< Jean Notes | Jean Page | Jean Bellstock >
Jean first made a name for himself at the Orion Academy of Space and Interdisciplinary Science by his failure to graduate. Despite having top marks, one day, he simply disappeared. On his return seven years later he accepted an honorary degree in astrophysics, spoke before the graduating class, and awarded the school a twelve billion credit research grant. In between he honed a sort of well conceived recklessness, finding ways to neutralize risk even in the most dangerous circumstances.
His 'early graduation' was the first of many such ploys. A year ahead of his disappearance he began exhibiting eccentric behaviors leading to him spending most of his time alone in the dormitories or labs. After about a month he had begun to appear in his classes via telepresence or simply accessing lecture recordings, only showing up when absolutely required. Thus, when he left a bioroid fascimalie (complete with a low-res emulation of his personality) and left the planet, nobody caught on. Genuine letters continued to be sent home, and papers continued to be written and published. Only the intervention of a few friends' attempts to rescue Jean from a closeted lifestyle eventually foiled the ruse, but by that point it was only months before graduation and the school quietly brushed the matter aside, leaving his name on the graduation roster out of hope to avoid any further embarrassment.
Meanwhile he had been living on an asteroid tug, getting valuable real world experience and advancing in the ranks of OGRE's terraforming division. Using a false identity concocted with a fellow student, they had had a marriage of convenience and used the opportunity to generate entirely new identities for themselves. While Jean stayed in local space, Jane went off to the Outer Rim. Quickly learning to pilot a tug, he spent his free time (which was substantial) on to engine optimizations which were quickly implemented amongst the fleet. He was given a post on a command ship, coordinating the efforts of entire asteroid groups and a small research and development lab of his own. By the time he had advanced high enough in the ranks of OGRE to draw attention to himself instead of his work, his boyish looks were gone and any other youthly characteristics could be explained away with his Ladon heritage. A cursory examination of his (falsified) record was sufficient - everyone's attention was on his more recent accomplishments. Being granted a field lab commission, Jean began to encounter his first really challenging work. Exploration and research of the uninhabited worlds.
The Galactic War had left many ruins of a countless diversity of worlds. His job was to learn what he could before they were destroyed forever by the terraforming process - intentionally, in many cases, as nobody wanted to live on a world where Old Empire defenses might be (and often were) still active. At about this time his ruse was discovered, but he had already been exposed to material that had been classified to the highest degree. No longer needing to worry about fake identities or secret communications, Jean returned to his given name and capitalized on the wealth afforded to him by his hazard pay to the greatest extent that he could. Eventually however, he outgrew such dangerous assignments, as even his sense of recklessness was being overwhelmed. He was appointed to Vice President of Research and Development where he saw many projects come to fruition, including the programming of BELL whom he eventually adopted when the program was terminated. It was also when he began working on Project Bluebell.
⚠ (:showhide div=bluebell init=hide:) - Project Bluebell
Terraforming requires vast resources. And the end of a long and expensive process you are left with a planet with a limited carrying capacity and several unavoidable hazards and engineering hurdles. Project Bluebell aimed to change that. Instead of one blue ball it would entail the creation of millions of blue 'bells' surrounding a sun - habitable environments allowing a far more efficient use of surface area. In effect, creating a Dyson Cloud around a sun. The model had several advantages over simply colonizing an asteroid belt (Although early versions of Project Bluebell involved ways to manipulate the asteroid belt, such as shifting positions of the gas giants in the system to drive a belt closer to the sun). The first would be that it is much closer to the Sun, meaning that exponentially more energy could be tapped. Other advantages included it being 'flatter', so that resources were more efficiently distributed, and more controllable habitats. In comparison to a planet, no worrying about gravity, no worrying about large ecosystems. In effect, where Void Walkers attempted to remake humanity to survive better in space, Bluebell sought to make space inhabitable by humanity.
At its end stages, Bluebell looked something like this. Planetoids would be smashed into a planet, aimed to cause it to spiral in towards the sun, increase it's rotation and melt the surface. Eventually the crust would break up forming a ring around the star where shepard planetoids would redirect clumps of matter into polar orbits. Implosion seeds would form planetoids from the ring, and self-replicating nanites would be released to produce solar sails, creating an uninhabited dyson cloud where each planetoid could be inhabited at leisure. Meanwhile, the metallic core of the planet could be harvested for raw materials. One such cloud could replace hundreds if not thousands of terraformed planets, and the process might be even quicker. A trial run for the project was needed, to collect data for the model so that refinements could be made.
Jean restricted the search to Dwarf planets that were uninhabited - objects like Earths' moon that could be plummeted with asteroids from a belt. The other Project Leaders were less picky. They wanted something in a populated system. Something with well traveled Jump Points. And most importantly, they wanted it now - the other Project Leaders had huge investments in manufacturing of the devices that would be required for Project Bluebell to work. So corners were cut - and when Jean saw the list of prospective planets, he had to act. Many were inhabited - and for most, a war would have to be fought to claim the system first. They would never see the project begin, but they would profit immensely from the buildup, and Jean had to act quickly. He contacted a millitant void walker group and informed them of some of the planetoids chosen, many which, far from being uninhabitable, had some kind of indigenous life. These void walkers discreetly stirred up public opinion in favor of indigenous life, though they had no idea what they were fighting for, politicians knew that they had to make laws in favor of such life if they wanted to capitalize on it. Terrorist operations were also staged, resulting in the destruction of data and equipment, though Jean provided no data or encouragement on that front. Once a vocal supporter of the project, Jean assembled every flaw into a blasting presentation and delivered it to the Orion Council on Ethics. Project Bluebell's funding was pulled and its assets auctioned off, though its organization chart was still intact if it could find the funds...
After his sabotage of Project Bluebell his career with OGRE was over . In the process of preventing Genocide (or worse), Jean had cost his fellow project leaders millions upon millions of credits. He was reassigned to Interstellar Transporation, and then left. His private assets suffered mysteriously - stocks crumbling, a spaceship he had been paying for on layaway repossessed, and a personal laboratory bombed. The message was clear - get out of Orion before something happens. And so he did. With a few personal possessions and his daughter BELL, he made way for the rest of the Galaxy to try and make his way.
Stryck Wiki