While Marcus and many of his direct heirs had proven eccentric, their primary focus had been shepherding wormhole technology and using their wealth to foster projects to help humanity move beyond the mistakes of its past.
Claudius, possibly through the machinations of his wife, began spending extravagantly, taking multiple mistresses, and neglecting his duties. The board threatened to replace him with his brother, Tybalt. While Tybalt had no interest in the company, he would agree to step in and even provide a sperm sample to create an heir. (Tybalt had a same-sex spouse and had no interest in taking a wife, even if only to procreate.) Claudius’s wife allowed herself to be impregnated and gave birth to a daughter, Tessa, in 341. When Claudius’s behavior threatened the existence of the company, the board removed him, named a series in interim CEOs, and named Tessa chief operating officer at only the age of ten. While the title was in name only, it had the effect of effectively erasing Tessa’s adolescence as she had to learn the company’s operations from her preteen years onward.
Germanicus became her surrogate father. Although he had no way to physically manifest, he nonetheless gave her as much time and attention as he could spare. Tessa grew up normally, behaving less flamboyantly than her ancestors. Nonetheless, she kept the headquarters and family estate on Earth, where Claudius moved it. She reasoned the company had invested too much in converting the city of Tacoma into a corporate headquarters and the Seattle estate had been the only home she knew.
Germanicus supported her when she became pregnant by Quentin Austin, but Tessa warned him not to interfere with his career, even if the couple split. Both Tessa and her oldest son JT grew up loathing her parents. When JT became trapped in the invasion of Amargosa, Germanicus did all he could to help her.
Semi-retirement
During the year the Compact spent trying to unravel the mystery of Amargosa‘s occupation, Germanicus had the opportunity to use his nascent resurrection technology on a human. Carolyn Best was caught in a fusion blast on Bromdar. When he began working closely with her husband Douglas, he implanted the couple with chips that would backup their minds. However, Carolyn died before he could prepare a clone body for her. He took a semi-autonomous golem that resembled a human female and used it to bring back Carolyn. By the time this worked, Douglas had moved on, believing her gone forever, and married High Normaj Jayne Chedowski. Carolyn opted to use the resemblance to the Jefivan goddess and call herself Marilyn. Germanicus asked what role she would like to play so they could create a legend for her. She opted to be his wife.
Germanicus spent the year needling Secretary-General Marcus Leitman, an old rival. He knew exactly how and when Leitman engineered the war with the Realm and believed Leitman would ultimately fail. Leitman made a bet with him, promising to dissolve Juno if he didn’t. (He welshed on the bet.)
As time went on, Marilyn began taking on more and more responsibility at Dasarius. Germanicus believed the endgame for the centuries-long project to be near. With pressure from him, Aphrodite began the long-overdue transition from protectorate to colony to core world.
Personal Life
Germanicus cleverly hid his true nature for five centuries, revealing it and his crime as Steven Turing to only a few. To those who knew, he said his entire life had been a penance for what amounted to mass slaughter and attempted genocide. He would, he said, achieve humanity’s salvation with three goals: Make humanity an interstellar civilization, allow humans to live virtually forever, and reorganize trade so that no one entity could dominate all. This last he and Marcus Dasarius baked into their company, planning its end and dissolution or reduction when the other two goals were achieved. Then he promised to submit himself for the death penalty when he was done.
Suri Mongano: As Steven Turing, he met Suri Mongano after he had become virtual. She wrote instruction sets for drones on both sides of the Third World War. Her job brought them into contact, and she assumed Turing was another developer somewhere on the Internet. Because his interactions with her made him feel “real” once more, they began an online relationship. Yet when America entered the war, the exchange of nuclear potshots began. Turing enacted a plan to set off a nuclear holocaust and let a remnant of humanity in Antarctica rebuild. She was horrified to learn his true nature, but she talked him out of continuing the slaughter beyond Ulan Ulde. Turing seemingly disappeared.
As Jermaine Tolbert, he reconnected with her and her then-lover Gene Klament. Eventually, Suri realized his true identity, but Tolbert explained all he did now was “penance for Ulan Ulde.” He also promised one day he would die for his crimes.
Suri and Klament had been among the first to obtain periodic rejuvenation, extending their lifespans indefinitely. Shortly after first contact with the Orags, descendants of the Neanderthals transplanted to Gohem some 50,000 years earlier, Klament and Suri took part in a disastrous first attempt to make rejuvenation permanent. Of ten patients, only Suri was successful, and only one other patient survived.
The Orags continued their experiments with sapiens humans in secret, leading to the founding of Thule, a distant world above the galactic plane. Suri became a leader there. She would later serve as one of Thule’s delegates to the Compact Assembly and Compact Security Council. Germanicus promised to come to Thule when his work concluded to face punishment.
Gene Klament: Klament was Suri Mongano’s long-time lover when contacted by Jermaine Tolbert. The couple had met during the first rejuvenation clinical trials immediately following the end of the World Wars. Klament became something of a protégé to Tolbert, even supporting his identity change to Tol Germanicus. Through Germanicus, Klament and Mongano took part in the first attempt at Orag rejuvenation (later called Thulian rejuvenation). Ten patients participated with Suri being the most successful. Eight of the participants died, and Klament suffered organ rejection. Transported to the Orag homeworld of Gohem saved him. During his absence, the Earth-Mars War flared up. Klament returned to sapiens space and became angry. When he learned the truth about Germanicus’s origins, he blamed him.
He founded an organization cryptically named Juno and began working to undermine Germanicus’s work. He repeatedly sabotaged efforts to pacify Aphrodite until the planet came under a proper military occupation in 434.
Eileen Burke: As she rose in the ranks, Eileen Burke made Germanicus’s acquaintance. Because her position as a flag officer often necessitated interaction with Dasarius Interstellar, she came into frequent contact with him. Germanicus certainly respected her, but on occasion, Burke implied a mild crush after spending the night a couple of times at one of his estates. Still, Burke kept to her domain, the Navy, where even senior admirals followed her lead, including Fleet Admiral Tran. Germanicus tended to give her opinion more weight than her superiors, but even Germanicus could not convince her to accept promotion. While she did achieve the rank of full admiral by 432, she resisted all attempts to grant her the fleet admiral’s position.
Tessa Dasarius: Tessa was the late-life daughter of Claudius Dasarius, considered the worst CEO of Dasarius Interstellar. His grandson JT would later half-joking refer to an encyclopedia article about Claudius’s lack of intelligence.
Because Claudius and his wife was so self-absorbed and neglectful, Germanicus intervened and seized custody of Tessa when she was 10, also training her much sooner than her ancestors or her son and daughter. Even though he could not be physically present, he treated her as a daughter. Tessa felt closer to him than her own parents, though regretted they could not physically interact.
Tessa warned Germanicus not to interfere with Quentin Austin’s career, explaining she wanted to get pregnant. But at the same time, she leaned on him for support, especially after JT was stranded on Amargosa during the occupation.
Germanicus hoped that Tessa or JT (and later, Shaneese) would guide Dasarius to its end as warp propulsion, amortality, and humanity’s survival were all achieved.
Quentin Austin: Germanicus did as Tessa asked and kept his hand out of Quentin Austin’s career. The two met socially over the years, but did not meet in a formal capacity until 429, after Austin was nearly killed during his investigation of JunoCorp. He was angry a subsidiary bought the front for Klament’s terrorist group. Thanks to Austin’s efforts, he was able to find and pass along information about a Gelt attempt on Anacreon. Later on, Germanicus hired Austin’s informal assistant Sarai Gaddar to continue the investigation after the Navy tried to bury it.
Douglas Best: When Austin passed the investigation into JunoCorp to Jefivan Delegate Douglas Best, Germanicus reached out to him to brief him on what Dasarius knew. He provided support for Best and his wife, Carolyn and provided a ship to rescue Best when he crashed during the second fusion attack on Bromdar. Though Best never knew about it, he arranged with Suri Mongano for Best and High Normaj Jayne to receive care on Thule.
Later, Germanicus recommended Best to become the Compact’s ambassador to the Laputan Guardianship, a post he did not hold long as Germanicus, Lattus Tishla, and Athena Jovann suggested him as provisional governor of Amargosa.
Marilyn Germanicus: Carolyn Best was caught in the fusion blast on Bromdar, an explosion Germanicus suspected was not Gelt in origin. Having secretly implanted both Bests with resurrection chips, he was able to salvage her mind, but did not have DNA to create a clone. Germanicus placed her into a golem he had built as an assistant. By then Best and High Normaj Jayne had married in order to produce and raise an amortal child. Carolyn, no longer resembling herself, decided to treat this new iteration as an entirely new being. Germanicus said she was one of three new species of human, the Bests being Homo amortalis (amortal man), Homo virtualis (virtual man, as Germanicus considered himself and all human-sourced Ais), and Homo syntheticus (synthetic man, anyone with a largely manufactured body.) Because of her resemblance to the Jefivan goddess, she assumed the name Marilyn and became Germanicus’s wife.
For Germanicus, it ended five centuries of loneliness as he knew his time was near. Fashioning a golem for himself, he and Marilyn could physically interact, though Germanicus had methods of intimacy only an AI-based being and a golem could enjoy. Marilyn began taking over his duties at Dasarius.
Bio Capsule:
Species: Human (Sapiens, Homo virtualis)
Birth Year: 1987 AD
Birthplace: New York City, New York, United States, Earth
Homeworld: Earth, Etrusca
Occupation: Software engineer, financier, executive, diplomat
Spouse: Marilyn Germanicus (429 – )
Appearances:
The Marilynists, Beyond Amargosa, The Amortals, The Exile, Storming Amargosa