Will in a tube
Rockwood
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  Will Rockwood
Rational straight man, space station captain.

Will is the only mentally stable person on the space station. He's rational, responsible, and cool under fire. Of course, all of these are just another way to say "dull." Will is vanilla ice cream wrapped in manilla paper. He's also in charge of day-to-day operation of the station, balancing whatever needs to be done for its visitors and crew against the eccentric whims of Skip Sterling, the space station's owner. His hair, appropriately enough for space, could best be described as being "anti-gravity."

 
  Skip Sterling
Internet trillionaire, space station owner.

Skip turned his lucky tech stock gambling into Dennis Tito's dream by purchasing his own space station from CIA surplus. The richest man on or off the world, Skip has retained his annoying habit of calling everyone "dude" or "babe," but now has no one who will call him on it. His astonishing wealth means Skip can buy his way out of pretty much any situation, and also allowed him to buy his friends' company by offering them jobs that no sane person could turn down.

 
  Mitch Ryder
Naive optimist, first officer.

Mitch believes that everything will turn out all right in the end... unless some chain e-mail letter from the internet tells him differently. He likes spending his off hours watching TV with his best friend Al, but sometimes worries that he might be ruining his eyes. Mind you, he doesn't worry about that enough to actually turn off the TV, but the thought has crossed his mind.

 
  Al Vanguard
Perpetual cynic, station maintenance.

Al often mistakes skepticism for intelligence. He's not really any smarter than Mitch, but he usually thinks he is. Although he prefers to spend his off hours watching TV, he's always up for get-rich-quick schemes, the only things he's not skeptical of. As a show of token resistance against "The Man," Al goes everywhere in his black T-shirt instead of the station uniform. However, he still wears his pressure suit pants because he likes the way they make his legs feel "tingly."

 
  Dana Lopez
Harsh realist, station doctor.

Dana is the coolest doctor in space since Bones McCoy. She is completely committed to healing the sick, but thinks that many of the healthy should be pushed out of an airlock, only to burn up upon reentry in Earth's atmosphere. Dana wears doctor scrubs everywhere she goes because what's the point of being a doctor if you can't wear the pajamas and still have everyone take you seriously?

 
  Kepler Fulton
Child prodigy, junior mad scientist.

Only 14 years old, Kepler earned his Ph.D. and has chosen to use it in space where, theoretically, it will stand the smallest chance of hurting the population at large. Until he shows a disregard for human life, he'll never make it past "junior" mad scientist, but he still is considered slightly dangerous by the rest of the crew, who all know that Kepler knows far too much to be considered "low-risk."

 
  KHAN
Station's control unit, HAL Jr.

Fortunately for all the humans on the station, KHAN had Asimov's "robot code" programmed into him first. Self-aware enough to realize that he's clearly superior to the rest of the human crew, KHAN wishes for the destruction of the humans, but his programming forbids him from taking action on it. The best he can do is throw out an occasional banana peel and hope someone slips. KHAN stands for Kill Humans All Now-- even though his logic is superior, he still doesn't quite have the hang of grammatical phrasing.

 
 

 

The Space Station
"2001" meets "The Love Boat."

Orbiting 250 miles above sea level, this ex-CIA weapons platform was bought by Skip Sterling and turned into an orbiting hotel. It rotates once every 45 seconds to create 1 g of artificial gravity and can host nearly 500 guests at once. Technically, it's not really a character so much as a place, but at least now you understand where they all are.

 
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