.application @ singularity.
Character Information ;
Name: Raimi Matthews
Name of Canon: Broken Saints
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference: official website, wikipedia, some dvd rips
Canon Point: The end of Chapter 7 (Lucid)
Setting:
In every sense, there is little difference between the world of Broken Saints and yours and mine - it is the real world. Technically. Except now, imagine a world that has been exaggerated in subtle aspects. Like several racial stereotypes. History itself, however, hasn’t been altered in many drastic ways. Pop culture references still exist, like comic books and movies and literature. Superheroes are still but a subject of fiction, and powers and special abilities is, for the most part, more of a mostly symbolic concept of artistic licenses (for instance, the four main characters are associated with the elements of earth, air, fire, and water; except they don’t actually have any control of these elements, as it’s more of a spiritual association than anything else). One of the factors which set the universe of Broken Saints apart from the real world, other than human cloning and empaths and conspiracy theories (and the ridiculously poetic and abstract speech/internal monologue that a handful of characters harness), would be the very existence of a few major global companies, formed as a mean to an end. Or, in their perspective, to influence the world for a better tomorrow...
> BIOCOM: The corporation which Raimi Matthews (a software engineer and one of the four protagonists) works for. It’s also the biggest global telecommunications and pharmaceutical company in the world, founded by the late Marshall Palmer and Joe Convoy Lear Dunham. In spite of being a major pharmaceutical company, the current CEO, The Smoking Man Benjamin Palmer, decided to focus on the more profitable communications technologies rather than its biological and medical research. Though the individual programmers never saw the whole picture of what they were working on, Raimi entertained himself with notions of government conspiracy theories. Humoring his paranoia after slaving on sixteen-hour work days for over a year, Raimi finally snooped through the backdoor files of his company one day, only to stumble upon a piece of top secret information that he wasn’t supposed to see. Following this, the BIOCOM employee got called in for a review. He was then given no reason as to why he got yanked from a vital project that had been in the works for the past three years; all he did was help code the bulk of BIOCOM’s data-tracking programs for a global communication network, in addition to several other useful contributions. Though they were remiss to disclose to reason for his removal from the project, Raimi believed that he was getting too close to the company’s dark secret, which led to him getting pulled. In addition to that, he was then required to do mandatory overtime at home to debug some new tracking software in order to meet the deadline they’ve been trying to reach. Both bored and pissed off because of the demotion, Raimi dragged his vindictive ass back to his flat... not to debug, but to once again snoop through the company’s mainframes for answers. Initially, everything seemed harmless enough with their business partners, only to discover an arising conspiracy when he uncovered major military ties to BIOCOM, along with its other affiliations that made the company Raimi worked for increasingly more suspicious:
> IMMAXON: Used to supply vaccines for smallpox and anthrax to the UN, and other forms of genetic research and bio-computing. They had also been working on genetic sequencing and stem cell research, and were currently working under a contract with BIOCOM in turn to assist in developing a chip that uses pairs of human neurons as the on/off (0/1) state. While initially this chip was created to supposedly protect those from a global signal scheduled to broadcast, penetrating the minds of billions into submission... it’s much later discovered that the chip’s real purpose is to actually amplify the signal’s effects. Those implanted with the chip - military generals, soldiers, and politicians alike - would fall while those that remain are left to stand witness of their great collapse.
> PRISMATEC: Originally used for holographic projection equipment and laser guidance/display systems. Like IMMAXON, they were also bounded to a contract with BIOCOM to develop a network-wide “stratocasting” system, supposedly for major advertising revenues. Basically, they would begin to launch special events via the satellite network. Sounds pretty nifty, right? You could project an image of Rorschach hobos wearing sandwich boards heralding the end of the world in alleyways, and no one would be able to tell the difference between a hologram and a real person.
> COGENT: Here is where BIOCOM’s partnerships get even shadier than they already were. This long-time military contractor helped developed HF (high frequency) and ELF (extremely low frequency) equipment for broadcasting, ionospheric penetration and manipulation (HAARP), and GAMMA RAY crust “snapshots” (kind of like what you see in Google Maps for government use. It’s through this source where Raimi soon after discovers that the shadow men overcasting BIOCOM have been watching from a distance all along). In addition to that, they have also developed broadband jamming set-ups, electromagnetic weaponry, and microwave beams (EM pulses) for the Navy as a mean of taking out any electronics. It’s also stated that, if strong enough, an EM pulse is capable of turning even organic madder into chalk.
The common idea behind BIOCOM’s philosophy was to relay a broadcast via satellites so that no man, woman, or child were to be “ignorant of the future”. In other words, it didn’t matter where you were on the planet, be it in a populated city or in buttfuck nowhere on a deserted island, you would be connected. At least, that’s what most people believed BIOCOM was all about. Question is: What would a big telecommunications and pharmaceutical company have to do with the aforementioned major military ties?
That was exactly the kind of poop that Raimi Matthews had intended to unearth. However, just when our paranoid programmer had dug up some juicy blackmailing material that one fateful evening, he was struck by a traumatic, psychic assault. A signal, which Raimi initially assumed to be some kind of new detection system, hit all of his home computer screens, sending him into a catatonic state for the next several days. In the process, his brain was fried, but not without its side effects: All of his senses spiked, leaving him hypersensitive to the world around him. He began having nightmares and visions of significant people and places that were previously unknown and meaningless to him, but now somehow had meaning. Piecing together these fragmented visions, Raimi began to realize over time that the same signal reached these figures from his dreams: A soldier from Iraq, a Shinto monk from Japan, and a young woman from the Fijian chain. With what little evidence he had to work with, he later figures that the signal that hit his computer distributed some kind of low frequency message that messes with the higher brain function, including the nervous system and motor skills. As Raimi later describes the experience, “You feel like you’re seeing God and burning in Hell at the same time.”
Arguably, Raimi was fortunate enough to work where he did by the time the seizure struck him. Had it not been for the wonders of modern technology and BIOCOM’s staff housing, there would have been no security monitoring his biorhythms, alerting medical personnel immediately after his little fit. Raimi awoke at the company med wing some time afterwards, informed that he had suffered a mild stroke, and that they had been monitoring irregular brain patterns.
Seeing that he had not yet been handed his pink slip and a court order for his little so-called “harmless information salvage”, one could only assume that none of the officials had accessed the cache on his home computer. But if they did, he’d not only be fired, but left homeless and brain-damaged. Not that the prospect of no longer having to bust his ass for a company he despises seemed to have its up sides. Even with the six-digit salary he was making working for a corporate world in a big, noisy city full of greed, poverty, and sin, Raimi seemed to have already embraced it, albeit with a bitter attitude as he refers to it as his own “little circle of Hell”. This circle consists of just about every level of debauchery and new-age bullshit you could imagine in an urban utopia, full of hate, bitterness, and fear.
Anyway, in spite of his illegal practices and misuse of company equipment, Raimi was not fired for what had started out as a harmless espionage through the company mainframes. Instead he was promoted from his previous position. In fact, Palmer himself put Raimi in charge of a certain LEAR/SPEC/SILO project, which was supposedly an extension of the global network that they had been working so hard on. And it’s only a matter of weeks before the fragments, faces, and places that he’s seen only in nightmares become a reality to him.
Underneath all of the pretentiousness, political controversy, religious/spiritual “undertones”, and the Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness of Broken Saints, the overall messages are incredibly straightforward when you get down to it. That is, if you can sit through twelve hours of new-age sermonizing. YMMV.
Personality:
Raimi Matthews is a delightful young man who believes in the American Dream, and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of assholicness. But in all honesty, really... who knows if at one point in his miserable existence he was anything but an asshole kid, exercising a colorful language and playing video games while mouthing off to nuns and nurses. That said, Raimi’s views probably made the most dramatic shift out of any character in the damn series halfway through, but for the first half, his monologues are soaked in hatred, resentment, and bitterness towards his chosen way of life. Overall, Raimi can be described as a bundle of jaded joy, delivered in a lovely, shit-colored wrapping paper recycled out of sarcasm, paranoia, racism, bigotry, and too much intellect for one little man-brain to contain. It’s pretty extreme.
Somehow, despite his unpleasant nature, there is a kind of strange charm to him. Probably because it’s his way with words, and the manner in which he uses them. Raimi is not much of a man of action and physical violence; rather, he talks in order to get his way, whether if it works in his favor or not. When all of that fails, he makes use of technology to achieve his goals. He has a tendency to be overly analytical, which does in effect make it easier for him to understand the whole “picture” before others do - and isn’t incapable of dumbing down his terminology into laymen’s terms for those having trouble catching up with him. Just when Raimi seems to have it all figured out, he tends to lose people in the wake of all his techno-babble and words. But that’s also how he views his life of metaphors and poetic irony: As symbols; computer codes that beg to be decoded.
Many would consider Raimi to be impulsive, obsessed, and paranoid. Above all else he is especially paranoid, and isn’t above trying to stir people up with conspiracy theories and the like. He takes most of the things bred by the media with a grain of salt. Additionally, he used to mock the very concept of things such as fate. But these days, he believes there are no such things as flukes or coincidences anymore; everything that happens around him seems to happen for a reason - which would explain his initial fixation with uncovering the reason he had been pulled off the project. He’s relentless and, when threatened, is willing to push back in his own way, even if it doesn’t involve brute force. If patience is considered a virtue, then it sure as hell has no place in Raimi’s broad and crude dictionary.
Raimi can be considered a hard worker, but with several of his own faults. While a valuable provider as a whole, he’s developed something of a track record for habitual absenteeism at the office: In the past year he had taken fifteen sick days, ten mental health days, two-hundred-sixty vacation hours, four weddings, two funerals, and at one point he celebrated both Christmas and Chanukah.
This goes without saying, someone certainly did not win themselves any Employee of the Month awards.
He further breaches the grounds of corporate professionalism by violating several copyright laws, including pirated software and pornography on his work computer. Yes, he’s just that kind of dumbass (although it reflects more on the fact that he just doesn’t give a shit about his job than it does on his actual intelligence, as he’s fully aware of what he’s doing and he does it out of spite more than anything else. It helps that he deliberately carried out these actions with the intent of getting himself fired. Since being fired = bigger severance package, as opposed to just quitting your job with no golden handshake).
But don’t let that fool you: Raimi is pretty fucking smart. Otherwise he would’ve been fired a long time ago instead of being promoted (his behaviors, as his boss saw it, were signs of an “unchallenged mind”). Most of the time people tend to get lost in his expositions due to all of the crazy jargon he spews out, which makes him even harder to follow. He doesn’t have any problem with finding words, and finds there being a kind of comfort in being smarter than someone. His narration explains that he sees a lot of things that other people don’t - patterns within patterns, plans within plans. Again, this does make him sound insane as hell (to the extent that some had just gotten so used to it that they’d just humor Raimi’s conspiracy theories and crazy talk), but his awareness of his surroundings is a fairly unique gift.
Seemingly corrupt in nature, Raimi does in fact desire control; to make an impression on the shit-infested world around him; to impact the profound. Potentially, he desires this to make up for his helplessness as a child. However, he’s prone to being pulled back by his own self-doubt, often skeptical of his abilities to make a difference even though he’s very capable of it. He doesn’t try to hide the fact that he lacks his sense of self-worth, as he doesn’t see much value in his miserable existence. Feeling the weight of guilt comes down on him when he learns that he was one of the many who had a hand in the arising plot BIOCOM is conspiring, he is then more inclined to act - he just doesn’t always know how. At the end of the day, Raimi very well knows that he is corrupted, his soul stolen by the city he embraced. He also knows that this isn’t the kind of person he wants to be, neither is this the life he wants to live. Buried in codes and machinery, Raimi loses sight of himself to the ways of modern society. Not so much because he chooses to, but because he feels there is no other alternative, in spite of his need to seek connection and reach out - to be the good guy.
Because of this, though, he’s grown accustomed to the American ways: He feels defined by his job, his things, and his failures which serve to fuel his hatred of life. And he’s pretty okay with this. That is, until a coma-induced epiphany and the weeks that follow in its wake, leading him to realize that none of his petty fears and insecurities matter anymore.
Though that is the problem; the anchor that drags him to the ground - it is his fear. Raimi shows terror in the face of danger, and has no reservations to announce the fact that he’s scared shitless in inappropriate situations. He’d probably run to save his own ass if not for the fact that he tends to freeze up in life-threatening situations (or, if all else fails, he’ll try to talk his way out of it). Otherwise he lets those more capable, the “better players”, to handle the more physically tasking obstacles. What he can muster is a sense of false bravado, which tends to come off as cheesy since he gets it all from all of the TV shows and video games he’s played/watched. When put in a situation that he’s never been in and doesn’t understand how he’s supposed to react, he will seriously resort to speaking in clichés.
One could arguably consider Raimi’s “humility” to be an interesting trait. He doesn’t have any reservations about putting himself on the spot, even if it’s under a “sexually ambiguous” light. He will admit that he’s a pathetic American (even though he’s, you know, from Canada) who would rather snuff it than to lose his credit rating. In spite of everything, his fear of losing the life he has become comfortable with is great. Too bad that he has a terrible habit of emoting this fear by acting like an even bigger asshole. Big surprise, there.
Much of his bitterness seems to have been stemmed from his childhood, including possible feelings of abandonment (which has hardened and conditioned him to the life he lives now). On the surface, it seemed that Raimi had a relatively happy relationship with his parents. At one point he explains a story about his father taking him to a wrestling match when he was ten. He describes this time in his life in a somewhat traumatic light, being a child subjected to a violent fight scene where he was certain that one of the fighters was going to die. That was when his father told him, “Don’t worry, son... the good guys don’t die - and the good guys don’t leave.” Which seems like a heartwarming tale enough. Except that three months later after the event, he reveals that his parents divorced and his father moved to Utah, and Raimi never saw or heard from him again. To make matters worse, Raimi was left to deal with his mother dying of cancer; something that would leave any child with abandonment issues feeling pretty lousy. Afterwards, he reveals very subtle hints that he’s susceptible for motherly figures, willing and obedient to those who are firm enough to put him in his place (while still expressing an attitude). After his mom died, Raimi was then on raised in a Catholic school, where he wallowed in bitterness and his festering hatred of God and the society in which he grew up alone in.
Yeah. Cry more, Raimi Matthews.
Abilities
hacking/computer programming; When working with computers, it seems as though his mind and body work as one, as this is Raimi’s primary skill. He utilizes technology as a mean of seeking control in his life, though it may not be the life he wishes to live just because he’s good at it; the control does give him a sense of empowerment. Not only was he the one who developed voice recognition and storm firewall for BIOCOM, but he also figured out ways to allow himself backdoor entries into their knowledge base. Ever the clever computer nerd, he is also experienced at covering his tracks over the network. In the Broken Saints universe, Y2K had been a legitimate threat until the BIOCOM engineers, Raimi included, put a stop to it before the final hour. In spite of their efforts, the news reported it as a “non event”.
hypersensitivity; Interestingly enough, Raimi’s instincts have never been the same ever since his brain had been fried by the signal. As some kind of psychological side effect to experiencing the signal, his sense of smell, hearing, and touch increased beyond belief. What he explained to the doctor was that he was feeling a “little hypersensitive”. Which is subverted in how Raimi perceives the world after his little meltdown, given that he seems to be able to literally feel parasites and other molecules crawling on his skin. Indeed, you can imagine that this makes shaving a little difficult for him.
eidetic memory; Ironic, considering how Raimi had been apparently been suffering some psychological memory issues prior. Now, his keen memory seems to be a result of the signal frying his brain, allowing Raimi to remember information down to the tiniest, most delicate detail. He describes the need as insatiable, as though his brain couldn’t be fed enough data, and went so far as to memorize phone books for the hell of it - with one look, he is able to tell how many hairs are on a person’s head. It’s like his cerebral cortex had been turned into a living hard drive with unlimited memory, with its own built-in processor. A very nifty gift, when you realize that silly things like machines and data records are unnecessary.
perception/white man can jump; Okay, this may or may not be an actual ability (and might be more of a symbolic, artistic liberty than anything else), but hey, it sure looked cool. One time he jumped so high his artsy metaphorical shadow FUELED BY THE POWER OF TRUE FRIENDSHIP shat wings. This is also probably more of an allusion to the fact that Raimi’s “element” is associated with air. However, it is not exactly a literal control over the elements, but more of a spiritual analogy that reflects on the individual’s personality. In Raimi’s case, his perception and awareness of his surroundings (i.e. his heightened senses) is associated with this element, but nothing more than that.
Weaknesses
voices; While never clinically diagnosed and can also be considered significantly subverted, Raimi does admit to hearing voices at times. It could be more of a subtle intuition (describing voices telling him things; hearing his cells “plotting”), as it’s never actually played up as an actual mental disorder. But in context it does sound like he’s pretty fucking batshit insane at times.
insomnia; With his brain constantly set to overdrive, Raimi is unable to sleep (which, in effect, he also has difficulty keeping food down. This is reflected on the fact that there is a dismal lack of contents within his refrigerator). Oftentimes his nights are spent staring off into the void, suffering visions and hallucinations and delusional episodes. He also resorts to a variety of “industrious” activities in his free time (feel obliged to use your imagination on that one or not). But for this reason, Raimi doesn’t always seem at all there at times.
physical prowess; Or lack thereof. Raimi is someone who spends most of his time in an office, not a gym. That said, he’s pretty scrawny and out of shape, and loses his breath quickly. The fact that he tends to smokes cigarettes like a fucking chimney probably doesn’t help in the least. He’s also extremely combat inexperienced, and prefers not to carry weapons around, even in situations that would call for them. He’s actually never even touched a gun in his entire life, either, because Raimi is what you would probably consider a Non-Action Guy. So he’s okay with playing up the irony of the Unarmed American.
self-deprecation; One of Raimi’s biggest banes is his sense of self-doubt. His life and everything he’s ever done doesn’t matter, and the thought of dying in the city is an all-consuming fear that chastises and belittles him. His life, as he views it, is worthless, regardless of his desire to make an impact. When any sense of danger is near, instead of acting out he tends to go all deer-in-the-headlights and freeze up (this goes hand-in-hand with the above). Raimi’s fear of death is a great fault, as it often prevents him from taking action and helping others in their time of need. This is something that takes great effort for him to overcome.
acrimony; To put it lightly, Raimi is an asshole. A very bitter asshole. He’s a racist, and when it comes to having a mental filter - he just doesn’t have one at times, to the point where he comes off as downright offensive. No matter who he’s talking to, he’ll speak his mind whether he actually means what he says or not. His father leaving him with his dying mother had probably been but the stem of Raimi’s embittered nature, which only grew when he moved to America. Hardened by the world he lives in, he hates himself more than anything on his Hate List.
Inventory:
- pair of glasses
- pack of (Morley) cigarettes
- book of matches
- one big blue man-purse containing a laptop
Age:
25.
Appearance:
There isn’t really much to describe Raimi beyond his self-proclaimed “boyish good looks”. While his exact ethnicity remains unknown, though it’s stated that he was originally born in Montreal, Canada. His brown hair often has a kind of messy look to it, spiking out at the sides. And his eyes are indefinitely green behind the gold and rectangular-shaped rimless glasses that he wears.
He seems to carry quite a variety in his wardrobe, which range between turtleneck sweaters and jeans, khakis, vests, T-shirts, and the usual white-collar worker dress code. Greens and reds seem to be pretty common on him, as far as color coordination goes. He will also wear the occasional hat and aviators.
Raimi stands approximately six feet tall, and looks more to be a snarky skateboarder than a stereotypical computer geek. Fuck that Hackers shit where they cast the best-looking kids in Hollywood. In Raimi’s case, it is described that he is not meant to look like your average hacker, but rather a smarmy, sex-obsessed hipster who is more inclined to watch than to engage.
So there you go.
Name: Raimi Matthews
Name of Canon: Broken Saints
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference: official website, wikipedia, some dvd rips
Canon Point: The end of Chapter 7 (Lucid)
Setting:
In every sense, there is little difference between the world of Broken Saints and yours and mine - it is the real world. Technically. Except now, imagine a world that has been exaggerated in subtle aspects. Like several racial stereotypes. History itself, however, hasn’t been altered in many drastic ways. Pop culture references still exist, like comic books and movies and literature. Superheroes are still but a subject of fiction, and powers and special abilities is, for the most part, more of a mostly symbolic concept of artistic licenses (for instance, the four main characters are associated with the elements of earth, air, fire, and water; except they don’t actually have any control of these elements, as it’s more of a spiritual association than anything else). One of the factors which set the universe of Broken Saints apart from the real world, other than human cloning and empaths and conspiracy theories (and the ridiculously poetic and abstract speech/internal monologue that a handful of characters harness), would be the very existence of a few major global companies, formed as a mean to an end. Or, in their perspective, to influence the world for a better tomorrow...
> BIOCOM: The corporation which Raimi Matthews (a software engineer and one of the four protagonists) works for. It’s also the biggest global telecommunications and pharmaceutical company in the world, founded by the late Marshall Palmer and Joe Convoy Lear Dunham. In spite of being a major pharmaceutical company, the current CEO, The Smoking Man Benjamin Palmer, decided to focus on the more profitable communications technologies rather than its biological and medical research. Though the individual programmers never saw the whole picture of what they were working on, Raimi entertained himself with notions of government conspiracy theories. Humoring his paranoia after slaving on sixteen-hour work days for over a year, Raimi finally snooped through the backdoor files of his company one day, only to stumble upon a piece of top secret information that he wasn’t supposed to see. Following this, the BIOCOM employee got called in for a review. He was then given no reason as to why he got yanked from a vital project that had been in the works for the past three years; all he did was help code the bulk of BIOCOM’s data-tracking programs for a global communication network, in addition to several other useful contributions. Though they were remiss to disclose to reason for his removal from the project, Raimi believed that he was getting too close to the company’s dark secret, which led to him getting pulled. In addition to that, he was then required to do mandatory overtime at home to debug some new tracking software in order to meet the deadline they’ve been trying to reach. Both bored and pissed off because of the demotion, Raimi dragged his vindictive ass back to his flat... not to debug, but to once again snoop through the company’s mainframes for answers. Initially, everything seemed harmless enough with their business partners, only to discover an arising conspiracy when he uncovered major military ties to BIOCOM, along with its other affiliations that made the company Raimi worked for increasingly more suspicious:
> IMMAXON: Used to supply vaccines for smallpox and anthrax to the UN, and other forms of genetic research and bio-computing. They had also been working on genetic sequencing and stem cell research, and were currently working under a contract with BIOCOM in turn to assist in developing a chip that uses pairs of human neurons as the on/off (0/1) state. While initially this chip was created to supposedly protect those from a global signal scheduled to broadcast, penetrating the minds of billions into submission... it’s much later discovered that the chip’s real purpose is to actually amplify the signal’s effects. Those implanted with the chip - military generals, soldiers, and politicians alike - would fall while those that remain are left to stand witness of their great collapse.
> PRISMATEC: Originally used for holographic projection equipment and laser guidance/display systems. Like IMMAXON, they were also bounded to a contract with BIOCOM to develop a network-wide “stratocasting” system, supposedly for major advertising revenues. Basically, they would begin to launch special events via the satellite network. Sounds pretty nifty, right? You could project an image of Rorschach hobos wearing sandwich boards heralding the end of the world in alleyways, and no one would be able to tell the difference between a hologram and a real person.
> COGENT: Here is where BIOCOM’s partnerships get even shadier than they already were. This long-time military contractor helped developed HF (high frequency) and ELF (extremely low frequency) equipment for broadcasting, ionospheric penetration and manipulation (HAARP), and GAMMA RAY crust “snapshots” (kind of like what you see in Google Maps for government use. It’s through this source where Raimi soon after discovers that the shadow men overcasting BIOCOM have been watching from a distance all along). In addition to that, they have also developed broadband jamming set-ups, electromagnetic weaponry, and microwave beams (EM pulses) for the Navy as a mean of taking out any electronics. It’s also stated that, if strong enough, an EM pulse is capable of turning even organic madder into chalk.
The common idea behind BIOCOM’s philosophy was to relay a broadcast via satellites so that no man, woman, or child were to be “ignorant of the future”. In other words, it didn’t matter where you were on the planet, be it in a populated city or in buttfuck nowhere on a deserted island, you would be connected. At least, that’s what most people believed BIOCOM was all about. Question is: What would a big telecommunications and pharmaceutical company have to do with the aforementioned major military ties?
That was exactly the kind of poop that Raimi Matthews had intended to unearth. However, just when our paranoid programmer had dug up some juicy blackmailing material that one fateful evening, he was struck by a traumatic, psychic assault. A signal, which Raimi initially assumed to be some kind of new detection system, hit all of his home computer screens, sending him into a catatonic state for the next several days. In the process, his brain was fried, but not without its side effects: All of his senses spiked, leaving him hypersensitive to the world around him. He began having nightmares and visions of significant people and places that were previously unknown and meaningless to him, but now somehow had meaning. Piecing together these fragmented visions, Raimi began to realize over time that the same signal reached these figures from his dreams: A soldier from Iraq, a Shinto monk from Japan, and a young woman from the Fijian chain. With what little evidence he had to work with, he later figures that the signal that hit his computer distributed some kind of low frequency message that messes with the higher brain function, including the nervous system and motor skills. As Raimi later describes the experience, “You feel like you’re seeing God and burning in Hell at the same time.”
Arguably, Raimi was fortunate enough to work where he did by the time the seizure struck him. Had it not been for the wonders of modern technology and BIOCOM’s staff housing, there would have been no security monitoring his biorhythms, alerting medical personnel immediately after his little fit. Raimi awoke at the company med wing some time afterwards, informed that he had suffered a mild stroke, and that they had been monitoring irregular brain patterns.
Seeing that he had not yet been handed his pink slip and a court order for his little so-called “harmless information salvage”, one could only assume that none of the officials had accessed the cache on his home computer. But if they did, he’d not only be fired, but left homeless and brain-damaged. Not that the prospect of no longer having to bust his ass for a company he despises seemed to have its up sides. Even with the six-digit salary he was making working for a corporate world in a big, noisy city full of greed, poverty, and sin, Raimi seemed to have already embraced it, albeit with a bitter attitude as he refers to it as his own “little circle of Hell”. This circle consists of just about every level of debauchery and new-age bullshit you could imagine in an urban utopia, full of hate, bitterness, and fear.
Anyway, in spite of his illegal practices and misuse of company equipment, Raimi was not fired for what had started out as a harmless espionage through the company mainframes. Instead he was promoted from his previous position. In fact, Palmer himself put Raimi in charge of a certain LEAR/SPEC/SILO project, which was supposedly an extension of the global network that they had been working so hard on. And it’s only a matter of weeks before the fragments, faces, and places that he’s seen only in nightmares become a reality to him.
Underneath all of the pretentiousness, political controversy, religious/spiritual “undertones”, and the Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness of Broken Saints, the overall messages are incredibly straightforward when you get down to it. That is, if you can sit through twelve hours of new-age sermonizing. YMMV.
Personality:
Raimi Matthews is a delightful young man who believes in the American Dream, and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of assholicness. But in all honesty, really... who knows if at one point in his miserable existence he was anything but an asshole kid, exercising a colorful language and playing video games while mouthing off to nuns and nurses. That said, Raimi’s views probably made the most dramatic shift out of any character in the damn series halfway through, but for the first half, his monologues are soaked in hatred, resentment, and bitterness towards his chosen way of life. Overall, Raimi can be described as a bundle of jaded joy, delivered in a lovely, shit-colored wrapping paper recycled out of sarcasm, paranoia, racism, bigotry, and too much intellect for one little man-brain to contain. It’s pretty extreme.
Somehow, despite his unpleasant nature, there is a kind of strange charm to him. Probably because it’s his way with words, and the manner in which he uses them. Raimi is not much of a man of action and physical violence; rather, he talks in order to get his way, whether if it works in his favor or not. When all of that fails, he makes use of technology to achieve his goals. He has a tendency to be overly analytical, which does in effect make it easier for him to understand the whole “picture” before others do - and isn’t incapable of dumbing down his terminology into laymen’s terms for those having trouble catching up with him. Just when Raimi seems to have it all figured out, he tends to lose people in the wake of all his techno-babble and words. But that’s also how he views his life of metaphors and poetic irony: As symbols; computer codes that beg to be decoded.
Many would consider Raimi to be impulsive, obsessed, and paranoid. Above all else he is especially paranoid, and isn’t above trying to stir people up with conspiracy theories and the like. He takes most of the things bred by the media with a grain of salt. Additionally, he used to mock the very concept of things such as fate. But these days, he believes there are no such things as flukes or coincidences anymore; everything that happens around him seems to happen for a reason - which would explain his initial fixation with uncovering the reason he had been pulled off the project. He’s relentless and, when threatened, is willing to push back in his own way, even if it doesn’t involve brute force. If patience is considered a virtue, then it sure as hell has no place in Raimi’s broad and crude dictionary.
Raimi can be considered a hard worker, but with several of his own faults. While a valuable provider as a whole, he’s developed something of a track record for habitual absenteeism at the office: In the past year he had taken fifteen sick days, ten mental health days, two-hundred-sixty vacation hours, four weddings, two funerals, and at one point he celebrated both Christmas and Chanukah.
This goes without saying, someone certainly did not win themselves any Employee of the Month awards.
He further breaches the grounds of corporate professionalism by violating several copyright laws, including pirated software and pornography on his work computer. Yes, he’s just that kind of dumbass (although it reflects more on the fact that he just doesn’t give a shit about his job than it does on his actual intelligence, as he’s fully aware of what he’s doing and he does it out of spite more than anything else. It helps that he deliberately carried out these actions with the intent of getting himself fired. Since being fired = bigger severance package, as opposed to just quitting your job with no golden handshake).
But don’t let that fool you: Raimi is pretty fucking smart. Otherwise he would’ve been fired a long time ago instead of being promoted (his behaviors, as his boss saw it, were signs of an “unchallenged mind”). Most of the time people tend to get lost in his expositions due to all of the crazy jargon he spews out, which makes him even harder to follow. He doesn’t have any problem with finding words, and finds there being a kind of comfort in being smarter than someone. His narration explains that he sees a lot of things that other people don’t - patterns within patterns, plans within plans. Again, this does make him sound insane as hell (to the extent that some had just gotten so used to it that they’d just humor Raimi’s conspiracy theories and crazy talk), but his awareness of his surroundings is a fairly unique gift.
Seemingly corrupt in nature, Raimi does in fact desire control; to make an impression on the shit-infested world around him; to impact the profound. Potentially, he desires this to make up for his helplessness as a child. However, he’s prone to being pulled back by his own self-doubt, often skeptical of his abilities to make a difference even though he’s very capable of it. He doesn’t try to hide the fact that he lacks his sense of self-worth, as he doesn’t see much value in his miserable existence. Feeling the weight of guilt comes down on him when he learns that he was one of the many who had a hand in the arising plot BIOCOM is conspiring, he is then more inclined to act - he just doesn’t always know how. At the end of the day, Raimi very well knows that he is corrupted, his soul stolen by the city he embraced. He also knows that this isn’t the kind of person he wants to be, neither is this the life he wants to live. Buried in codes and machinery, Raimi loses sight of himself to the ways of modern society. Not so much because he chooses to, but because he feels there is no other alternative, in spite of his need to seek connection and reach out - to be the good guy.
Because of this, though, he’s grown accustomed to the American ways: He feels defined by his job, his things, and his failures which serve to fuel his hatred of life. And he’s pretty okay with this. That is, until a coma-induced epiphany and the weeks that follow in its wake, leading him to realize that none of his petty fears and insecurities matter anymore.
Though that is the problem; the anchor that drags him to the ground - it is his fear. Raimi shows terror in the face of danger, and has no reservations to announce the fact that he’s scared shitless in inappropriate situations. He’d probably run to save his own ass if not for the fact that he tends to freeze up in life-threatening situations (or, if all else fails, he’ll try to talk his way out of it). Otherwise he lets those more capable, the “better players”, to handle the more physically tasking obstacles. What he can muster is a sense of false bravado, which tends to come off as cheesy since he gets it all from all of the TV shows and video games he’s played/watched. When put in a situation that he’s never been in and doesn’t understand how he’s supposed to react, he will seriously resort to speaking in clichés.
One could arguably consider Raimi’s “humility” to be an interesting trait. He doesn’t have any reservations about putting himself on the spot, even if it’s under a “sexually ambiguous” light. He will admit that he’s a pathetic American (even though he’s, you know, from Canada) who would rather snuff it than to lose his credit rating. In spite of everything, his fear of losing the life he has become comfortable with is great. Too bad that he has a terrible habit of emoting this fear by acting like an even bigger asshole. Big surprise, there.
Much of his bitterness seems to have been stemmed from his childhood, including possible feelings of abandonment (which has hardened and conditioned him to the life he lives now). On the surface, it seemed that Raimi had a relatively happy relationship with his parents. At one point he explains a story about his father taking him to a wrestling match when he was ten. He describes this time in his life in a somewhat traumatic light, being a child subjected to a violent fight scene where he was certain that one of the fighters was going to die. That was when his father told him, “Don’t worry, son... the good guys don’t die - and the good guys don’t leave.” Which seems like a heartwarming tale enough. Except that three months later after the event, he reveals that his parents divorced and his father moved to Utah, and Raimi never saw or heard from him again. To make matters worse, Raimi was left to deal with his mother dying of cancer; something that would leave any child with abandonment issues feeling pretty lousy. Afterwards, he reveals very subtle hints that he’s susceptible for motherly figures, willing and obedient to those who are firm enough to put him in his place (while still expressing an attitude). After his mom died, Raimi was then on raised in a Catholic school, where he wallowed in bitterness and his festering hatred of God and the society in which he grew up alone in.
Yeah. Cry more, Raimi Matthews.
Abilities
hacking/computer programming; When working with computers, it seems as though his mind and body work as one, as this is Raimi’s primary skill. He utilizes technology as a mean of seeking control in his life, though it may not be the life he wishes to live just because he’s good at it; the control does give him a sense of empowerment. Not only was he the one who developed voice recognition and storm firewall for BIOCOM, but he also figured out ways to allow himself backdoor entries into their knowledge base. Ever the clever computer nerd, he is also experienced at covering his tracks over the network. In the Broken Saints universe, Y2K had been a legitimate threat until the BIOCOM engineers, Raimi included, put a stop to it before the final hour. In spite of their efforts, the news reported it as a “non event”.
hypersensitivity; Interestingly enough, Raimi’s instincts have never been the same ever since his brain had been fried by the signal. As some kind of psychological side effect to experiencing the signal, his sense of smell, hearing, and touch increased beyond belief. What he explained to the doctor was that he was feeling a “little hypersensitive”. Which is subverted in how Raimi perceives the world after his little meltdown, given that he seems to be able to literally feel parasites and other molecules crawling on his skin. Indeed, you can imagine that this makes shaving a little difficult for him.
eidetic memory; Ironic, considering how Raimi had been apparently been suffering some psychological memory issues prior. Now, his keen memory seems to be a result of the signal frying his brain, allowing Raimi to remember information down to the tiniest, most delicate detail. He describes the need as insatiable, as though his brain couldn’t be fed enough data, and went so far as to memorize phone books for the hell of it - with one look, he is able to tell how many hairs are on a person’s head. It’s like his cerebral cortex had been turned into a living hard drive with unlimited memory, with its own built-in processor. A very nifty gift, when you realize that silly things like machines and data records are unnecessary.
perception/white man can jump; Okay, this may or may not be an actual ability (and might be more of a symbolic, artistic liberty than anything else), but hey, it sure looked cool. One time he jumped so high his artsy metaphorical shadow FUELED BY THE POWER OF TRUE FRIENDSHIP shat wings. This is also probably more of an allusion to the fact that Raimi’s “element” is associated with air. However, it is not exactly a literal control over the elements, but more of a spiritual analogy that reflects on the individual’s personality. In Raimi’s case, his perception and awareness of his surroundings (i.e. his heightened senses) is associated with this element, but nothing more than that.
Weaknesses
voices; While never clinically diagnosed and can also be considered significantly subverted, Raimi does admit to hearing voices at times. It could be more of a subtle intuition (describing voices telling him things; hearing his cells “plotting”), as it’s never actually played up as an actual mental disorder. But in context it does sound like he’s pretty fucking batshit insane at times.
insomnia; With his brain constantly set to overdrive, Raimi is unable to sleep (which, in effect, he also has difficulty keeping food down. This is reflected on the fact that there is a dismal lack of contents within his refrigerator). Oftentimes his nights are spent staring off into the void, suffering visions and hallucinations and delusional episodes. He also resorts to a variety of “industrious” activities in his free time (feel obliged to use your imagination on that one or not). But for this reason, Raimi doesn’t always seem at all there at times.
physical prowess; Or lack thereof. Raimi is someone who spends most of his time in an office, not a gym. That said, he’s pretty scrawny and out of shape, and loses his breath quickly. The fact that he tends to smokes cigarettes like a fucking chimney probably doesn’t help in the least. He’s also extremely combat inexperienced, and prefers not to carry weapons around, even in situations that would call for them. He’s actually never even touched a gun in his entire life, either, because Raimi is what you would probably consider a Non-Action Guy. So he’s okay with playing up the irony of the Unarmed American.
self-deprecation; One of Raimi’s biggest banes is his sense of self-doubt. His life and everything he’s ever done doesn’t matter, and the thought of dying in the city is an all-consuming fear that chastises and belittles him. His life, as he views it, is worthless, regardless of his desire to make an impact. When any sense of danger is near, instead of acting out he tends to go all deer-in-the-headlights and freeze up (this goes hand-in-hand with the above). Raimi’s fear of death is a great fault, as it often prevents him from taking action and helping others in their time of need. This is something that takes great effort for him to overcome.
acrimony; To put it lightly, Raimi is an asshole. A very bitter asshole. He’s a racist, and when it comes to having a mental filter - he just doesn’t have one at times, to the point where he comes off as downright offensive. No matter who he’s talking to, he’ll speak his mind whether he actually means what he says or not. His father leaving him with his dying mother had probably been but the stem of Raimi’s embittered nature, which only grew when he moved to America. Hardened by the world he lives in, he hates himself more than anything on his Hate List.
Inventory:
- pair of glasses
- pack of (Morley) cigarettes
- book of matches
- one big blue man-purse containing a laptop
Age:
25.
Appearance:
There isn’t really much to describe Raimi beyond his self-proclaimed “boyish good looks”. While his exact ethnicity remains unknown, though it’s stated that he was originally born in Montreal, Canada. His brown hair often has a kind of messy look to it, spiking out at the sides. And his eyes are indefinitely green behind the gold and rectangular-shaped rimless glasses that he wears.
He seems to carry quite a variety in his wardrobe, which range between turtleneck sweaters and jeans, khakis, vests, T-shirts, and the usual white-collar worker dress code. Greens and reds seem to be pretty common on him, as far as color coordination goes. He will also wear the occasional hat and aviators.
Raimi stands approximately six feet tall, and looks more to be a snarky skateboarder than a stereotypical computer geek. Fuck that Hackers shit where they cast the best-looking kids in Hollywood. In Raimi’s case, it is described that he is not meant to look like your average hacker, but rather a smarmy, sex-obsessed hipster who is more inclined to watch than to engage.
So there you go.