Tock

Authored by Jamie Moore

Character Biography

Appearance:

A wood texture constitutes Tock’s ‘skin’, with a thin protective coating of transparent aluminium. A black plating, only very slightly raised above the rest of his surface material, marks out the shape of a hairline, giving the appearance from a distance of short trimmed hair. His only facial features are eyes, two small holes with a dim white/yellow glow which provide visual input. When he speaks, his voice replicates Easterlin’s Southern drawl. Tock is clothed in a 24th century style tuxedo.

Biography:

A decorated Starfleet officer and scientist, Commander Jerome Easterlin, in his final years committed himself to the project of assembling Tock, a clockwork android designed not to continue his sentience (this was neither desirable or legal under the ban on the development of synthetic life forms) but to preserve the knowledge and wisdom he had amassed throughout his life. This was, of course, an act of immense vanity. The man could simply have used the same technology to incorporate a curated and sorted version of his knowledge into the libraries, as many others had done before him. Additionally, while Easterlin claimed to have assembled the android entirely from raw materials by himself, those who examine Tock tend to conclude that he in fact replicated most components at the most pre-assembled level possible. Thankfully for Easterlin’s project, he was a dying man with friends in high places in Starfleet Command. Upon the completion of Tock only months before the man’s passing, a friend of Easterlin, an admiral with Starfleet Medical, promised he would find a vessel for Tock to be ‘stationed’ on where his knowledge could continue to be useful. At the time of his death, the Commander’s memories were downloaded and stored in Tock’s memory banks.