Nikolai/BackupSystem

Nikolai, not trusting the Mess's more conventional backup systems, has opted for something a bit more extreme. There is a central location that holds his exomind, a collective but unconscious datadump for his active mind. He is upstreaming thoughts and experiences in realtime to this external source. When he is killed or the signal interrupted for a long enough amount of time, a new full-body copy is instantiated almost instantly at the same point of death. His new mind will be a snapshot of everything uploaded up to point of termination.

This can lead to problems, however, in copies that cannot or refuse to die or cease transmission. Every time he dies there is a risk of the exomind-state being chaotic or unbalanced by something, thus affecting the latest enbodied mind. So he's, well, often quite mad.

He has respawned occasionally without dying, which causes inconsistencies in the uplink. Two or more minds individually streaming to the source aren't a problem...until one dies and the source must be re-read with the combined multiple state. This has already happened before.

Only recently remembering what has happened, Nikolai has recalled that one of his first experiments with the Strangevirus involved a clone of himself. The other version got infected by Strange, but Nik was able to halt the process. He then buried the clone away somewhere, forgetting the location soon after. A sensory-depraived mind, trapped in darkness and kept alive with the vestiges of Strangevirus, constantly upstreaming thoughts to the exomind. He gets a full mindful of it every time he dies, which is fairly often.

The other time that this system proved difficult was when Nik got infected with the CharmFever he invented. He turned into a psuedo bubble-doll, but the backup system respawned another version of him. Thus, he would try to go about his work, but happy joyous thoughts kept distracting him when respawning. So he hunted down and killed the BubbleNik.

However, the happy thoughts were tempting. At a time when he was weak and plagued by the missing 'mind spike' as he called it, he intentionally took a strain of the CharmVirus to distract himself. It worked, if only for a temporary solution.

The backup system has proved to have a bandwidth limit, as does Nik's mind. He attempted to interface with the Cube Tree in Puzzle Park by hacking a cable directly into one of the leaves. It worked better than he expected--he got information overload, the resulting backlash traveling through his uplink and essentially frying his exomind. This left him rather incapacitated for quite some time. He was kept in a stasis field, and Coalesce ended up mounting a mission to rescue him. He took Ataxia and Twin along to discover the source of Nik's backups, which turned out to be the crystalline Core of a giant factory in DarkUnder. After getting into the core with the help of Ataxia and Twin, Coalesce interfaced with the crystal, determined what portion was undamaged, and physically excised the portion that housed Nik's backup. At least, that's what he remembers happening. So Nik now carried around a crystal--basically, his mind. Until it was broken in StrangeWarp.

In a conversation between GrayZero and 'Mother', the Strangevirus incarnation inhabiting Nikolai, some possible truth or possible lies came out.

GrayZero smiles ...mockingly? Maybe. "You have no domain. You may have convinced others, but you do not own this place." She then narrows her eyes. "Toy or tool, it matters not. He will not have you and you will withdraw."

Nikolai says, "candle not snuffed until wax depleted. but oh, oh how he burns bright! "

GrayZero stares intensely at Nikolai/virus/Strange. "He is not yours to burn."

Nikolai trails a claw over his own chest. "oh dear, dear me. you are so 'sure', hm? what makes you sure he was ever 'his own'?"

GrayZero smiles visciously. "He had an existence before you. Whence comes your right to subvert this existence? Souls learn in their own time and in their own way. You pervert this process. Thus you must and you shall leave."

Nikolai plucks another antenna from his skull. "so much you presume. this one has been tool longer than he can if notmad remember." He folds the long cord over and over into a ball. "taking gaining gathering hoarding knowledge, upstreaming back to where, hm? innocence with fangs, indeed. madcurious spy, always kept busy. would i lie? of course...but the factory Core does not. "

GrayZero shakes her head. "It matters not. His Lessons are his to Learn, not yours. You have no business here."

Nikolai says, "by whose right do you usurp Ours? "

GrayZero snorts. "I only seek to retrieve that which was not yours to begin with."

Nikolai slides a claw across his own chest, drawing a little blood. "that depends on your beginning."

• This is probably a Lie.