258: Gresham

ENTRY 258: Gresham

He was a good agent. Everyone agreed on that, right up to the end. It was just the waiting that got to him. Long stake-outs are a mental and physical drag on agents in the field, a combination of constant attention, physical inactivity, and sheer mental boredom that drives most to drink or drugs. Gresham started eating his own arms.

So, it was medical retirement, with a decent i-rep score in place of a pension and weekly trips to the pharmacist and the therapist to try and control his condition. He likes to tell himself that he doesn’t miss the fieldwork or the officework, and has fun propping up the bar, drinking Ink Washes (vodka, cranberry juice, and black sambuca), and playing hide-the-tentacle with any sweet young biomorph drunk or feeling explorative enough. But he never turns down an offer of work without due consideration…

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
18	15	17	16	19	16	20	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	40	8	80	30	6	45

Morph: Octomorph

Skills: Academics: Malacology 40, Academics: Political Science 30, Academics: Psychology 30, Art: Ink Printing 33, Climbing 44, Deception (Mimicry) 56, Exotic Ranged Weapon (Ink Attack) 44, Fray 50, Freerunning (Microgravity) 45, Infiltration 40, Infosec 42, Interests: Existential Threats 45, Interests: Intelligence Organizations 45, Interests: Uplift Disorders 45, Interfacing 45, Intimidation 25, Investigation 44, Kinesics 44, Language: Native English 86, Language Japanese 40, Language Hindi 40, Networking: Autonomists 55, Networking: Criminal 35, Networking: Hypercorps 15, Networking: Media 20, Perception 55, Persuasion 35, Profession: Intelligence Gathering 66, Protocol 44, Research 44, Swimming 63, Unarmed Combat (Beak) 43

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Chameleon Skin, Cortical Stack

Traits: Addiction (Pain medication and alcohol, minor), Mental Disorder (Autophagy)

Using Gresham

In his prime, Gresham was a force to be reckoned with. Now he’s let himself go a little, his identity is known to the intelligence world, and none of the reputable intelligence agencies want anything to do with him. The safe thing for him to do would be to write a (highly sanitized) memoir, lend his name to a ghost-written line of novels, and continue to drink until he was little more than a pickled tentacle in the bar.

Except this is Eclipse Phase, and things are a little more complicated for retired spies. They may or may not fade away, but they don’t just die after a couple of decades. Young intelligence agents have already run into the issue of crowding at the top, as the first generation of spies with cortical stacks are still running around, mentally and physically fit as they ever were, and with decades more skills than young and ambitious agents with everything to prove. If James Bond was in an immortal robot body and has a century or so of experience, why not continue to use him? And if you do end up retiring him, what the heck is he supposed to do for himself?

Gresham is more or less in the same boat: he has the skills and the knowledge and the contacts, but personal indiscretions have got him kicked out of the game. It’s not a question of if he’ll go freelance, it’s when—and everyone knows it, except maybe Gresham.