I Zubin
Ivah / Isaiah Zubin
One of the senior Researchers at Decameron
In Game
Character Hint
You are Isaiah Zubin, one of the senior engineers at Decameron Enterprises, and your life pretty much ended today. Today was Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, and you thought it would be a great chance to show her what you do. And then that unstable kid O'Malley flipped out, grabbed a gun and killed her like some kind of afterthought.
The grief and the anger are pretty much tearing you apart right now. You damned well want justice here, but with O'Malley dead himself, you aren't sure what you can do.
Costuming: you are 50ish and pretty conservative. Somewhere between office casual and office formal would be appropriate.
Character Sheet
You are
I Zubin. You're fifty years old, and somehow you can't even be surprised that your life is pretty much over at this point. Your rabbi would frown at you saying it, but you sometimes think God likes to play with you the way he did with Job.
Even back in college, everything always seemed to be stress and difficulty, but you didn't know how good you had it. You fell in love with a beautiful girl, Millicent Hamilton, and she was like the sunshine in your days. Sophomore year was probably the happiest and most carefree time of your life, and it thrilled you when you and Millie moved in together junior year.
But your classwork was hard, so you couldn't see as much of her as you wanted to, and you wound up fighting all the time over money. Millie was born rich, and never really understood that, for normal folks like you, money doesn't grow on trees: you have to earn it, and shepherd it carefully if you want to be secure. In the end, late junior year she broke it off with you, and you were pretty morose during senior year. (Not that she was ever nasty about it, but the "let's just be friends" thing always hurt, deep in your gut.)
She was sincere about still caring for you, though, and proved it a few years later. She'd gone and married Roger Cameron, which was pretty much exactly what you'd expected: a flashy WASP with perfect hair, who was going about founding a new company. You kind of bristled when you first met him -- it felt like shoving your history right in your face -- but she explained that Roger needed a lead engineer for his new company. And the company, if a little quixotic, actually sounded like fun: designing and building state-of-the-art model rockets. It was a little silly, but piqued your interest: the sort of multi-stage rockets he envisioned (even a Space Shuttle simulator!) would require a lot of precisely mechanical and aeronautic engineering. You needed a good job, and this sounded a lot better than working for some government contractor, so you came in as the company's first official "employee".
Of course, being an "employee" instead of a "founder" meant you didn't get nearly as much stock. You've always kind of resented the way that
F Ronit got way more out of the company than you, simply by dint of coming in a little earlier. (Yes, the business people always like to make out that the head of Marketing matters more than the engineers who actually design and build things, but you've never accepted that.) Much less Helen Derren -- she has always been a nice to you and all, but she is kind of the canonical one-percenter, sitting back and making millions off of her investments, while not
doing much aside from sitting on the Board.
But the work was good, and you were decently content, especially once you and Judy found each other. You met at synagogue about 20 years ago, and fell for each other quickly. She was never quite as beautiful or sparkling as Millie had been, but she understood you, and you had come to see how important that was. The two of you simply meshed, as if you'd known each other all your lives, and you married quickly and without hesitation. And a few years later, you were blessed with your beautiful daughter Amy...
... oh, God, Amy -- why did she jump out like that? She was just a girl, she should have stayed down...
The past few months have been generally a bit crazy. The company is all wrapped up in this idiotic "Project Sureshot", Fred's latest clever idea from his government connections. Not that things have ever been as good since the company almost went under 15 years ago. The whole model-rocketry thing turned out to be something of a fad, and the boys who had been buying your stuff were moving on to video games and the like. Roger started laying off staff, and you were terrified for a while that you were going to get fired yourself, new baby notwithstanding. You've always added a little prayer of thanks for that warehouse fire: the insurance money allowed Decameron to keep at least the core staff like yourself while he and Fred put on their thinking caps and refocused the company.
(The yellow media insinuated that the warehouse fire was arson or something like that, but you know not to think ill of your friends.)
Of course, "refocused the company" meant that you were now working for... a government contractor. Yay. But it kept paying the bills, and supporting your family mattered, so you weren't going to complain.
The good days really started to end about ten years ago, when Judy found the lump in her breast. The next year was so hard, her going through chemo, young Amy asking why Mommy was losing her hair, and you having to be strong for the both of them. But you were, and she recovered, and you thought it was passed, and life went back to normal.
Five years later, you weren't so lucky. The second round of cancer carried Judy away, and you thought your heart would burst. You might have simply let yourself die, then and there, if Amy wasn't depending on you.
Last year, Roger got onto a kick of hiring engineers right out of college -- he wanted "new blood" and "fresh thinking", as if you and the other older staff were lame dogs to be put out to pasture. (You're pretty sure that the truth is simply that he needed to expand, and wanted to hire them cheap and young.) They all got put onto Sureshot, some kind of ungodly weapons program to build a supergun. You've stayed away from the details -- you've been busy enough with the research into high-speed drones, and never bothered to get cleared for Sureshot -- let Frank treat that as his own toy, and leave you out of it.
(Not that you're one of these bleeding-heart anti-gun types. You are kicking yourself for not having your gun with you today, but everyone made a big deal about today being about the kids, and it being inappropriate. Damn them -- if you'd had your gun today, maybe you could have stopped that monster O'Malley. At least, that's what you like to tell yourself, to stop thinking about the fact that you were under the table, and poor Amy was the brave one...)
You have to admit that you've been feeling like the company has been passing you by. Roger never said anything, but it's been clear that Sureshot was where all the attention was going, and they're treating drones as dime-a-dozen nowadays. It's given you a lot to think about as you walk across the park to work, that maybe it is time to move on, but you've never been one of those people who are eager for change.
Speaking of the park, that's been a place of some weirdness lately. There's a homeless bum who lives there, Robert Gervasio, who Roger sort of adopted as a company mascot some months ago -- letting him use the company coffee, take showers in the locker room, and stuff like that. It all seems kind of inappropriate to you, but hasn't been your business, and you slowly accepted that he wasn't an immediate menace.
But when you were walking home a couple of months ago, you were startled to notice him on a park bench, chatting with Mayor Jeri Ferdinand. Now that is not normal for a homeless person. And you've seen the same thing several times since, always about the same time of the week: the Mayor talking, clearly intently, with him. It's an out-of-the-way spot that not many people go through, so perfect for covert meetings.
You don't know what to make of it, but you're no friend of the Mayor -- she is way too liberal for your tastes, and it gets up your nose when someone without children pulls the "but think of the children" crap. So you told Fred about it. While you aren't "best buds" or anything like that, you've known each other since the founding of Decameron, most of 30 years ago now, and you're certainly friends. He left the company to go into politics five or six years ago, and it suits him -- he's always been a passionate conservative, and he's done a good job as State Rep. Now he is running for Senate against the Mayor, and you know which way you'd probably vote, so giving him a little insight into the opposition seems like the right thing for a friend to do.
Heh. Who ever thought that politics would be the happiest thing you could think about? But here you are.
You were sitting around the lunchroom this morning, with Amy in tow. Ainsley, Roger and Millie's daughter, is about a year older than Amy, and she'd come up with this harebrained idea of "Take Your Daughter to Work Day". You thought the whole thing was silly -- your work mostly consists of sitting at the computer and thinking a lot, so no chance Amy would find it interesting -- but Ainsley and Amy have been friends since they were children, so Amy begged you to support the idea. (Judy and Millie bonded over the girls, and while they certainly weren't raised together, they saw a good deal of each other when they were young.) Who else was there -- Robert Gervasio, in for him morning cup of coffee, and Shrivatsa Kiran and Paula Vasilios, a couple of those young-turk engineers. It all seemed completely normal and calm, until you all heard the first bang.
You were startled, but not sure what it was -- someone doing something stupid in the Lab, maybe? But then, a minute or two later, there was another bang, much closer, and you were sure that this one was a gunshot. You got up, beginning to pull Amy in towards you -- and saw that idiot O'Malley walking down the hall, with the gun in his hand.
Poor, brave Amy. Your eyes must have gone wide as saucers, because even while you were diving under the table, she turned, saw O'Malley, screamed, and threw herself in front of you. And the bastard just turned and shot her in cold blood, then ran off.
They're telling you that Paula grabbed a gun from Roger's office and stopped O'Malley's rampage with it. Good for her, and good riddance to bad trash. But you don't know, you were just sitting there, with Amy cradled in your arms, crying. At some point, Carla tried to get you to go to the lobby and wait for the police, but to hell with that -- you weren't leaving your girl. Even now, a couple of hours later, it aches to think of the police standing around her body like some piece of meat, without you there as a father should be...
Who You Know
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Roger Cameron: Millie's husband, the talented (if slightly egotistical) founder of Decameron Enterprises. He was apparently the first one who got shot this morning. You were never as close to him as you were to Millie, but he was a fair and reasonably good boss; you will miss him.
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Millie Cameron: Once upon a time, she was the love of your life. You wouldn't sacrifice your life with Judy and Amy for anything under heaven, but you sometimes wonder what it would have been like if you and Millie had made it work.
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Ainsley Cameron: Roger and Millie's daughter, who has been hanging around the office a lot for the past year -- apparently Roger went and gave her part of the company as a sweet-16 present or something like that. (Yet another example of The Rich Are Different.) She's always seemed like a decent girl, though, and she and Amy were close. You can't quite get past the fact that Amy would still be alive if Ainsley hadn't talked her into coming to the office, but are trying to be respectful: the poor girl just lost her father, after all.
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Seamus O'Malley: The monster who took your Amy away from him. You don't really believe in Hell the way your Christian colleagues do, but this once you wish you did. You don't even know why Roger hired him in the first place -- you thought he was mediocre at best when he interviewed, and told Roger as much, but he insisted on bringing the kid in. Maybe your mistake was not speaking your mind strongly enough then, a year ago.
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Fred Ronit: Roger's partner when he was founding the company, and the chief of Sales and Marketing during those early, good years. He has been State Representative from this neighborhood for several years now, and has decided that it is time for him to run to Senate. You wish him well: he is a strong and passionate leader, and likely to do well in Washington.
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Carla Lennart: The current VP of Sales and Marketing, who stepped in when Fred moved into politics. You've been impressed with her focus and drive: while you don't love all this government work, she has at least helped make sure that the company is strong.
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Helen Derren: Decameron's first investor, Millie's best friend in college. You've never precisely been close -- she is a little too much about the money, and never much else -- but you've known her since then, and you've always been cordial in social settings.
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Samuel Antonino: The company's office manager since almost forever -- he hasn't been with the company as long as you, but not too far off. He is nice in that earthy-crunchy kind of way, and everyone likes him, but you sometimes wish he was just a little more direct with people.
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Brian Truman: The representative from Greyrock Investments, the company's VC investor. You've been suspicious of this whole venture-capital thing from the start, and you tried to argue with Roger that it was a bad idea to take money from people like that, but he basically laughed you off and told you to focus on the engineering, and that it would all be fine. You hope he was right.
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Robert Gervasio: The homeless man living in the park, who Samuel sort of adopted as a pet this past year. You're still uncomfortable about having someone like that around the office, but you've learned to keep it to yourself.
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Jeri Ferdinand: The Mayor of Violet City. Why is she meeting with Robert Gervasio in the park so often?
GM Notes
Was carrying hir own gun this morning, but hid rather than confronting Seamus. Is deeply freaked out, and the police taking away hir gun isn't helping any. Change to: wasn't carrying hir gun today, because sie had hir daughter at work. And now this has happened. This has produced a truly epic crisis of belief for hir, as a victim of gun violence who feels like sie could have prevented it with a gun at hand.
Knows that Seamus' hiring in the first place was fishy. Sie wasn't impressed by Seamus in his interview, but heard that Roger insisted on hiring him. Always felt that Seamus was a fairly weak engineer -- far as sie can tell, Seamus was basically a frustrated artist who was bullied into engineering by his family.
Has picked up the
Bereaved Parent archetype, previously on
E Martin. That rounds out this character nicely. His now-dead daughter was
Amy Zubin, 16 years old, and something of a friend of Ainsley's. His late wife was Judy Zubin -- she passed away about five years ago from breast cancer.
Has observed the weird relationship between
J Ferdinand (who he doesn't like much) and
R Gervasio, meeting every week out in the park. He doesn't know what that's all about, but told his old friend
F Ronit about it last week, as something he ought to look into.
He was in a relationship with Millie for about a year during college; for a while they were fairly serious, even living together junior year, but Millie always told him that he was too dour, and eventually they broke it off amid some resentment. They had spent too much time arguing, especially over money: Millie never seemed to understand how different things were for those of you who had to make your way in the real world, without rich parents. But several years later, Millie introduced him to her new husband Robert, and said that he was hiring for his new company, Decameron Enterprises. He hit it off fairly well with Robert, and signed on with a good job as his first engineer. (But without founders' equity. He has always been a bit resentful that
H Derren has made millions off of Decameron, while he has had to make do with salary plus a modest chunk of stock.)
He wound up married a few years later, and was quite happy with him wife Judy and daughter for quite some time; life was good. But him wife passed away from breast cancer about five years ago, leaving him bereft and somewhat alone. He has often wondered, in the years since, what things might have been like if he had managed to stick with Millie, who he is still quietly in love with.
