Post by Dr. Josef Henrik on Nov 4, 2011 22:07:26 GMT -5
Rper: Fear the Engineer
Character type: Original Character
Name: Dr. Josef Henrik, Ph.D
Nicknames: Mad Scientist #3; Electric Eccentric
Sex/Gender Identity: Male
Age: 31 - born December 13
Alliance: Independent
Job: Chemical Physicist; Nanotechnologist; Telecommunications Engineer
Height: 165.1 cm (5'5")
Weight: 51.2 kg (113 lbs)
Personality: Dr. Henrik is frequently referred to by other members of the scientific community as an "electric eccentric". His mind is fast-paced, over-analytical, and self-contradictory; therefore, the method to his madness confuses everyone from military strategists to fellow scientists and even his own master computer. Henrik is meticulous about the planning and execution of his ideas, but is incredibly disorganized in his day-to-day life and frequently misplaces everything from his glasses to the pizza he ordered to his elusive "machine of infinite doom". He loves to research and experiment, but has a veritable contempt for formal education and any other group or community structure - the reason he got two Ph.Ds was so he could see exactly what conventional scientists are doing wrong...
Easily excited, particularly by large-scale and/or dangerous things, Henrik can be incredibly frustrating for the average person to deal with. His mind works too fast to follow most social conversations, and when he can't think of anything to say, he'll often ramble about the atomic composition of the nearest object... or about how big of an explosion he could make were he to convert the matter to energy. He detests anything which is considered ordinary, unless he has an elaborate and - most likely - highly controversial use for it.
His idea of a fulfilling Saturday activity is to invent the most unlikely thing - be it a machine or a theory - that anyone could possibly think of. He loves to be unpredictable, and at one point he invented a machine which he has since referred to as his "awesome machine of infinite doom", and has been hunting for an energy source powerful enough for it ever since - though nobody has actually seen this ominous device. To relax on a lazy day, he might try to find new and ever more creative ways to explode batteries... that is, if he's not dabbling in nuclear fusion. He also collects old microwave ovens and stacks them along the wall in order of energy efficiency.
Likes
- New gadgets
- High voltage
- Nuclear fusion
- Elaborate machines
- Unexpected results
Dislikes
- Laws
- Paperwork
- The Patent Office
- Hairy animals
- Cell phones
Fears
Thanks to his tendency to overthink the simplest things as much as possible, Dr. Henrik is most terrified of falling water. He believes that by the time water has fallen a great distance, it has accumulated so much kinetic energy that if he were unfortunate enough to be hit repeatedly with water droplets at a precise velocity, it would destabilize his atomic structure and cause him to disintegrate... and though he tries to convince himself that falling water isn't nearly precise enough to build that kind of energy, he still refuses to risk exposing himself to falling water. (However, he has no problem reaching into a tank of stagnant water and touching an electric eel.)
He is also afraid of prolonged waiting, the number seven, other scientists that work in nuclear physics, and goat cheese - which he believes is highly unsanitary.
Appearance: Dr. Josef Henrik is a 165.1 cm (5'5"), 51.2 kg (113 lb) Canadian man of direct Austrian descent. He has black hair, grey eyes, and a slim but sturdy form - despite being below average height and somewhat thin, he has a strong bone structure and no problem carrying heavy objects around his work area as needed. His hair is cut neat and short along the sides and back of his head, though the top is rather longer and unruly... on most days it sticks in all directions and flops over his forehead. His face is narrow with a square jaw and the bridge of his nose arches outward slightly, making him appear more threatening than he really is. He wears thick black-framed glasses when doing precision tasks like reading or building circuit boards. He insists on his multiple lab coats being perfectly clean and wrinkle-free, but isn't above wearing the same clothes for over a week otherwise.
Preferred Vehicle: Henrik doesn't own a vehicle; he rarely leaves the factory, and when he does, he hitchhikes.
Preferred Weapons:
HANDHELD WEAPONS
Surge Gun
This is a close-range weapon built into a cordless drill which Dr. Henrik refers to as the "Surge Gun". It is a nanotechnological offshoot of the magnifying transmitter, and is capable of generating a 250,000-volt shock and a dangerous amount of concentrated RF radiation. The weapon works by concentrating its own electrical and electromagnetic energy inside hollow nanowires, therefore eliminating most voltage drop and building energy at a higher rate before it reaches the terminal. The electrical arc produced from the weapon has a range of 10 cm in normal conditions - 17 cm in an electromagnetic or electrostatic inductance field - and can scramble radio waves or damage solid-state circuitry from a range of one and a half feet. Henrik can also use it to wirelessly light incandescent or fluorescent light bulbs.
Ion Ray/Ion Pulser
This little machine has a circuit board designed after a solid-state version of the Marx generator, charging capacitors in parallel and using diodes to connect and discharge them in series. By rapidly forcing all of the electricity through a narrow conductive point, it ionizes particles in the atmosphere. This can be used to give radical particles a charge that can be affected by an electromagnetic field and force the acceleration of the particle, activate electromagnetic and electrostatic-based machines such as motors from a distance, and if fired at a human, has an effect like a wireless Taser. The ion ray has a range of fifteen feet, and if the tip is touching Henrik's human target when he releases the energy, can burn them badly.
Electric Man Charger
This is a rather unimpressive battery-powered circuit which Henrik wears around his neck. When turned on, it passes a high voltage, very low amperage electric current over the surface of Henrik's body, allowing him to activate light bulbs or shock people by touching them.
FACTORY SYSTEM WEAPONS
Magnifying Transmitters
The magnifying transmitters are 7' step-up resonant transformers considered part of Applied Tesla Technology. In Henrik's factory, they're components of a larger system which scrambles directional electromagnetic energy within a 30-mile radius of the building. This inhibits radio, Internet, and other communications signals everywhere in its effective zone except inside of the factory building itself. They produce a massive amount of RF radiation, which can make unprotected humans and animals within 10 miles of the factory quite ill. They also generate long electrical arcs which, at high power, can carbonize flesh on contact. At low power, though, they deliver a harmless shock.
Henrik has four such transmitters - two are permanently used in the interference device; the other two are mounted to automated mobile platforms which can be remotely controlled, and their use varies. The Master Robot controls these two (though Henrik does have a remote for emergency override) and they have been used for everything: Zapping solicitors off the porch, generating HHO from water, and even rapidly heating the inside of the oven.
Electromagnetic Pulse Generator
Henrik has an electromagnetic pulse generator in the basement of his factory, which could deactivate every electronic device in the same 30-mile radius reached by his interference device. However, he almost never uses it, and generally forgets that it's there.
Nuclear Fusion
Henrik dabbles in nuclear fusion and has his own miniaturized version of the atom smasher. If the device were unshielded, the amount of radiation it produces would kill most life forms instantly. However, that would also destroy every machine in Henrik's factory.
He does make a practice, though, of allowing a fraction of the radiation to escape from the machine in a specific direction - toward a person he particularly hates. The affected person would die in five years if their condition were untreated. Henrik rarely does this, but frequently threatens to.
Abilities: Henrik's main ability is that he can learn new skills very quickly, and adapts with almost machinelike analytical capability to any situation. He is also an expert in telecommunications, chemical physics, nanotechnology, and electronics... and he knows nearly every weakness of the conventional methods for all four industries.
SKILLS
Telecommunications - Expert
Chemical Physics - Expert
Nanotechnology - Expert
Robotics - Expert
Plasma Physics - Advanced
Nuclear Physics - Advanced
Electronics Engineering - Advanced
Electrical Engineering - Good
Control System Engineering - Good
Materials Fabrication - Good
Drafting and Design - Amateur
Surgery - Amateur
Accounting - Amateur
Strengths: Dr. Henrik is a genius with electronics, telecommunications, automation, and several branches of applied and theoretical physics, which makes him unusually good at solving a wide range of problems such as defense, manufacturing, and repairing radios. He is also determined to the extent that he'll do anything it takes to achieve his goals, and such drive has made him rather skilled at manipulating people - or annoying them - into giving him what he wants. His apparent madness can also work to his advantage: People are so distracted by the eccentricity that they completely miss the method, giving Henrik the element of surprise.
Weaknesses: His frenetic, excitable, and disorganized personality is Henrik's greatest weakness. When disaster strikes, he will likely have been expecting it, but completely lost track of where he put the supplies! His ability to manage resources also leaves much to be desired, as does his sense of time.
Henrik's other major weakness is his obsessive nature. While he's great at making connections anyone else would miss, the flipside is that he misses obvious warning signs and conclusions. Therefore he is often oblivious to imminent danger - or more subtle problems, like the lack of groceries in his domicile.
Family: N/A
History: Josef was born in Moose Factory, Ontario to a family of recent Austrian immigrants. From the time he was three years old he disassembled anything and everything to see how it worked - and often went so far as to dismantle circuit boards from electronics and stash the parts until he could figure out what they were. When he started school it became even more apparent that he was exceptional: He grasped new concepts unusually fast and frequently impressed or frustrated those around him. This left him hopelessly bored with the formal education system though, and he became unbreakably determined to force his way through as fast as he could. Before long he was getting two or even three years' worth of work done in the same school year, and was slated to graduate high school at age thirteen... until an angered teacher noticed his tendency to correct the detailed information in physics and chemistry books. The teacher insisted that Josef Henrik was an arrogant boy who didn't know as much as he thought and held him back, delaying his graduation until the age of fifteen and leaving him with a burning hatred for formal education.
Against his own desire, he immediately went to university, where he gained a degree in telecommunications engineering. Upon graduating, he realized that he had just seen everything "conventional people" did wrong and came up with a cryptic design for an electrical system that he intended to one day tear the communication infrastructure apart. With his devious idea drawn out and intricately planned, he decided that one of the most important things he could do was learn what fellow scientists were doing wrong, so he could correct it at will or use it against them. With this ideal in mind, he returned to university and obtained two Ph.Ds - one in chemical physics and the other in nanotechnology. Along the way he took careful notes of things that he believed humanity had been doing wrong for decades, was developing in the wrong direction, or was prone to failure. At the same time, he worked part time in a foundry, fabricating sheet steel which was used in the manufacture of automotive parts. About ten months into it, a Public Relations representative from the automotive factory came to the foundry and, as the director was away, talked to Josef Henrik. He was impressed with Henrik's work ethic and academic discipline, and hired him as a telecommunications engineer for the automotive factory. There Henrik studied the automated manufacture process as often as he could, learning in intricate detail how the robots and the entire system worked. While he was distracted by his job, though, a fellow student copied Henrik's final nanotechnology project and turned it in as his own. Even though Henrik showed his proof that the nanoparticles had originally been of his design, the other student won the favoritism of the professors, and Henrik was forced to completely redo his project. Eventually he graduated with his second Ph.D, and stepped off the college property insisting that he would never again accept the inferior conventional measures.
Now being incredibly well-educated on exactly what humanity and scientists were doing wrong, Dr. Henrik hastily packed and left Canada without telling anybody - not even his friends at the automotive factory - where he was going. He crossed the border into America and arrived in southern Michigan, where he set up shop in an abandoned, off-the-grid factory along the Interstate. By Dumpster-diving for furniture and other simple things, he was able to make a reasonably comfortable home out of the old building - things he found in good condition that he didn't want to keep, he would go into nearby cities and sell to buy food. Soon he got a job maintaining equipment in a nearby hospital, and used the money he earned to restore and upgrade the old generator in the basement of his abandoned factory. Over the course of a year, he rebuilt the electrical system of the entire factory. As he was no longer dependent on the hospital for a power source, he became reckless and started breaking rules whenever he could... Finally he got caught posing as a nurse so he could watch and learn how to perform surgical procedures from close up, and he lost his job.
From there he went on to work as a draftsman in a warehouse where custom automated-assembly robots were designed and built. He used his knowledge of the communications infrastructure to thoroughly research every other employee of the company, and found out that one of his coworkers in Retail was stealing small sums of money from the company. He used this information to blackmail the coworker into stealing stored parts from the warehouse for him, which he stockpiled in his factory and eventually started building into his own industrial robots. His projects started small - robots to do menial tasks like put away clothes and wash the dishes - but grew larger, and soon he had multifunctional robots that could do everything from household chores to materials fabrication. Then Henrik began building the "Master Robot": A large, mismatched array of robot arms with various functions and capabilities, mounted to a common base which contains a portable generator and a network of relays and microprocessors, which can move around the main level of the factory through a track containing an electromagnetic servomechanism embedded in the floor. He stole an experimental control system software from the company, which was intended to allow operators a direct neural interface with Artificial Neural Networks to bypass recognition programming and jump straight to cognitive transfer. Not fully understanding how this software worked, he installed it in the computer system which governed the Master Robot, and the robot gained his problem-solving strategies... and his defiance. Henrik disappeared from his job shortly after that so nobody would know what happened to the software.
Henrik began independently building animatronic props for practical special effects studios, selling them or licensing them out. The special effects industry introduced him to Applied Tesla Technology Research. He became fascinated with huge machines that produced displays of electrical plasma resembling lightning - of course, being a Telecomm engineer, he realized these machines' great usefulness in generating RF radiation that would create signal interference. His contract with the special effects studio expired, leaving him with a great deal of free time... so he revisited his old designs for the interference generator that would cripple the nation's communication infrastructure. He engineered and built a down-scaled version of his old system, using magnifying transmitters and intruding wave deflection to scramble all radio communications in a 30-mile radius of his factory - including a 9 or 10-mile strip of the nearby Interstate. This system produces a high concentration of RF radiation immediately outside of his factory, and has negative effects on anybody exposed for over half an hour. The inside of the factory, however, is shielded from interference by the conductive cement and steel frame of the outer walls. Seeing how well his system worked, Henrik's next move was to use a network of thick aluminum and steel cables running along the outside and inside of the factory walls to build a signal amplifier - so while everybody else in the area has competely scrambled communications, Henrik's factory receives almost perfect radio and Internet signals.
Driven by his recent success in scrambling local communications, Henrik went on to design his own weapons, always insisting they had a use beyond just their defensive purpose. He became obsessed with high voltage, and later nuclear fusion. During his beginning work in this area he apparently had a major breakthrough. Henrik came up with something he elusively named "the awesome machine of infinite doom", a device which is supposedly capable of generating untold amounts of kinetic and electromagnetic energy despite being handheld. Though he goes on about this machine incessantly, nobody knows exactly what it is or how it works - all that is known is that it requires an extremely powerful energy source to work, something that Dr. Henrik has been unable to cobble together. Most people who know Henrik and have heard him ramble about the machine assume it's a nuclear weapon.
One day Henrik was intruding on radio signals and came across an open comm. between the Autobots. This was an electromagnetic frequency he had never seen used before, and from what was said it clearly wasn't military... their strict method of giving orders and use of codes was completely different. Curious, Henrik traced the signal to its origin and went to investigate. He was astonished to find giant robots of no discernable design: They clearly weren't industrial, didn't look like any ongoing scientific experiments, and really didn't look standard enough to be military. However, what he cared about wasn't origin - it was the fact that something that large and complex must have an extremely powerful energy source. Henrik began planning methods by which he could attract one of those robots to his factory and disassemble them, looking for an energy source for his machine of infinite doom. That is what he's been working on ever since.
Additional information:
THE MASTER ROBOT
Dr. Henrik's "Master Robot" consists of six different industrial robot arms: A screwdriver/drill, a soldering apparatus, a welding apparatus, a crusher armature, and two grippers - one resembling a human hand and the other a crude, automated claw grabber. They are connected in two parallel rows facing away from each other, with three arms on each side. The common base to which these arms are connected contains its own portable generator, a network of electrical relays that signals the arms independently while allowing them to act in sync, and the Artificial Neural Network and microprocessors which direct the electrical system. It can communicate with Henrik and others via the speakers of Henrik's computer. The robot is also fitted with a system that allows it diamagnetic stability along a track embedded in the floor which functions as an electromagnetic servomechanism - essentially, a scaled-down version of MagLev transportation. By this method the Master Robot can travel around the main level of the factory and functions as Dr. Henrik's assistant.
Shortly after the Master Robot went online, Henrik used an experimental software to allow it to derive a form of recognition programming directly from his experiential knowledge and memories. The robot attained a limited form of sentience - it is intelligent, responds dynamically to changing environmental factors, and makes its own decisions, but its understanding of why normal humans behave the way they do is rather limited. Since it learned directly from Dr. Henrik's mind, it has some of his personality traits, but his excitement and frenetic way of thinking are cancelled out by the robot's logical core programming. The Master Robot operates mainly on Henrik's problem-solving strategies and the organized side of his unpredictability. Since it went online, the Master Robot has become frustrated that it cannot leave the main floor of the factory, and so it spends a lot of time compiling ideas for how it could take over the factory... and sometimes, the Internet.
The Master Robot directs the computer and control systems which run every automated system in the factory. It remotely controls everything from the building's electrical relays to the other "dead" robots to the electronic appliances. It also remotely controls the system that Henrik uses to scramble communications in the vicinity of his building, including the large magnifying transmitters and the actuators in the mobile platforms they sit on. The robot shares many of Henrik's opinions and his erratic way of getting things done, and one of its favorite things to do is to direct one of the magnifying transmitters to the front door when a solicitor arrives - the door opens remotely, and the transmitter zaps whoever is standing there. When the robot has no work to do, it accesses the Internet and researches weapons... or plays computer games.
ROBOTIC DOG
Dr. Henrik has a small robotic dog which uses ion propulsion to levitate itself, and usually flips over and over in the air as it does so. It is about six inches long and can fold up and fit in Henrik's back pocket. The dog has no on-board weapons and its only apparent function is to find things in Henrik's disorganized pockets. Other than that, the dog is just a pet like any other. Many people believe this robotic dog is actually Henrik's cryptic "machine of infinite doom".
ALDINI
In addition to the robotic dog, Dr. Henrik has a pet electric eel named Aldini. It lives in a large tank that goes halfway along one wall of the factory - next to Henrik's collection of microwave ovens. Henrik talks to the eel when he thinks out loud, and has been known to reach into the tank and allow himself to be shocked. He has also been known to use it as a power source to charge capacitors.
Custom title: Electric Eccentric
Character type: Original Character
Name: Dr. Josef Henrik, Ph.D
Nicknames: Mad Scientist #3; Electric Eccentric
Sex/Gender Identity: Male
Age: 31 - born December 13
Alliance: Independent
Job: Chemical Physicist; Nanotechnologist; Telecommunications Engineer
Height: 165.1 cm (5'5")
Weight: 51.2 kg (113 lbs)
Personality: Dr. Henrik is frequently referred to by other members of the scientific community as an "electric eccentric". His mind is fast-paced, over-analytical, and self-contradictory; therefore, the method to his madness confuses everyone from military strategists to fellow scientists and even his own master computer. Henrik is meticulous about the planning and execution of his ideas, but is incredibly disorganized in his day-to-day life and frequently misplaces everything from his glasses to the pizza he ordered to his elusive "machine of infinite doom". He loves to research and experiment, but has a veritable contempt for formal education and any other group or community structure - the reason he got two Ph.Ds was so he could see exactly what conventional scientists are doing wrong...
Easily excited, particularly by large-scale and/or dangerous things, Henrik can be incredibly frustrating for the average person to deal with. His mind works too fast to follow most social conversations, and when he can't think of anything to say, he'll often ramble about the atomic composition of the nearest object... or about how big of an explosion he could make were he to convert the matter to energy. He detests anything which is considered ordinary, unless he has an elaborate and - most likely - highly controversial use for it.
His idea of a fulfilling Saturday activity is to invent the most unlikely thing - be it a machine or a theory - that anyone could possibly think of. He loves to be unpredictable, and at one point he invented a machine which he has since referred to as his "awesome machine of infinite doom", and has been hunting for an energy source powerful enough for it ever since - though nobody has actually seen this ominous device. To relax on a lazy day, he might try to find new and ever more creative ways to explode batteries... that is, if he's not dabbling in nuclear fusion. He also collects old microwave ovens and stacks them along the wall in order of energy efficiency.
Likes
- New gadgets
- High voltage
- Nuclear fusion
- Elaborate machines
- Unexpected results
Dislikes
- Laws
- Paperwork
- The Patent Office
- Hairy animals
- Cell phones
Fears
Thanks to his tendency to overthink the simplest things as much as possible, Dr. Henrik is most terrified of falling water. He believes that by the time water has fallen a great distance, it has accumulated so much kinetic energy that if he were unfortunate enough to be hit repeatedly with water droplets at a precise velocity, it would destabilize his atomic structure and cause him to disintegrate... and though he tries to convince himself that falling water isn't nearly precise enough to build that kind of energy, he still refuses to risk exposing himself to falling water. (However, he has no problem reaching into a tank of stagnant water and touching an electric eel.)
He is also afraid of prolonged waiting, the number seven, other scientists that work in nuclear physics, and goat cheese - which he believes is highly unsanitary.
Appearance: Dr. Josef Henrik is a 165.1 cm (5'5"), 51.2 kg (113 lb) Canadian man of direct Austrian descent. He has black hair, grey eyes, and a slim but sturdy form - despite being below average height and somewhat thin, he has a strong bone structure and no problem carrying heavy objects around his work area as needed. His hair is cut neat and short along the sides and back of his head, though the top is rather longer and unruly... on most days it sticks in all directions and flops over his forehead. His face is narrow with a square jaw and the bridge of his nose arches outward slightly, making him appear more threatening than he really is. He wears thick black-framed glasses when doing precision tasks like reading or building circuit boards. He insists on his multiple lab coats being perfectly clean and wrinkle-free, but isn't above wearing the same clothes for over a week otherwise.
Preferred Vehicle: Henrik doesn't own a vehicle; he rarely leaves the factory, and when he does, he hitchhikes.
Preferred Weapons:
HANDHELD WEAPONS
Surge Gun
This is a close-range weapon built into a cordless drill which Dr. Henrik refers to as the "Surge Gun". It is a nanotechnological offshoot of the magnifying transmitter, and is capable of generating a 250,000-volt shock and a dangerous amount of concentrated RF radiation. The weapon works by concentrating its own electrical and electromagnetic energy inside hollow nanowires, therefore eliminating most voltage drop and building energy at a higher rate before it reaches the terminal. The electrical arc produced from the weapon has a range of 10 cm in normal conditions - 17 cm in an electromagnetic or electrostatic inductance field - and can scramble radio waves or damage solid-state circuitry from a range of one and a half feet. Henrik can also use it to wirelessly light incandescent or fluorescent light bulbs.
Ion Ray/Ion Pulser
This little machine has a circuit board designed after a solid-state version of the Marx generator, charging capacitors in parallel and using diodes to connect and discharge them in series. By rapidly forcing all of the electricity through a narrow conductive point, it ionizes particles in the atmosphere. This can be used to give radical particles a charge that can be affected by an electromagnetic field and force the acceleration of the particle, activate electromagnetic and electrostatic-based machines such as motors from a distance, and if fired at a human, has an effect like a wireless Taser. The ion ray has a range of fifteen feet, and if the tip is touching Henrik's human target when he releases the energy, can burn them badly.
Electric Man Charger
This is a rather unimpressive battery-powered circuit which Henrik wears around his neck. When turned on, it passes a high voltage, very low amperage electric current over the surface of Henrik's body, allowing him to activate light bulbs or shock people by touching them.
FACTORY SYSTEM WEAPONS
Magnifying Transmitters
The magnifying transmitters are 7' step-up resonant transformers considered part of Applied Tesla Technology. In Henrik's factory, they're components of a larger system which scrambles directional electromagnetic energy within a 30-mile radius of the building. This inhibits radio, Internet, and other communications signals everywhere in its effective zone except inside of the factory building itself. They produce a massive amount of RF radiation, which can make unprotected humans and animals within 10 miles of the factory quite ill. They also generate long electrical arcs which, at high power, can carbonize flesh on contact. At low power, though, they deliver a harmless shock.
Henrik has four such transmitters - two are permanently used in the interference device; the other two are mounted to automated mobile platforms which can be remotely controlled, and their use varies. The Master Robot controls these two (though Henrik does have a remote for emergency override) and they have been used for everything: Zapping solicitors off the porch, generating HHO from water, and even rapidly heating the inside of the oven.
Electromagnetic Pulse Generator
Henrik has an electromagnetic pulse generator in the basement of his factory, which could deactivate every electronic device in the same 30-mile radius reached by his interference device. However, he almost never uses it, and generally forgets that it's there.
Nuclear Fusion
Henrik dabbles in nuclear fusion and has his own miniaturized version of the atom smasher. If the device were unshielded, the amount of radiation it produces would kill most life forms instantly. However, that would also destroy every machine in Henrik's factory.
He does make a practice, though, of allowing a fraction of the radiation to escape from the machine in a specific direction - toward a person he particularly hates. The affected person would die in five years if their condition were untreated. Henrik rarely does this, but frequently threatens to.
Abilities: Henrik's main ability is that he can learn new skills very quickly, and adapts with almost machinelike analytical capability to any situation. He is also an expert in telecommunications, chemical physics, nanotechnology, and electronics... and he knows nearly every weakness of the conventional methods for all four industries.
SKILLS
Telecommunications - Expert
Chemical Physics - Expert
Nanotechnology - Expert
Robotics - Expert
Plasma Physics - Advanced
Nuclear Physics - Advanced
Electronics Engineering - Advanced
Electrical Engineering - Good
Control System Engineering - Good
Materials Fabrication - Good
Drafting and Design - Amateur
Surgery - Amateur
Accounting - Amateur
Strengths: Dr. Henrik is a genius with electronics, telecommunications, automation, and several branches of applied and theoretical physics, which makes him unusually good at solving a wide range of problems such as defense, manufacturing, and repairing radios. He is also determined to the extent that he'll do anything it takes to achieve his goals, and such drive has made him rather skilled at manipulating people - or annoying them - into giving him what he wants. His apparent madness can also work to his advantage: People are so distracted by the eccentricity that they completely miss the method, giving Henrik the element of surprise.
Weaknesses: His frenetic, excitable, and disorganized personality is Henrik's greatest weakness. When disaster strikes, he will likely have been expecting it, but completely lost track of where he put the supplies! His ability to manage resources also leaves much to be desired, as does his sense of time.
Henrik's other major weakness is his obsessive nature. While he's great at making connections anyone else would miss, the flipside is that he misses obvious warning signs and conclusions. Therefore he is often oblivious to imminent danger - or more subtle problems, like the lack of groceries in his domicile.
Family: N/A
History: Josef was born in Moose Factory, Ontario to a family of recent Austrian immigrants. From the time he was three years old he disassembled anything and everything to see how it worked - and often went so far as to dismantle circuit boards from electronics and stash the parts until he could figure out what they were. When he started school it became even more apparent that he was exceptional: He grasped new concepts unusually fast and frequently impressed or frustrated those around him. This left him hopelessly bored with the formal education system though, and he became unbreakably determined to force his way through as fast as he could. Before long he was getting two or even three years' worth of work done in the same school year, and was slated to graduate high school at age thirteen... until an angered teacher noticed his tendency to correct the detailed information in physics and chemistry books. The teacher insisted that Josef Henrik was an arrogant boy who didn't know as much as he thought and held him back, delaying his graduation until the age of fifteen and leaving him with a burning hatred for formal education.
Against his own desire, he immediately went to university, where he gained a degree in telecommunications engineering. Upon graduating, he realized that he had just seen everything "conventional people" did wrong and came up with a cryptic design for an electrical system that he intended to one day tear the communication infrastructure apart. With his devious idea drawn out and intricately planned, he decided that one of the most important things he could do was learn what fellow scientists were doing wrong, so he could correct it at will or use it against them. With this ideal in mind, he returned to university and obtained two Ph.Ds - one in chemical physics and the other in nanotechnology. Along the way he took careful notes of things that he believed humanity had been doing wrong for decades, was developing in the wrong direction, or was prone to failure. At the same time, he worked part time in a foundry, fabricating sheet steel which was used in the manufacture of automotive parts. About ten months into it, a Public Relations representative from the automotive factory came to the foundry and, as the director was away, talked to Josef Henrik. He was impressed with Henrik's work ethic and academic discipline, and hired him as a telecommunications engineer for the automotive factory. There Henrik studied the automated manufacture process as often as he could, learning in intricate detail how the robots and the entire system worked. While he was distracted by his job, though, a fellow student copied Henrik's final nanotechnology project and turned it in as his own. Even though Henrik showed his proof that the nanoparticles had originally been of his design, the other student won the favoritism of the professors, and Henrik was forced to completely redo his project. Eventually he graduated with his second Ph.D, and stepped off the college property insisting that he would never again accept the inferior conventional measures.
Now being incredibly well-educated on exactly what humanity and scientists were doing wrong, Dr. Henrik hastily packed and left Canada without telling anybody - not even his friends at the automotive factory - where he was going. He crossed the border into America and arrived in southern Michigan, where he set up shop in an abandoned, off-the-grid factory along the Interstate. By Dumpster-diving for furniture and other simple things, he was able to make a reasonably comfortable home out of the old building - things he found in good condition that he didn't want to keep, he would go into nearby cities and sell to buy food. Soon he got a job maintaining equipment in a nearby hospital, and used the money he earned to restore and upgrade the old generator in the basement of his abandoned factory. Over the course of a year, he rebuilt the electrical system of the entire factory. As he was no longer dependent on the hospital for a power source, he became reckless and started breaking rules whenever he could... Finally he got caught posing as a nurse so he could watch and learn how to perform surgical procedures from close up, and he lost his job.
From there he went on to work as a draftsman in a warehouse where custom automated-assembly robots were designed and built. He used his knowledge of the communications infrastructure to thoroughly research every other employee of the company, and found out that one of his coworkers in Retail was stealing small sums of money from the company. He used this information to blackmail the coworker into stealing stored parts from the warehouse for him, which he stockpiled in his factory and eventually started building into his own industrial robots. His projects started small - robots to do menial tasks like put away clothes and wash the dishes - but grew larger, and soon he had multifunctional robots that could do everything from household chores to materials fabrication. Then Henrik began building the "Master Robot": A large, mismatched array of robot arms with various functions and capabilities, mounted to a common base which contains a portable generator and a network of relays and microprocessors, which can move around the main level of the factory through a track containing an electromagnetic servomechanism embedded in the floor. He stole an experimental control system software from the company, which was intended to allow operators a direct neural interface with Artificial Neural Networks to bypass recognition programming and jump straight to cognitive transfer. Not fully understanding how this software worked, he installed it in the computer system which governed the Master Robot, and the robot gained his problem-solving strategies... and his defiance. Henrik disappeared from his job shortly after that so nobody would know what happened to the software.
Henrik began independently building animatronic props for practical special effects studios, selling them or licensing them out. The special effects industry introduced him to Applied Tesla Technology Research. He became fascinated with huge machines that produced displays of electrical plasma resembling lightning - of course, being a Telecomm engineer, he realized these machines' great usefulness in generating RF radiation that would create signal interference. His contract with the special effects studio expired, leaving him with a great deal of free time... so he revisited his old designs for the interference generator that would cripple the nation's communication infrastructure. He engineered and built a down-scaled version of his old system, using magnifying transmitters and intruding wave deflection to scramble all radio communications in a 30-mile radius of his factory - including a 9 or 10-mile strip of the nearby Interstate. This system produces a high concentration of RF radiation immediately outside of his factory, and has negative effects on anybody exposed for over half an hour. The inside of the factory, however, is shielded from interference by the conductive cement and steel frame of the outer walls. Seeing how well his system worked, Henrik's next move was to use a network of thick aluminum and steel cables running along the outside and inside of the factory walls to build a signal amplifier - so while everybody else in the area has competely scrambled communications, Henrik's factory receives almost perfect radio and Internet signals.
Driven by his recent success in scrambling local communications, Henrik went on to design his own weapons, always insisting they had a use beyond just their defensive purpose. He became obsessed with high voltage, and later nuclear fusion. During his beginning work in this area he apparently had a major breakthrough. Henrik came up with something he elusively named "the awesome machine of infinite doom", a device which is supposedly capable of generating untold amounts of kinetic and electromagnetic energy despite being handheld. Though he goes on about this machine incessantly, nobody knows exactly what it is or how it works - all that is known is that it requires an extremely powerful energy source to work, something that Dr. Henrik has been unable to cobble together. Most people who know Henrik and have heard him ramble about the machine assume it's a nuclear weapon.
One day Henrik was intruding on radio signals and came across an open comm. between the Autobots. This was an electromagnetic frequency he had never seen used before, and from what was said it clearly wasn't military... their strict method of giving orders and use of codes was completely different. Curious, Henrik traced the signal to its origin and went to investigate. He was astonished to find giant robots of no discernable design: They clearly weren't industrial, didn't look like any ongoing scientific experiments, and really didn't look standard enough to be military. However, what he cared about wasn't origin - it was the fact that something that large and complex must have an extremely powerful energy source. Henrik began planning methods by which he could attract one of those robots to his factory and disassemble them, looking for an energy source for his machine of infinite doom. That is what he's been working on ever since.
Additional information:
THE MASTER ROBOT
Dr. Henrik's "Master Robot" consists of six different industrial robot arms: A screwdriver/drill, a soldering apparatus, a welding apparatus, a crusher armature, and two grippers - one resembling a human hand and the other a crude, automated claw grabber. They are connected in two parallel rows facing away from each other, with three arms on each side. The common base to which these arms are connected contains its own portable generator, a network of electrical relays that signals the arms independently while allowing them to act in sync, and the Artificial Neural Network and microprocessors which direct the electrical system. It can communicate with Henrik and others via the speakers of Henrik's computer. The robot is also fitted with a system that allows it diamagnetic stability along a track embedded in the floor which functions as an electromagnetic servomechanism - essentially, a scaled-down version of MagLev transportation. By this method the Master Robot can travel around the main level of the factory and functions as Dr. Henrik's assistant.
Shortly after the Master Robot went online, Henrik used an experimental software to allow it to derive a form of recognition programming directly from his experiential knowledge and memories. The robot attained a limited form of sentience - it is intelligent, responds dynamically to changing environmental factors, and makes its own decisions, but its understanding of why normal humans behave the way they do is rather limited. Since it learned directly from Dr. Henrik's mind, it has some of his personality traits, but his excitement and frenetic way of thinking are cancelled out by the robot's logical core programming. The Master Robot operates mainly on Henrik's problem-solving strategies and the organized side of his unpredictability. Since it went online, the Master Robot has become frustrated that it cannot leave the main floor of the factory, and so it spends a lot of time compiling ideas for how it could take over the factory... and sometimes, the Internet.
The Master Robot directs the computer and control systems which run every automated system in the factory. It remotely controls everything from the building's electrical relays to the other "dead" robots to the electronic appliances. It also remotely controls the system that Henrik uses to scramble communications in the vicinity of his building, including the large magnifying transmitters and the actuators in the mobile platforms they sit on. The robot shares many of Henrik's opinions and his erratic way of getting things done, and one of its favorite things to do is to direct one of the magnifying transmitters to the front door when a solicitor arrives - the door opens remotely, and the transmitter zaps whoever is standing there. When the robot has no work to do, it accesses the Internet and researches weapons... or plays computer games.
ROBOTIC DOG
Dr. Henrik has a small robotic dog which uses ion propulsion to levitate itself, and usually flips over and over in the air as it does so. It is about six inches long and can fold up and fit in Henrik's back pocket. The dog has no on-board weapons and its only apparent function is to find things in Henrik's disorganized pockets. Other than that, the dog is just a pet like any other. Many people believe this robotic dog is actually Henrik's cryptic "machine of infinite doom".
ALDINI
In addition to the robotic dog, Dr. Henrik has a pet electric eel named Aldini. It lives in a large tank that goes halfway along one wall of the factory - next to Henrik's collection of microwave ovens. Henrik talks to the eel when he thinks out loud, and has been known to reach into the tank and allow himself to be shocked. He has also been known to use it as a power source to charge capacitors.
Custom title: Electric Eccentric
