Applications/Morty

Subject: Morty [character application -- proto-Eisenstimmen]

1. Description

This is a small, hairless woman who almost fades into the background. Her oversized denim overalls, stiff with copper grease, call more attention than she does. Wrapped around her wrist is a leather strap connected to a leather-bound book. The book says "MEMO" on the cover, which has been cunningly worked into the face of an idol: a scowl, round eyes, and ritual scars.

2. Concept Summary.

Once upon a cycle, there was a section of Puzzlebox, not far from The Mess, that was broken and dim. Fenced in by "Nobles" that had full access to all of Puzzlebox's functions, Mortality (as the dark, Backup-less city was called) still was a vital place: A place of stable physics and darkness, producing art that was traded to the Nobles for food.

A lot of other necessitites had to be manufactured, which is where Morty fit in: He rose from worker to management in one of Mortality's many factories. He lived what he considered to be a normal life: An honest day's wages for an honest day's work.

Until his reflection reached out and strangled him to death, in voliation of everything he though he knew.

Yet, Morty lived on. In a sense. He had been strangled by the reflection of the mirror next to his bed, while he was flipping through his journal. Now, anyone who picks up the journal -- described above -- becomes Morty, though poorly-understood transdimensional means. They have all of Morty's memories up to his death, plus possibly a few hours or days memories more, as experienced from the moment they became Morty. Morty is sure to write important things down in the journal, as every so often the memory resets back to the moment of his death. He can't seem to maintain new memories in a new body for long. Once the journal removed from a body, it regains its old memories at the next Backup, regardless of whether the person participates in the Backup system or not..

Over time, the journal has been modified. It is now capable of growing new pages (which is good, since many are ripped out), and has a built-in camera in the eyes, for taking pictures which appear on the pages of the journal. It also has been known to interfere with the local Backup sytems in a strange way, completely independant of wishes of the current "incarnation" of Morty. Plus, when Morty owned the journal in Mortality, it didn't have a face...

3. Themes

First, some revelant themes...

• Altered Conciousness (possession, previous "versions" of Morty communicating with the "current" Morty via notes)
• Corporeality (how does Morty really "work" -- where *is* he, really)
• Creation and Destruction (Morty feels he must produce something in order to be worth something)
• Memory (short term vs. long term)
• Mutability of Identity (changing bodies plays Hell with your sense of self)
• Scarcity vs. Postscarcity (on a moral level -- Morty will be gravitating toward the Eisenstimmen)
• Urbanism (at heart, Morty is still a factory worker, a strong believer in the moral value of crowded, dirty work)

To pick one of the above, let's talk altered conciousness and mutability of identity. It think it would be interesting if Morty had in his journal to watch out for certain people, who are, in fact, people he once possessed, but neither he nor they remember this fact. Figuring out why the "previous" Morty didn't wanted the "later" Morty to meet certain previous "hosts" -- and what he did then, hidden by torn pages -- could make an interesting mystery plot all to itself, or could link Morty into any number of other plots.