Sam Bridges's Questionnaire

Sam lives in Sydney, in a relatively cheap apartment from which he employs his talents as a tech support caller. It's small, but it has everything he needs; food, water, power, wi-fi and space for his clothes and gaming systems including his self-built PC. He lives where he does because that's where the business is and where his family isn't, simple as that. His domain is small, fairly plain, furniture bought without much regard for how it looks compared to the rest of it, but he does make the effort to keep it clean. He doesn't have any friends he feels comfortable with inviting over, so he never has much food or drink in his pantry and fridge at any one time.

The major perk of his apartment, as he sees it - aside from the solitude, of course - is the fact that is has a relatively unobstructed view of the inner city. He can see roads, other, smaller buildings, and on the right kind of day he can look out and up to catch sight of a plane. The biggest downside of his apartment, though he'd never admit it even to himself, is that in spite of everything he has going for him... he's lonely.

Sam makes his money mostly by working as a tech support specialist, but he also loans out his talents for other purposes on the side. Videogame coding and design, the odd programming job here and there, the occasional digital covering of tracks for some less than legal transactions, that sort of thing. He spends it on upgrading his PC, his rent and food and various other utilities, and puts the rest aside for his retirement. He is, however, starting to get a vague sense that the government might be on to him and his... tertiary source of income...

Sam has always been fascinated by transhumanism, as far back as he can remember. But every depiction of such things in the physical world seemed to trend towards ugly, misshapen things or else too-perfect robots that inevitably went rogue and tried to kill humanity. The solution, then, must lay on the other side of the screen, in fully customisable and freely shifting digital life forms. If the internet reflects real life, then surely there must be a way to create true life within the digital spaces. Sam doesn't know how he's going to do it, but he will discover the means to merge man and machine at the virtual level. And if there happens to be a body or tow behind him, this or that life burning and ruined in his wake... sacrifices have to be made for the sake of progress. That's the way of the world.

The defining event of Sam's life was the first time he'd aided and abetted a crime. Some enterprising souls had figured out a way to drain some fat cat's wallet, sucker them into a bitcoin scheme and pocket the digital cash. All they needed was a way to cover their tracks. Sam offered his services, completed his tasks and received payment from a perfectly legitimate company that vanished two weeks later, just before the report hit the tabloids.

That was the moment Sam realised something. They always said that crime doesn't pay, but Sam's realisation was that crime did in fact pay, so long as you followed through.

A week after that, Sam discreetly put out offers for similar digital cover jobs, and the money started rolling in.

One of the more prominent people in Sam's life is his manager, Harvey. Harvey sets the goals, Sam does his best to meet those goals and gets paid, fairly cut and dry stuff.

Despite wanting to distance himself from his family, there are still two relatives that Sam keeps in contact with. The first is his little brother, Max. A little shit, but Sam keeps in touch anyway. Max is doing his own thing, currently pursuing an arts degree out in Brisbane to great success, as far as Sam knows anyway.

The other relative Sam keeps in touch with is his dear mother. She raised him as best she could and unfailingly encouraged his interests, even going so far as to provide the bond on his apartment, which he made sure to pay back as soon as he could. He calls her every weekend, more letting her talk about her life than talking about his, since he's not sure how closely the feds are watching his communications.

Sam's childhood was a rather regular affair. He didn't have many friends, but his parents ensured he was cared for, working their jobs as managers for some government agency or other; Sam never was able to pin it down. His days were mostly spent in books, and then online as he grew older. He did indeed attend school, primary and secondary, showing a more studious bent, his grades were never the best but they were consistently better than average. It was in the last two years of high school that he was introduced to code, to machines, how they worked and what they did, and his ensuing fascination carried him into university and a successful degree. Sam liked to think he fit in well enough to not be branded as a freak but he was never quite sure of that, and he couldn't really find it in himself to care regardless.

Sam has never particularly felt more than friendship to much of anyone. There's no particular reason to his mind, he was just never really interested in that sort of thing. He gets on well enough with people he knows but there has never been a particular desire for anything other than friendship. He's certainly had friends who are girls, some of them even good friends, but there was never anything beyond that despite the teasing of several acquaintances. It wasn't until he'd almost graduated from high school that he figured out asexuality was a thing, and where he fit into that spectrum.