Allison Hamilton

By Michael Beck.

To the general public, the Eden Cabal is a mass of dysfunctional nanotech mutants being cynically manipulated by a few over-the-hill criminals for the purpose of destroying the best thing to ever happen to America in the last two genrations. The ISA largely thinks the same way, but is beginning to get glimmers that there's something more involved. In reality they are both right and wrong. The Eden Cabal started out as exactly what they think it is, but thanks to a burned-out old lady, things are turning around.

Allison Hamilton was born in the land that women's lib forgot. The last major event that happened in her hometown was the arrival of General Sherman, but after a look at the place he decided it wasn't even worth looting. The rest of the world was like quantum particles--it was assumed it existed, but no one had ever seen it.

Allison Hamilton was a genius however, and her 1600 SAT score attracted a great deal of attention (it was the first time someone from her county ever made it into quadruple digits). Stunning marks in high school and brilliantly written entry essays got her a full scholarship to Berkley, and she left her town and never looked back.

She arrived in the middle of the antiwar movement, and was lured into it by a hunky boy student who recruited her partially because he knew she could argue the anitwar case brilliantly and partially because she was someone worth marching behind during rallies. He got her pregnant, and dumped her. Allison made the discovery that it was a lot harder to stick it to the man when you've got a baby, and that giving the child milk was a higher priority than giving the administration hell. She pored into her studies with renewed energy, graduating with summa cum laude with a double major in history and economics. She went to graduate school, became a professor, got tenure, and taught classes for decades. She was considered one of the greatest minds in the country in that area, and won a Nobel Prize for economics in 2002.

As the twenty-first century dawned, Allison saw earlier than most the growing dangers of corporate power. Reluctantly she reentered the world of political activism, but this time things were a lot harder. The student rallies she had organized were a single, united voice calling out in a barren wilderness. But now she had a lot fewer supporters, and there were a lot more conflicting speeches. The background sound had been set so high the dialogue could not be heard. She failed again and again, and, disillusioned, went back to teaching.

In 2024, she was contacted by the fledgling Eden Cabal. The edgerunners who made up its leadership were trying to run it like a glorified gang, and it wasn't working. They knew they needed help, so they went to one of the greatest revolutionaries in history. Allison sociological senses, honed by decades of watching, had been set off by the ISA but she had lacked the willpower to do anything about it. A mixture of pleas, bribes and threats lured her out, and she took over the day-to-day management of the Cabal. She had turned it from a few world-weary thugs into what will, given another ten years, be a massive worldwide conspiracy of children and adults capable of saving the world from itself. The corps won't go down easy, but Allison is very sure that they will go down.

However, she is very troubled for two reasons. The first is that she has some real doubts as to whether the country can survive another decade of ISA. Even if it can, it probably won't be worth saving. What worries her even more is the long term consequences of her tactics. Only the cyberevolved and the yogangs know little enough about the world to engage in such an idealistic revolution, but Allison is really scared of what will happen afterwards. All her simulations show victory--but they also show that the collateral damage, both physical and social, will be immense. The cure may be worse than the disease, and Allison has real doubts as to whether the world will be able to pick up the pieces after the Cyberrevolution is complete. Neither adolescents nor edgerunners make the best of administrators. Allison is trying to train a corps of what can best be called cyber-bureaucrats to take over in the interim, but she doesn't know how to keep the interim government from! turning into a tyranny.

Personality

Allison Hamilton has more reasoning ability in her little finger than most people do in their whole body. She has the brains to fight the beast--but she's missing the brain damage. She no longer got that special brand of madness that lets someone fight the power like there's no tomorrow, to ignore all but one's ideals. She's caught between a rock and a hard place. Her mind shows her what will happen should she fail, but it also shows her the horrible consequences of success. She lies awake at night thinking of what will happen should she win. Also, keep in mind that she's one of the world's great geniuses. She knows all the characters plans probably before they do, and will take appropriate measures to aid or impede them.

STATS

INT-14
REF-5
COOL-3
LOOK-3
MOVE-4
LUCK-8
BODY-3
EMP-11
TECH-9
(I know her physical stats are low, but she's 78 years old)

Skills

Languages (many)-10
Academics(all social sciences)-13
Awareness-12

She has about as many weapons and combat skills as you'd expect from a 78 year old college professor-none)
Cyberware: A whole passel of neural enhancement gear

Equipment

Personal Comp
Cellular
Pager
She has no weapons, not a clue on how to use them.
Stunningly advanced social modelling software, programmed by Rache and Spider
Ten Cabal supplied bodyguards, who use the Exceptional Agent Template
A *lot* of influence in the Eden Cabal, with the ability to send teams of cyberevolved kids to do whatever jobs she wants. If the players mess with her, they'll find rumors on the street that they're Raptors.