Methodology Rose - engineer/hacker

Methodology Rose (no family names)

She brings a naive perspective to the story (or at least one that is naive of everything happening above ground). In this way she sometimes serves as a surrogate for the reader. She also sometimes plays the straight man (similar to 7 of 9).

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

She is tall, with a thin, athletic build, and is very pale (she literally never experienced sunlight until she was 16 or 17).

Facial Features

She has the high cheekbones and fine features of a runway model.
Her black hair is shorn quite short - just a fraction of an inch (depending on how long it's been since it was last cut). This was common in the tunnels as the high humidity makes long hair take too long to dry after it's been washed, and lack of washing causes skin diseases.

Identifying Characteristics

She is covered in black tattoos. The surfaces of her body which she can see are covered in cryptic technical charts. The surfaces which she cannot easily see are covered in the equivalent of merit badges or medals. “Pretty? Do you have any idea how long it took me to earn this?” These might include striking facial tattoos. No piercings (unhygienic and dangerous around machines.) No jewelry. (She thinks jewelry is an insanely bad idea as it gets caught in machines and short circuits battery terminals.)

Physical quirks

She has quite poor eyesight due to her upbringing in the tunnels.

Apparel & Accessories

She habitually uses a parasol when in the sun.
Only light tools and materials are kept in pockets. Heavy tools and materials are kept in tool webs and packs.

Specialized Equipment

She owns a portable laptop and display goggles. She uses the goggles to increase the screen real estate beyond what would be portable. She is able to surround herself with dozens of virtual screens, each sized and angled as needed.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

She comes from an isolated group of people who have lived in an underground silo since before the war. Initially a cult formed in the early 60s and were heavily influenced by the cold war threat of Armageddon and the perceived decrease in piety. The cult leaders established rules stating that only cult members who followed a series of detailed and restrictive religious rules would earn the right for their children to join the cult. Members who broke the rules were free to continue to be part of the cult, but their children would not be welcome. Pious members were encouraged to produce large numbers of offspring. The secret purpose for these rules rested on the hypothesis that piety might have a genetic component. If so, then the rules of the cult should produce a group of people who are more pious with every new generation.
Initially the tone of their religiosity had a strongly christian flavor (although strongly affected by apocalyptic fears of a nuclear war). Once the apocalypse happened however, the cult underwent a series of jarring changes. Despite having retreated to a shelter dug from an abandoned subway station, the war still produced many casualties among the adults of the cult. Many of the members were injured or suffering badly from radiation sickness (especially the adults). One of the few adult members who remained healthy began a secret program of culling those adult cultists whom she saw as a unworthy.
She also was selective about the tasks she assigned to the surviving children. Less pious children were given more dangerous tasks that brought them into contact with areas with higher contamination. More pious children were kept well fed, medically treated, and once they reached an appropriate age, encouraged to reproduce. Her reign did not last very many years, but her impact on the cult was profound. It was during these years that the youth began to whisper to each other about their doubts that god could have allowed something so terrible as the war to happen to humanity. Lacking a god, they also began to privately speculate on the possibility of creating one. Once she died, the eldest cult members were 19. Lacking any elders, the culture experienced rapid drift. Atheism and a mandate to create an AI god became official doctrine, although there were some ugly schisms in the process. The older members (18, 19, 20, 21 year olds) often felt loyal to a more traditional interpretation of the cult’s religious tenets. The technolotrists (those who desired to create god from technology) had channeled their piety into the obsessive study of engineering and this knowledge proved to be a huge advantage in many ways during the conflict. The traditionalists were soon banished, and the technolotrist doctrine was polished and promulgated to the young children.
At this point they are probably better described as a tribe rather than a cult. They created a two-caste system for their tribe - the explorer caste, and the cloistered caste. The explorers are allowed to leave the silo (what they call the entirety of their sprawling underground lair). The cloistered caste are not allowed to leave the silo and must maintain strict religious laws, but receive the best food and medical treatment.
One of these young children was the mechanic. She spent the next 15 years learning everything she could about the technological arts, eventually becoming the tribe’s foremost computer scientist. A pious member of the cloistered caste, she looked forward to giving birth to as many children as possible but to her horror it soon became apparent that she was infertile. Devastated, she distracted herself from her grief by engaging in marathon hacking sessions wherein she explored the internet. During one 28 hour binge, she finally managed to crack into a military server containing information about secret US military nuclear facilities. Seeing no future for herself in the cloistered caste, she joined the explorer caste in order to track down and destroy these weapons.
Everyone from her tribe uses what remains of the internet. Few people outside of the tribe know where a working computer might be located, how to connect to the internet, and how to use it. As a result, her tribe accounts for perhaps 10% of the population of the internet. They scour old servers for information, which they archive and analyze. Some of this information helps improve machinery or processes in the silo. Some provides entertainment and knowledge about the larger world (crucial for a tribe that is mostly trapped in a tiny silo). Some of the younger generation have formed religious feelings about the internet. Visiting it was like astral projection or communing with the supernatural. With little else to fulfill their natural cravings for spirituality, this cult took off and was eventually embraced by the elders. The mechanic has very strong religious feelings about the internet, which leads her to behave in ways that are even more odd than one might expect from someone with her background. In fact, the reason she eventually left the silo was because one day she hacked her way into a previously uncracked military server. In its files she discovered the locations of many of USA’s intact nuclear weapons.
She will not reveal even vague details about the location of the silo, even on pain of death. Wherever the silo is located, maybe its lower levels connect with old pre-war tunnels of some kind? Perhaps subways? Perhaps their “silo” was actually an abandoned subway station? This might make it easier for them to hide since they would be located immediately under an inhabited city.
She connects to the internet whenever possible and as a result is much more in contact with her tribe mates than most of the people around her realize.

Intellectual Characteristics

Rose is brilliant. She is the only character with strong computer and electrical engineering skills. She is the only character able to hack computer systems, the internet, and electric vehicles. She is less skilled at mechanical engineering and while she can make internal combustion engine vehicles function, and upgrade them to some extent, she does not have the skills of a true gearhead.

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

She is deeply religious. She desires above all else to create a god (through technical means) to watch over humanity. Secondly, she wishes to located, ascertain, and secure the US nuclear weapons stockpile. Thirdly she wishes to protect her friends and see them happy.
She sees the world in a very systematic way. Everything is flow charts and bullet points for her.

Virtues & Personality perks

She is the only character in the story who can get a pre-war electric vehicle working efficiently.
She can computer hack. This can potentially give her access to satellite data and whatever she can find on the internet.

Vices & Personality flaws

She is less well versed with mechanical devices and especially internal combustion engines.
She is stronger than she looks, but she looks like a spindly little girl, so she often needs some big muscular types to assist with large engineering projects.
She may have a secret agenda to secure nuclear weapons, and this may conflict with the goals of the team.

Personality Quirks

She misunderstands common american cultural elements because these elements had a very different meaning in the silo. e.g. perhaps having a special cake baked for you was a sign that you were to be exiled whereas in the USA this is a way to celebrate birthdays. She is often humorless and cold, like Seven of Nine. Almost total unfamiliarity with nature due to living underground for so many years.

Honorary & Occupational Titles

She is a nun in her religion. Severely traumatized by the horrors that humanity has exacted upon itself, they believe it is their spiritual duty and fate to create a god to take care of humanity. This god will take the form of an AI. Based on this central article of faith, they believe they must push computer science as fast as possible. In order to do this, they must rehabilitate the internet, rescue lost data and scientific knowledge, and return civilization to a state of technological functionality.

Quotes & Catchphrases

“My name is Rose. It’s a flower.” (She doesn't realize that literally every single human who lives on the surface knows what a rose is.)