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This character was originally written for GURPS Monsters, but was rejected. As the Transhuman Space sourcebook playtest was going on simultaneously, I got a few of the THS-characteristic tropes somewhat wrong, but not disasterously so. In the interests of historical accuracy (and not out of laziness at all) I've left Dr Pak in his original state.
Dr Pak prefers bushbot and cyberdoc cybershell bodies, or a teleoperated 'shell with dexterity bonus and micro-manipulators.
| ST varies; | DX 14 [45]; | IQ 15 [60]; | HT varies |
| Speed varies; | Move varies; | Dodge varies |
Advantages: Doesn't Sleep [20]; Eidetic Memory 1 (no skill bonus; -66%) [10]; Fearlessness [2]; Lightning Calculator [5]; Unusual Background [10].
Disadvantages: Berserk [-15]; Callous [-6]; Delusion (Success will enable him to return to normal life) [-10]; Distractible [-1]; Flashbacks [-5]; Low Empathy [-15]; Obsession (Solve the biological upload problem) [-15]; Obsession (Watch widow when not otherwise busy) [-5]; Outlaw [-20]; Short Attention Span [-10]; Workaholic [-5].
Other Physical Advantages and Disadvantages as per current body.
Quirks: Leaves notes everywhere while working [-1]; Often switches languages mid-sentence when excited [-1]; Talks to his subjects about the experiment in progress [-1]; Thinks of his widow as his wife [-1].
Skills: Administration-15 [1]; Area Knowledge (Pyongyang)-18 [3]; Area Knowledge (Boston)-16 [1]; Artificial Intelligence-19 [4]; Bicycling-14 [1]; Biochemistry-16 [6]; Chemistry-14 [1]; Computer Hacking-15 [2]; Computer Operation-17 [2]; Computer Programming-18 [5]; Driving (Automobile)-14 [2]; Electronics Operation (Medical)-19 [5]; Forgery-14 [1]; Leadership-12 [1]*; Physician-16 [3]; Psychology-11 [1]*; Research-17 [3]; Streetwise-15 [1]; Surgery-15 [4]; Tai Kwon Do-13 [4]; Teaching-15 [1]; Writing-15 [1].
*Leadership and Psychology both have had -3 adjustment due to Low Empathy.
Languages: Korean-18 [3]; Japanese-16 [2]; Mandarin Chinese-16 [2]; English-16 [2].
Equipment: Ideally, a sound-proofed and isolated room fitted out as a brain-research lab, with diagnostic table, emergency support unit, HyMRI scanner, ghost compiler, nanomanipulators and one or more high capacity microframes. The scanner may be modified to effect changes in the experimental subject's brain. Occasionally the doctor has been forced to abandon his lab and start over from scratch, in which case he will have a reduced stock of equipment in his new location.
Always carries a pneumospray hypo loaded with tranquilizer, an EM device of his own design that causes a similar effect in cybershells, and a palmtop (Tiny) computer holding his research notes and a copy of his research paper.
Biography: In 2091 the Solar System's foremost neurological researcher, Dr Pak Song-Chol, stepped onto the podium in Stockholm to receive his Nobel prize for Medicine for his 30 years of research into mind-emulation programming. Two days later, his body was found stuffed behind a maintenance panel at Stockholm International Airport, ironically the victim of a botched celebrity xoxing. The xoxer had apparently attempted to render the researcher unconscious to record a low-res brain-tape (a "Shadow") to be sold on the black market. However, the attempt had gone wrong and Dr Pak had suffered massive brain damage in the assault, leading to his death. Police caught up with the xoxer after a week-long intensive man-hunt, and he died permanently while resisting arrest.
This was unfortunate, since had the criminal lived the police would have found out that having critically injured Dr Pak, he had decided to go for a destructive high-res scan (a "Ghost") of the undamaged parts of the doctor's brain. Which scan he had just successfully sold on.
Dr Pak's ghost gradually became aware that he was running the hardware of a black neurological modification (or "brain-hacking") clinic. Being very intelligent even in a damaged form, and experienced in mind-emulation, he realised immediately what had happened to him and almost immediately... forgot it again.
There's no telling how many times he went through this cycle before he thought to make a permanent note to himself, telling himself what had happened and to think of a way out. There's no telling how many times he modified the note, adding observations, jotting down ideas, and summarising so that he could reach the end of the document before his attention wandered and he forgot it all over again.
Eventually he succeeded in modifying a purloined copy of a non-sapient personal assistant program to keep track of his notes and plans and to remind him what he should be doing next. With this helper he then started to plan his escape. He copied himself and his PA program into a stolen cybershell that had come in for modification, simultaneously erasing his original and releasing several nuisance programs to cover his escape.
Not knowing how closely he was being pursued, if at all, Dr Pak hijacked several cybershells in a row, erasing the resident personalities each time, copying himself into them, then erasing the older copy of himself (sometimes by physically destroying the cybershell) to cover his tracks.
Unfortunately, it was more than his short-term memory that was damaged in the xoxing. Internal bleeding and oxygen starvation had led to an decrease in general intelligence in the ghost, as well as damage to specific areas dealing with conscience and empathy. This damage was further "enhanced" by the black clinicians when installing him into their hardware.
Dr Pak's own attempts to integrate the PA package into his own software, and his attempts to reprogram himself to cure those problems that he is aware of have introduced further instabilities into his personality.
Motivations: His plan now is to return to a flesh-and-blood body and re-establish his life and career. His motivations are two-fold: having solved the problem of recording a biologically-derived mind into a computer, the Next Big Problem for him and his team had been the reverse process of putting a recorded mind into a biological brain; he wishes to continue this research. And as the original Dr Pak's last conscious thoughts were of his wife, the ghost Dr Pak wishes to return to her as a flesh-and-blood man, not a robot, nor even a meat-puppet.
Encounters/Schemes: Dr Pak is continuing his neurological researches in a most unethical manner. His current modus operandi is to hijack a cybershell or infomorph, use its assets to buy or steal equipment, then kidnap a human or bioroid. Dr Pak then experiments on the subject without such niceties as consent, anaesthetic or therapeutic amnesia. When the subject expires, he butchers the body to make it look like the victim of a paraphiliac sexual attack (disposing of the head separately) and looks for another subject. When local conditions become too hot for him, he gathers his notes, summarises and adds them to a research paper he is writing. He stores his equipment, finds a new body (preferably far-removed from his present one), then copies himself into it and starts the cycle again.
Dr Pak has tried several times to publish his paper, suitably altered to disguise its origins, but each time it has been rejected by the peer review process as "unoriginal", "badly organised", and "of dubious provenance and utility". This has frequently brought Dr Pak to the point of rage, sometimes prematurely ending his current experiment.
Detectives investigating Dr Pak's crimes are at a severe disadvantage, in that even if they associate the occasional cybershell disappearance with the serial murders of several humans and bioroids, they have been so far unable to escape the assumption that a human is responsible (since rogue AIs are so rare and generally have different motivations) leading them to totally mis-profile their quarry.
In quiet moments, between experiments, Dr Pak sometimes hacks into public and commercial surveillance systems in order to observe his widow. It is likely that if Mrs Pak ceases mourning and becomes romantically involved, Dr Pak will take action. Unknown to him, his hacking has been noted by Pyongyang police, but has been filed as the activity of a nuisance voyeur — a low-priority misdemeanor — so no action has been taken.
Is Dr Pak actually doing any useful work? It is possible that Pak's abilities are no longer good enough even to make a competent researcher, let alone have the brilliance necessary to achieve his goal. In this case the GM may wish to reduce his professional abilities still further and add Sadism and Delusion (Doing useful work) as disadvantages. On the other hand, maybe Dr Pak still has what it takes, and is on the verge of a break-through. The PCs may interrupt his researches only to find later that he has escaped using the body of his latest subject. Having been interrupted, the process may be less than perfect, necessitating further research....
If Dr Pak's research is good, and his notes and paper are discovered, there remains the difficult problem of what to do with research that has been obtained in such an unethical manner. It is unlikely that anyone with relevant skills lower than 18 will understand the research enough to put it to practical use, and most researchers will refuse to even read the notes once they understand how they were obtained. In fact, once details of the case become public, pressure will come to erase them totally.
One reason Dr Pak has remained at liberty so long is that, unlike most AI blights, he is uninterested in reproducing multiple copies of himself, and so remains low-profile. As only one Dr Pak could possibly return to his old life, he is usually careful to erase old copies once he has moved on. However, it is possible that circumstances may cause him to abandon an old copy, unerased. Such a copy will become a Hidden Enemy, having the same goals as the current version and possibly seeking revenge for its abandonment, and may be the source of a possible sequel adventure.
With a little modification, Dr Pak could be fitted into any Cyberpunk or Space campaign that features brain-taping technology. If the technology already exists to transfer braintapes into biological brains, then Dr Pak's goals will have to be slightly different. Perhaps he is seeking to rebuild the missing parts of his mind by splicing in parts of others. It would be a tragedy if he succeeded; only then would he realise just what he had done.
Dr Pak would fit easily into Atomic Horror: his mind captured by BEMs to run a robot factory, Dr Pak escapes by transferring himself into a robot body, returning to Earth with a stolen mind-transferance ray that he doesn't understand. He experiments with the ray to reverse the process, driven beyond the bounds of rationality in his desperation.
A magical version of Pak is also possible: soul-trapped in the body of a golem, the Sorcerer Pak studies the forbidden necromantic arts to restore his soul to a real body. Necromantic study requires necromantic experiments....
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This page updated Weds, Sept 06, 2006 around about 20:00 ish (BST)