Gerald Hopkins

Authored by Brian Richards

Character Biography

Gerald is a man of a few talents, but the have been honed for decades into sharp tools that can be used expertly. He was first and foremost a Combat Engineer with the SCE and prized himself in bravery and dedication to getting the work done. He was initially recruited into the SCE as an enlisted engineer and worked his way up the ranks till the outbreak of the Dominion War. He was assigned to work in conjunction with the ground troops to set fortifications and planetary weaponry systems in place. He displayed exemplary capability and fortitude in the face of the enemy and was quickly the one requested by the ground commanders leading to his promotion through the ranks to Senior Warrant Officer.

Then it all happened in a flash.

Gerald was working on setting up a shield array when the bombers struck. His position was guaranteed to be hidden but somehow the Jem’Hadar knew exactly where he was. His body was torn to shreds, major organ damage and loss of extremities was a near guaranteed death sentence. As his vision faded Gerald so thought his life was over. However not all was lost for the SWO.

Starfleet named him a person of top priority to the war effort on a list of documents with thousands of names and what was left of him was put into a experimental temporal lock chamber. A device that could take something and through tetryon and chronotron manipulation stop the time flow around it. It wasn’t that he was in stasis, it’s that his body existed outside the normal flow of time. That allowed them to transport him to the medical center where he was to be augmented, grafted, and saved.

Starfleet had been studying Borg nanite technology and their grafting of machine to organic. They knew they needed to win the war and they knew they couldn’t let good men die, thus a plan was born. Through the Stafleet Hyper Invasive Technology program ‘home grown’ implants and nanites were developed and grafted onto the war wounded. Not many survived, and those that did had drastic complications, but they were alive. Gerald was one of the lucky few that survived.

That was 20 years ago, and since then the remaining 13 patients have all suffered 100% rejection of their implants, Gerald among them. He transferred to the USS Ogawa to both serve and an Engineer, and to be a patient. While Gerald’s body is actively rejecting the implants they are still somewhat functional and he is on a healthy dose of imunosupressors and daily monitoring of neural link activity to ensure proper ability by him as a member of the crew.

Face and implant examples: https://www.this-is-cool.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/mikhail-rakhmatullin/The-Art-of-Michail-Rakhmatullin-19.jpg
He does not have the tattoo, instead he has a serial number of HPK-11 etched on the plating on his head. All of his implants follow a similar design language: tight exposed wiring (covered by transparent aluminum), smooth metal plating in a medium dull gray, exposed tubing as seen on the top of his head, but not as tall, far closer to being to the skull and not looking like exhaust pipes. The flathead screws are replaced with access ports and smooth flat covers for tool access.

Much of his internal organs have been replaced, on the outside is most of where the blast took away the parts of his body on his left side. His arm was cradled as he was turned slightly so his left arm is still organic while his right has mostly been replaced above the elbow. Included in that is his left hip and entire left leg as well as his right foot. There is a smooth 3” wide strip around his neck and covering his throat where his voice box was blown out and replaced. This strip also has ventilation for his breathing so he doesn’t intake air through his nose or mouth, it’s an automated system that is designed to keep his blood oxygen levels at a perfect ratio with his replacement lungs. He has exterior plates on his torso wrapping around his stomach and under his left arm. On his back, as seen in the photo above, is a protrusion that raises above his shoulder level that has two stout tubes plugged in that supply power through a rather ingenious bio-neural gel system that also provides supplementary data processing. The relays in his head are used to buffer data between his brain and the neural link controlled by the bio-neural system. If those relays fail, the bio-neural system has enough buffer time to give him 5 minutes of processing before the neural link shuts down the implants to preserve the brain of the patient, however in a case like Gerald’s this is a death sentence. He does use a charging station similar to a Borg regeneration alcove however it is far more compact and does involve physical docking with the station to provide the charging for his bio-neural system. It works on a similar process but plugs directly into the system attached to his back and can re-charge him in a matter of 4 hours as opposed to the usual 3 for a regeneration alcove. A charge can last Gerald up to 72 hours before needing to recharge.

Watch: https://cdn2.chrono24.com/images/uhren/15416229-59t6tir51sigk6qg797rf3p6-Zoom.jpg