A tall somewhat vaguely mustelid [weaselish-otterish-ferretish creature]. It's difficult to tell, because his muddy brown and white fur is patchy and almost falling out in places. Burn marks and the odd scar or two cross his face and arms, and the rest of his exposed chest. Across the back of his head is a brushed-metal skullcap, studded with thousands of slim wires that squiggle outward in all directions. A thin metal band of the same finish circles his neck. Just above his ears are a pair of thick-lensed goggles on a wide strap.
He is wearing a long white lab coat that is as dirty and befrazzled as he is. Sleeves dangle loosly with holes raggedly burned, torn, or melted in them. Large pockets dot the coat and hold a seemingly infinite amount of tools, gadgets, pens, digipads, and so on. It is not unusual for him to pull out things bigger than the pockets themselves, like a full chemistry table set. Lower down, ragged one-leg-shorter drawstring pants brush metal-toed tall rubber thicksoled boots.
Don't volunteer for any of his experiments without a very recent self-backup, as Nikolai has a flippant attitude towards death. Which is reflected in a patch sewn into one of his larger pockets, a motto that reads 'That which does not kill me makes me stronger', the 'not' being cleverly crossed out.
Nikolai (named after Tesla) is a rabid experimenter, always gathering information on random (or not so random) esoteric subjects. Alchemy, high energy physics, quantum probabilities, kabbalism, i ching, extreme electromagnetism, robotics, high frequency sonics, ancient weapons, and solipsism are some of his interests...though he is not likely to know a great deal about any of these.
He has been a scientist for quite a long time, probably longer than he can remember. Native to Puzzlebox, his lab is situated underneath Downwarp. He has a peculiar preference towards blowing up his lab every so often, and it's usually put back the way it should be. He also has a very flippant attitude towards death...it doesn't bug him to kill off someone at random purely for the sake of experimenting. He won't push too hard, there's always some other victim, so isn't all that dangerously malicious. Just violently curious...which could be worse.
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.
More recently, 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 carries around a crystal--basically, his mind. Well, except it's now broken.
In a conversation between GrayZero and 'Mother', the Strangevirus incarnation inhabiting Nikolai, some possible truth or possible lies came out.
Update: His lost clone has [been] [found!]. Sort of. Nik suddenly recalled where he was buried, only because of a sudden two-way link shared between them in the course of Nik being 'cured' within Papa Legba. And he took the chance to leap his mind across into the other's brain, escaping disinfection from the SMC, while his old body self-destructed.
So basically he's now in his old clone's body. It might still be mad. It's certainly been sensory-depraived, buried in the dark, and howling Strange-infected thoughts down the link to backup for several Wheels. Who wouldn't be mad?
Nik's Laboratory seems to be getting more popular as a place to fix things or just experiment. Recently he had some dealings with one Kehari, who was being hunted by StrangeInfected dragonness called Onya. Nik told her he would try to work out a reverse-infection virus for dealing with Strange on its own grounds. Several days later, he produced the antivirus, but it required testing. Leviathan-Chan and Parity expressed an interest in accompaining him on a tour of Strangewarp.
While down in Strange, Nik got his arm infected. Deep in the Periodical storage, his hand got stuck to a screen and erupted in silver boils, while Nik's mind got taken over by Glossolalia. However, the virus was stopped before total infection, and Nik lost his arm in the process. Leviathan and Parity helped him back to his lab, where he reset safely.
The antiserum tested, it was put to good use the next day. Roque and Onya had a fight, and Nik asked Kehari if he should use the antivirus on Onya herself, instead of on Kehari as a defense, which was the original plan. Nikolai ran off after Onya with a syringe, and managed to stab Onya with it while Roque stalled her. The antivirus did its work, incinerating the Strangevirus, damaging Onyas body but leaving her alive.
But Nikolai didn't leave this encounter unscathed....and in fact, was infected with Strangevirus himself, the same 'Mother' strain that the dragoness had. He's been working in his Lab since, on some sort of project. He has also gone on one excursion to Strangewarp to try and find his missing counterpart (see above), which Mother told him was the otter statue in the main square of Strange. This prompted him to cut its head off to search for the uplink implant, then he got into trouble with Slight. Upon being killed and having to respawn, his uplink crystal that was with him was tainted and then exploded.
Mel apparently has a last ditch plan in mind to recover Nikolai if no other options present themselves.
Nik's still infected, though in a new body. The attempted capture of Nik by the Strange Medical Corps ended up in minor disaster, leaving his body behind and jumping into his old lost one. The laboratory, however, is still infected with the Mother strain, and is currently sealed from entry. It is, incidentally, the only current site of Nikolai's backup data. Which could lead to trouble.
Update: Of course it did. Nikolai remembered a way to keep the Lab from continually respawning off its own backup, which involved destroying the crystal in the Core of the factory. Ojou and System helped him. Meanwhile Mother had lured Trilogee into the lab for some reason, thinking that She could trap the birdgirl and use her as bait for Nikolai. A clone of Nik was also created and inhabited by the Motherstrain.
System had a plan to destroy the lab entirely, pulling it into its home universe Prime and completely converting it into something else. To perform this, System had to go into the lab itself. Ojou helped break down the door, and there was a confrontation with Mother and System. Nikolai, ojou and Trilogee escaped from the lab just in time for System to finish the setting of the markers and completely destroying the inner lab room.
However, Mother had contingincy plans. Enough Strangevirus oozed into the superstructure of the robotic bodies in DarkUnder that housed the lab and Forge to animate it into a walking golem. Though the head (the lab and controlling Motherstrain) had been destroyed, the golem still crashed its way up through Downwarp on its way to Strangewarp. The SMC provided viral disinfection of the local area, then set up a false magic mirror when the titan rampaged into the Transit Nexus. The robot was trapped into a pocket dimension contained by the SMC, who plan to remove the Strange from it. Nik had suggested they convert the Strange to its primordial beginnings--the mirror-stuff.
Sweet William has entered Grey and delivered something of an ultimatum, if a very badly expressed one. The exact quote goes something along the lines of 'Give him back to us or we will take our revenge on the unwilling who bears you this speech.' Which might indicate that Strange is willing to kill off the Library's Secretary and do without whatever function he provdes in return for retrieving Nikolai...
![[weaselish-otterish-ferretish creature]](http://www.edgeofblue.com/PB/nikolaisml.jpg){kind=link}