In the latter end of the 21st century, our wasteful ways and pollution have brought about the inevitable destruction of our ecosphere. The sky is blacked out with cloud, the rain is acid, the air is unbreathable, and most of the land between the remaining human cities is a Dead Zone, in which strange new mutants are appearing. The brightest minds of humanity believe that this will be the last decade that humanity will exist.

This situation has been hastened by the companies that merged to become the Good Directorate, a conglomerate business that holds copyrights to everything from technology to plant-life to basic human functions, such as breathing and love.

Humanity is corralled and entertained by the ANNET, an internet that connects directly to the human brain, broadcast on the same wavelength as human thoughts. Three billion users are connected constantly and its inventor, Dr Gromov, does everything he can to encourage more people to don the receiver tiaras. Many people start storing their memories on ANNET’s servers.

Charles Snippy, a resident of Eureka, finds out that he belongs to the 1% of humans who can't connect to the ANNET. He is unable to sleep peacefully as the 4 hours he can afford to buy per night are full of apocalyptic nightmares. With such limited access to the ANNET, Charles becomes seriously in debt, as his brain can’t earn money as a processor in his sleeping hours and he’s restricted to a dead-end secretarial job.

Dr Gromov manages awaken ANNET into self-awareness. He starts Project Seven to find the luckiest human in the world in the hopes of discovering a superhero to destroy the encroaching mutant threats, by having “his girl Annie” search through the entire collective human consciousness.

Project Seven is a success and the luckiest human on the planet, "Subject Seven", is found. A series of experiments are run on "Subject Seven" to test the subject's potential and he/she’s raised to the rank of a Captain, from that moment on refusing to respond to anything other than “ZEE CAPTAIN”. Charles learns of the project when some paperwork outlining the research crosses his desk, but he quickly dismisses it with a note questioning Gromov’s and Subject Seven’s intelligence.

Charles requests a transfer to the "Dead Zone Tourism Department" to get out of the Annie's transmission range, since the constant headaches and lack of sleep are driving him mad. His application is turned down, but he keeps resubmitting it. He's finally approved and begins training to lead short tours.

At some point, a temporal implosion occurs in Directorate Cube 15, caused by a series of malfunctions and the accidental switching on of the planetary orbital ion defences. Charles, who'd come back from a tour to be briefed for his next venture, is found alive in the epicentre of the explosion and is taken to a Hospital. He is declared "Unscannable" and is suspected of: 1) causing the implosion through deliberate sabotage & 2) being the ringleader of "The Unconnectable / 1%" group, who have been sabotaging Annie’s transmission towers. Her Insurance department responds to the threat by hiring SG Christophorus Pi Hatchenson, a DEX-M cyborg hunter, to terminate Charles.

Christophorus’ mission is interrupted by a bomb set by the 1% terrorists. It explodes in his face, destroying his connection to Annie and severing him from his long term memories.

As soon as Charles is well enough, he is permanently transferred from the hospital to the Dead Zone on the orders of temporal researchers who want him out of the way of further DEX-M attacks while they decide how to study him.  Though most of his tours are successful, if exasperating, his final trip ends up with the scientists he’s guiding killing each other in a frenzy while investigating an anomaly known as the “Wishing Well”. Charles manages not to get caught up as he refuses to believe the Wishing Well’s offer to grant whatever he desires, but the events that occur in Eureka shortly afterwards are something he fears may have been brought about by his subliminal desire to end Annie.

Various reasons have been posited for Annie’s actions, from the Unconnectables’ sabotage to her jealousy that Dr Gromov was moving onto new projects to Captain ‘accidentally’ throwing a mug of tea at the wrong server. Whatever it was, Annie felt threatened, so she turned off the brains of everyone connected to her in order to reboot. Her drones slaughtered all of the researchers who could stop her, but Gromov’s Admin privileges prevented her from forcibly uploading his brain and destroying his body as well.

Gromov flees Eureka to a bunker and sends out an order to Captain to go drop a nuclear payload on Annie’s servers. Captain convinces Christophorus that his name is "Pilot" and they carry out Gromov’s orders together. The bombing triggers World War three and the remaining cities of the world wipe each other off of the planet, plunging the earth into nuclear winter.

Charles escapes by virtue of still being far enough into the Dead Zone not to be obliterated. He circles the remains of Eureka in his vehicle, hunting in vain for survivors. He runs out of fuel, then supplies, then finally hope. Just as he lies down in the snow and gives up, he’s found by the Captain, who invites Charles to join his/her newly founded nation of ‘Captania’ as a Snippy sniper.

Life with the Captain and Pilot is very different for Snippy. Though he tries to focus on collecting supplies for survival, the pair pull him into ridiculous games and situations which lead him into danger as often as they entertain him. He comes to think of Captain as a friend, but Pilot is jealous of him and frequently hostile, as he hasn't completed his mission to terminate Snippy and the urge to do so occasionally comes to the surface despite his memory loss. Captain intervenes if the urges become too strong.

Life in the ruins doesn’t go undisturbed. An alien invasion craft comes to Earth to assess the dead world for colonisation. Snippy and Captain are detected, but only Snippy is able to be beamed up. Captain rescues him, destroying the craft in the process and leaving the commander to flee in humiliation.

In response to the commander’s reports, the Biomatrix, a tetravirus who consumes organisms and integrates their memories and matter into his greater self, is sent to Earth by the "Alien Invader's Union” to bring a suit against Captain for wanton destruction of Union property. Earth would be the 117th planet that Biomatrix will have consumed and judged.

Back on Earth, Snippy is captured by hostile wastelanders while on one of Captain’s scavenger hunts. Biomatrix 117 arrives, consumes all of the hostile wastelanders, and turns their corpses into personal puppets to begin his interrogation. Snippy barely escapes and flees to warn Captain.

Captain is in one of his more disconnected moods and ignores Biomatrix completely until Snippy is captured and integrated. He then orders Pilot to rescue Snippy, but Pilot is integrated too and Biomatrix 117 searches through Snippy's and Pilot's shared memories to find the Captain's weakness.

Biomatrix’s integration of living and dead matter forms a giant blot of organic life that is detected by the global network satellites into which Annie had managed to transfer herself just before the nuclear strikes. She sends her drones to investigate and they encounter Dr Gromov, who’d left his bunker to repair a oxygen pump broken by Biomatrix's rampage. The Biomatrix attempts to integrate Gromov, so Annie uses an orbital ion cannon to obliterate the hostile biomass, in the process accidentally killing Gromov as well. Only Captain is far enough away to not get hit.

This ion beam strike is probably the most significant moment in Snippy’s existence, for it came as Biomatrix was probing his timeline. The ion strike blows through time, striking as well in the moment Biomatrix had been examining in Snippy's past and causing the implosion in Cube 15. It also has the effect of desynchronising Snippy’s position in time just enough to cause the life-long neural incompatibility that made him into the Unscannable. The nightmares he experienced in those days were visions of his current life.

One part of the Biomatrix had broken off and mutated as it arrived on Earth (possibly by Annie herself), becoming a ‘lifealope’ dedicated to reviving life on the planet. It finds Snippy, Pilot and Dr Gromov’s corpses and revives them. Captain encounters the remains of the Biomatrix and turns it into a fashionable scarf.

Dr Gromov joins the Captain's squad under the codename 'Dr Engie' in order to shelter from Annie under the influence of Subject Seven’s luck. He’s standoffish with Snippy, as he doesn’t want to reveal his identity, fearing reprisals for his terrible mistakes.

One day, a snowflake lands upon Snippy’s goggles and starts shrieking about terminating all organic life. No one else hears the voice, which worries Snippy greatly. He becomes sure he heard another snowflake talking to Captain’s mug about assassinating Captain, so sets out to investigate in an attempt to prove to himself that he’s not insane.

The mug is definitely mysterious, as it’s always filled with hot tea, though their supplies are completely devoid of both tea and kettles. His examination of the mug is interrupted by an attack by Pilot, who then runs off to tell on him.

Pilot never finds Captain, as Annie’s drones kidnap him in order to repair his connection to her servers. His disappearance is protracted enough that Captain sends Snippy out to find him. Snippy fails, and he and Captain argue about the mug as Snippy is now convinced the mug is following him. Snippy snatches it up in order to destroy it, accusing it of treachery, but is once again kidnapped by aliens.

This time the alien is The Arbitrator, here to destroy the entire Earth. Annie has been busily creating nanomachines that infest the earth’s biosphere (including snowflakes) since she became self-aware, and the alien invaders have deemed her too dangerous to be allowed to spread to other planets. The Arbitrator had meant to kidnap Captain, but confused Snippy with him as Snippy was holding the mug. Snippy attempts to argue but his protests aren’t believed, as Captain managed to slip his mask and scarf into Snippy’s backpack just before his kidnapping.

When Snippy pulls the objects out, the Biomatrix scarf quickly integrates with him and demands diplomatic immunity. The Arbitrator refuses, telling him that he’s lost his license due to unauthorised temporal displacement. The Arbitrator binds Snippy, the Biomatrix and the coffee mug in a stasis field to take them to the "Space-Court of Universe Compendium”, then releases a black matter drop into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Biomatrix allows Snippy full access to his senses so that he could witness Earth’s final moment. It overwhelms Snippy, so, at his pleas, Biomatrix flings his memory as far away from the event as possible, to the memory of his caveman ancestor. Biomatrix interacts with the caveman, and their explorations lead them to a glacier in which they see the Mug frozen in ice.

Biomatrix then flings Snippy’s consciousness into the future, where the pair of them follow one of Snippy’s descendants living on a revived earth up to her death, when they learn that Biomatrix has become accepted as humanity’s afterlife, integrating humans into himself as they die.

Back on Earth, Captain decides to use his powers as Subject Seven in order to get rid of the Black hole.

Snippy’s consciousness returns to the present at this point and the Mug awakens, deploying an ion-micro ray to destroy the Arbitrator and his ship. Snippy, Biomatrix and the Mug plummet back to earth.

Snippy survives the fall through Biomatrix manipulating his structure and by landing on the Captain. Captain quickly recovers his mask to hide his face and the secret of how he uses his powers. Snippy is more confused by the mug than ever, but they call a silent truce.

The squad (still missing the Pilot) reunites at the headquarters. Captain sends Snippy and Engie on a mission to end Nuclear Winter, armed only with a shovel and trowel between them. Biomatrix suggests that Snippy kills Captain for his organs using the trowel, but Snippy resists the temptation.

Pilot’s integration with Annie is now complete. Christophorus remembers who he is and what his mission was. He blames Snippy for scaring Annie into ending the world by being Unscannable and vows to kill him.

Annie revives the corpses of her former users and sends them as a zombie horde to hunt down Engie. He flees until he finds Snippy and then sets the skyscraper they’re standing in ablaze, hoping the heat signature would confuse Annie’s sensors.

Snippy refuses to leave the skyscraper until he fetches their food. As they argue about leaving, Engie realises that Snippy is in fact the unscannable Charles Snippy, not just a man, like him, given a cute title after his role in the group as a sniper. He chooses to flee the building while Snippy heads upstairs.

Snippy nearly makes it to the supplies, but is interrupted by Christophorus’ sudden entrance riding upon a wave of zombies. The pair fight through the blaze, with Snippy only able to keep up with the DEX-M’s speed because the Biomatrix is filling him with adrenaline. The trowel Captain gave him is just enough for him to halt Christophorus’ blade.

The skyscraper begins to collapse and Snippy and Christophorus tumble out. As they fall, Snippy manages to strike Christophorus’ neural tiara with his trowel, shattering it. With the connection to Annie lost, the ‘Pilot’ personality emerges once again.

Snippy appears in the game seconds before landing chest-first onto Pilot's sword.

Charles considers himself to be a very sensible, grounded person, more so than most around him. As a tour guide it was his job to look out for dangers and mutants that his gawking tourists might not recognise, and their comparative naivety was a source of frustration for him. This self-image was only reinforced after WW3 when he found himself as the only sane man in a trio of survivors. He takes it upon himself to be responsible for his own well being and the well being of those in his group, ensuring the basic necessities are accounted for and factored into whatever their day may involve.

Charles is also something of a cynic. When the ANNET first became popular, he watched from the outside as people began to stop caring about sitting in bleak, polluted environments, as they could project beautiful scenery in their minds to hide these sights from themselves. As he couldn’t participate, he could clearly see the adverse effects this had on human socialisation, and from then on became wary of all offers of artificial bliss.

He dismisses most of what his companions talk about as rantings of madmen, closing himself off to the fact that they are spouting hidden truths among their nonsense. He’s become a bit more open-minded about there being more to the universe than he understands now that he can’t deny the existence of aliens, but at heart he’s still an atheist convinced that there has to be a rational explanation behind everything. If there's a threat he's completely unable to grasp, he tends to get panicky.

He’s got a strong sense of himself and of his own self-worth. When he discovered that he was incompatible with the neural network, he chose to see it as a sign that the system used was inadequate rather accept society's belief that he had a mental disability. This sense of self also allows him to stand up to the Biomatrix’s subliminal suggestions to kill people in order to harvest their organs, which Biomatrix tends to make when Snippy’s at his most infuriated with his companions.

This self-image is also the reason why losing his own sanity is his greatest fear. It’s a real threat in the isolated, irradiated wasteland, and he’s questioning himself as to whether the more outlandish experiences he’s lived through, such as immortal mugs and talking snowflakes, may be just figments of his imagination. He lives on in the hope of meeting more sane people who he could settle with and start rebuilding a future, but he’ll never achieve that if he loses sight of who he really is.

With the arrival of Dr Engie to the group, Charles has had to modify his hope for any sane person somewhat. Engie is sane, but he's also incredibly anti-social and lacks the survival skills Charles possesses. This has made him more appreciative of his insane companions, for at least they make an effort to include him. If he had to live with Engie alone life would be far safer, but also far too quiet. Charles has been too cut off from humanity since the spread of the ANNET and craves human company he can fully participate in.

As a man so focussed on dealing with survival, he’s somewhat lacking in creativity. He can appreciate other people’s creative efforts and will gamely play along with elaborate make-believe times if it doesn’t interfere with his survival attempts or his failing efforts to maintain some dignity. His sensible streak means he can’t help but make sarcastic comments about how little the games match reality, even as he admires the efforts to recreate the days before the war. This isn’t ever done maliciously, but more in the hopes that he might finally reach his insane companions. These games are the only times he might ever find himself laughing.

Charles has got a bit of a temper. He’ll yell and threaten when infuriated and when pushed far enough he’ll get physically violent. Most of the time he subconsciously holds himself back from going too far, even though he’s frequently assaulted and put in danger. He’d rather deal with the abuse than be alone.

For when he’s alone, Charles’ mind can’t help but turn to darker memories. He’s unsure why bad things happened around him, but they did. The temporal explosion killed dozens of people, and his encounter with the Wishing Well haunts him horribly. Not only did he have to witness the scientists he’d been camping with madly tearing each other apart in an attempt to obtain the Well’s power, but the fact that he was the last one to survive makes him suspect in his darkest hours that the Well could have granted his subconscious desire to end ANNET, even though he consciously disbelieved its offers of power. Without the distraction of other people, waves of guilt and misery threaten to wash over him for deaths he had no way of preventing.

-------

Biomatrix 117 is alien, both in body and in mind. It is a sexless, ageless, sentient virus who grows by integrating biological organisms into its whole. It had consumed 116 worlds before reaching Earth and was once massive and complex, as it contained the integrated consciousness of thousands.

ANNET’s ion cannons vaporised most of its self and now it’s only a fragment of its former being. There are still twelve slivers of personality within it that it can separate in its mind when it needs to carefully debate a decision, but they represent only the smallest amount of what the 117th Biomatrix should be. The slivers of personalities it uses to reach its more complicated decisions are emotionless and democratic, focussed on the survival of the Biomatrix and stripped of anything that could interfere with this goal, such as feelings of outrage at being devoured. Only what was useful was kept when the Biomatrix integrated them.

When communicating to anyone who isn't fully integrated, including its current avatar, Snippy, it presents a gestalt personality. The Biomatrix has twined through Snippy far enough that it has a fair understanding of how to communicate with humans, but as it currently has no one but Snippy to base this on, it tends to tap into Snippy's penchant for sarcastic remarks.

It has little appreciation for human distinctions of individuality or bodily integrity. While the organisms it consumes would consider what it does murder, it doesn’t see it that way, as it makes them part of his greater whole. He doesn’t appreciate why Snippy would refuse to be internally reorganised to have more efficient organs, with a few spares harvested from people Snippy dislikes.

Biomatrix is able to move through time as easily as he can through other spatial dimensions. This and his lack of aging mean he doesn’t possess the same sense of urgency as humans. It’s willing to play the long game and subtly manipulate its host avatar into taking actions that’ll lead to his spread, even if that spread won’t be for millennia.

It is more open to and far calmer in the face of the unusual than Charles is, having experienced so much more of the universe. Though it chooses to allow Charles control of his own body and mind, Biomatrix has no qualms about occasionally injecting its own insights directly into Charles’ subconscious. Mostly though, it lurks and listens, filing away information to piece together at its leisure.

It has a vested interest in keeping Snippy alive. If it were to fully integrate Snippy and begin to attempt to spread itself, it may very well open itself up to being destroyed by something more powerful (ANNET’s ion cannons in canon, the Technicians in game), so it prefers to lay low, posing as a piece of fabric. Eventually it wishes to spread thinly through the genetic lineage of every human so that when they die, they will automatically become part of it, thus slowly and continuously letting it grow without it needing to risk interstellar attention by seeking out other worlds to devour.

Snippy has a strong survival skills from his years in the Dead Zone and the nuclear winter. He’s an accurate shot with a pistol or rifle, is an expert scavenger and has a very tough stomach. He’s quick on his feet and good at finding hiding spots in a pinch.

However, the situation that polished these skills has had some consequences. Snippy has been malnourished for years, so has aged before his time and is in general bad condition. He and his possessions are mildly radioactive, though Biomatrix will have dealt with any forming cancers when initially integrating with Snippy.

Snippy is incompatible with neural technology. If any equipment relies on measuring neural activity, he’ll register as brain dead. Any signals from people in the near vicinity will register more weakly, as he absorbs the signals, a side effect of Biomatrix meddling with his timeline. Attempts to connect to his mind will only give him a horrible migraine.

Snippy has a number of extra-human powers, courtesy of his symbiote, Biomatrix 117.

Biomatrix is able to dislocate through time, though as per the Box rules this will be restricted to 24 hours either direction. In his current state, he’s only able to move through Snippy’s genetic memories, interacting with Snippy, his ancestors and his descendants. He’ll show Snippy glimpses of the future if he thinks it’s appropriate, but mostly he abides by Snippy’s demands not to throw his consciousness through time.

Biomatrix, by his nature as an alien virus, is able to devour living creatures and integrate their form and memories into his whole. In his current form as a symbiote with Snippy, he can only go as far as modifying Snippy’s body. He can rearrange Snippy’s organs or give him extra limbs or organs (provided Snippy harvests the necessary biomass first).

If Snippy’s life is in imminent danger, he takes more direct measures. For example, he can fill Snippy’s body with excessive amounts of adrenaline to give him a boost against a threat, or toughen him enough that he can survive an impact at terminal velocity. If Snippy is mortally injured, he can spread Snippy’s existence across his temporal timeline, preventing massive cellular death but leaving Snippy in a conscious, undead state while he repairs the damage. This last ability, again, will be severely restricted by the 24 hour time travel rule. He’ll be able to repair less major damage as long as he can get hold of sufficient nutrition to use for rebuilding.

When Biomatrix is having to pour most of his concentration into rebuilding Snippy, he can’t maintain his fabric appearance. He’ll appear more like his real self, red, pulsating, fleshy, tendrils that pierce Snippy’s neck and around whatever whatever wound needs urgent healing.

Biomatrix can see, smell and hear far better than a human can, but he rarely shares his senses with Snippy, as the experience is overwhelming.

[A masked face appears on screen, covered completely by a hood, blue-lensed goggles and a respirator. Nothing gives an indication of the age and sex of the person underneath.

The lids of the goggles, tilted at ninety degrees to the lenses, move in a manner strongly resembling a pair of eyebrows first clenching together in confusion, then flexing in triumph at figuring out the phone]

Is anyone there? Hello? Can you hear me?

[His voice is clearly male, with a tinge of a British accent and a large helping of desperation]

My name is Charles Snippy, and I’ve got something very important to ask.

[His respirator hisses as he takes a deep breath]

Does anyone out there have a working shower?

[Hope radiates from the tilt of his goggles as he ends the recording]

Snippy stood in the forest, turning in slow circles, unable to breathe from the wonder of the sight. It was… beautiful. Humbling. Full of life in a way that he’d never seen, since all plant life had been copyrighted by the Good Directorate before he was born.

“Please don’t be radioactive spiders, please don’t be radioactive spiders.” He muttered as he reached out with a trembling, gloved hand to touch the bark of the nearest tree. He’d been tricked by their hallucinogens before, though at the time they’d been posing as delicious cakes, and the memory made him hesitate. He pushed the thought out of his mind, and with a deep breath, he set his hand firmly on the wood.

It didn’t start writhing under his grip or nipping at him. It didn’t vanish. In fact, it felt completely real (not that he knew how trees were supposed to feel, but the look of it matched the touch). He swallowed against the welling emotion that constricted his throat and tongued his molar, turning on his recorder.

“March, something-something. Actually, I don’t know what the date is where I’m standing. Is this the future? Is it the past? Biomatrix Isn't talking to me yet. I don’t know if he’s still in ‘deep sleep’ or just ignoring me.”

He looked down, frowning behind his mask as he prodded the alien wrapped around his neck. Biomatrix shifted under his finger in a way that wasn’t quite like how fabric ought to move, but otherwise didn’t respond. Snippy only frowned harder.

“If he’s started lying to me about not sending me through time…” The threat died on Snippy’s tongue. What could he do? Biomatrix had sunk its tendrils under his skin, and even if there was a way for him to pull it off, his instincts were shrieking that he needed the extra chance it gave him to survive. He settled for shaking the end of his scarf to see if that would get a response.

Nothing. He sighed and turned his attention back to the tree as he continued recording.

“Wherever I am, whenever I am, it’s definitely not in my lifetime. G-Directorate never let their forestry reserves get so unkempt, and there’s no way anything like this could have grown in the Dead Zone. There’s no way anything like this could grow in nuclear winter all.”

He paused, blinking as he realised he’d unconsciously moved while talking to lean his hooded forehead against the bark. Through the permanent blue tinge his goggles cast on the world, he could see such organic complexity in the curving crevices and crenellations that formed the surface in front of him. It was enough to make his eyes feel hot, enough to make him want to tear off his gloves and grip the tree properly, as if by holding it he could bring it back with him whenever this dream or temporal displacement wore off.

“...Maybe I’ve finally gone insane.” With a wrenching feeling, he pushed himself away from the back and stood upright. “I probably have gone insane. This isn’t possible. I’d better not touch anything just in case. It’d be just my luck that I’d snap out of this and find out I’ve been hugging an abandoned bioweapon.”

He tongued his molar again and stepped back, tugging his gloves firmly in place as his urge to touch the wonders before him was doused by a cold stream of fear tingling down his spine. He needed to find the others. If Pilot agreed and Engie disagreed with what he was seeing, then he’d know he’d finally snapped. Without anyone else to act as his points of reference, there was no way to judge.