S Kiran
Shakti / Shrivatsa Kiran
A young engineer working for Decameron, whose visa expired last year
In Game
Character Hint
You are Shrivatsa Kiran, a young engineer working at Decameron Enterprises. Life has been generally good to you here in the US, since you came here from your native India for college -- in many ways, you fit in better here than you ever did at home. You just hope nobody notices just how long it has been since your visa expired...
Character Sheet
You are Shrivatsa Kiran, a 22-year-old mechanical engineer originally from Uttar Pradesh, India. And today has demonstrated that occasionally, America truly is as insane as your family members back home keep insisting it is.
You have always been the bright one of the family, and your parents decided early on that you would be an engineer. So you jumped at the chance to get a scholarship to Violet City University through their outreach partnership with your school back home, and had an excellent time in college.
Of course, then it was supposed to be time to come home, but you truly did not want to. Home is dull, and you weren't especially looking forward to an arranged marriage and a two-hour commute from your village into the city. And the sad truth is, you've never fit in well with your family: your parents are both loud extroverts, as are all of your siblings, and it is not a good environment for someone who is a bit more shy. Here in Violet City you meet so many fascinating people and they don't expect you to be boisterous and outgoing all the time.
(On the downside, it can get tiresome dealing with American assumptions: people hear your accent and assume you are some kind of poor hick who worships monkeys. The notion that your father makes more than they do boggles them, and the idea that you might be Christian just confuses them.)
So you stayed in the US -- you arranged the job with Decameron before your student visa ran out, and so far you've fallen through the cracks nicely. You do live in some fear that someone will find out that you are here illegally, and you have recently begun to work with Samuel Antonino, the office manager here, to arrange a more permanent visa. Not many people know about your illegal status, and you've tried to keep it that way given how paranoid some Americans are about "illegals". You admitted it to Jonathan over a beer the other week, but otherwise you don't believe your co-workers know.
At Decameron, you were hired as one of Roger Cameron's "young guns" -- you thought that was simply a turn of phrase, but then you were brought in on Project Sureshot.
The Project -- well, it makes you uncomfortable and you can't deny that. It is so very American: trying to build a gun that always, without fail, kills its target, so that they can hunt terrorists more effectively. You admit that the idea is clever, and fits with Decameron's focus on rocketry nicely: the notion of building little self-aiming rocket-bullets would be elegant if it wasn't so terrible. But you've all been talking about it recently, especially with Seamus, and you pointed out that every weapon ever created eventually winds up on American streets. He seemed quite disturbed by that idea, that this might not just be used against terrorists. (He could be quite naive sometimes.)
But you have worked diligently: as your father always says, it is good to be political, but you should always avoid it interfering with your work. You made clear to Roger Cameron that you thought this project was likely to be a social ill, but he laughed it off as "just another gun". (An easy thing for a man to say when he keeps an entire cabinet of guns in his office.) And there isn't much else you can do. It isn't as if you can go to the media about it: even if American whistleblower laws were worth a damn (which they aren't), you had to sign a truly monumental and terrifying non-disclosure agreement before starting on this project. Roger made clear that not only would the company sue anyone who said anything, he hinted darkly that it might be some sort of federal offense. You don't want to be shipped back home, but even less do you want to see the inside of one of these terrible American prisons.
(Besides, there aren't that many jobs for mechanical engineers. You aren't like Paula, whose programming background means that she could leave this job today and find another one by tomorrow.)
Your job on the project has been to work on the "gun" itself, while Seamus focused on the rocket-bullets and Paula does the programming for the sensors, with all of you under the guidance of Frank Meyer, the head of Research and Development. It has been slow and painstaking work, getting all the details right, but you printed and assembled the latest prototype from the 3D printer last week, and it has done fairly well in testing. The only problem has been that the trigger is much too loose -- the last thing you want, with a self-aiming gun, is to make it too easy to fire accidentally.
In the meantime, you've made friends here. You fell in easily with Paula and Seamus -- working together with people of your own age made for a very pleasant environment. And a couple of months ago, Jonathan joined you: working as the assistant office manager rather than as an engineer (so you haven't been allowed to talk about the Sureshot with him), but an intern just a bit younger than you. He proved charming, and gradually wooed and won Seamus (even you could tell that Seamus was homosexual, but he had not consciously realized this himself), and the group of you bonded well. (You've also been joined by young Ainsley Cameron, the CEO's 17-year-old daughter. It makes you uncomfortable hanging around socially with an underage girl, but she has become part of the crowd, especially since school ended.)
You've also been trying to better yourself, making good use of your time here. Early on, you sounded out the company's accountant, Jamie Rickie, about whether he would tutor you about matters of finance and business. That has proven to be a good relationship, with him tutoring you and answering questions once or twice a week, and you have learned much from him. If you do wind up getting sent back to India, at least you will be able to convince your father that you have learned skills he considers useful.
For all that you have qualms about the ethics of your project, you must admit that the company has good people there. This has been exemplified by their treatment of Robert Gervasio, an American veteran who has fallen on hard times and is now a beggar. The company has taken him in and treated him warmly, allowing him to join you for coffee and donuts, use the shower facilities, and so on.
You felt that you should do your part, and it occurred to you that you had something to give -- your leftover medications. Some six months ago, you threw your back out, and you were in terrible pain for about a week. The doctors prescribed oxycontin, which was at least somewhat helpful, but it made you giddy and you stopped as soon as you felt better. So you offered the leftover pills to Robert, since your understanding is that they are rather valuable and can be sold. He was skittish at first, but you prevailed on him to take them, as a way to get some money. Since then, you've gone to your doctor and gotten a few more refills, which you have then passed on. (You tried to simply give them to him for free, but he insisted on paying your co-pay.) It is, admittedly, a bit dishonest, but given the ridiculous amount that American health insurance costs, this feels like a way to make things a bit fairer.
For all that you worry about America, though, you never thought you would feel like you were in the middle of one of their action movies, much less as a victim. But that is what this morning has been like.
You were sitting in the lunchroom, enjoying your morning coffee with Paula, Robert, Isaiah and him daughter Amy; it was all so very normal and relaxing. Then you heard the first shot. Everyone was startled, and you were all trying to figure out what to do when Amy screamed and jumped up. You were turning towards the door to the lunchroom (you had been facing away) when you heard a shot, right there, and she fell backwards. You saw Seamus, standing there with the Sureshot in his hand, and you tripped over yourself and fell backwards, hitting your head on the table. (At the time you barely felt it, scrambling backwards under the table, but you have a heck of a headache now.)
Seamus ran off, and Paula ran out of the room. You hid for a minute, then heard another shot from down the hallway. You peeked out the door, and saw Paula down the hallway to the right; as you watched, you saw the gun drop out of her hand and fall to the floor before she sank to her knees. You slowly stood up, and walked down the hallway the other way.
The hallway was empty until you got to Roger's office; Carla was standing outside it. You looked in, and while it shames you to admit that you were unmanly, you are pretty sure you screamed on seeing Roger dead on the floor. You couldn't tear your eyes away from the scene: him lying there with his eyes open in front of his gun cabinet, usually so neatly arranged and full but now missing one gun, with another lying on the floor in front of it. You slowly became aware of other people around you in the doorway, whispering and crying.
Finally, Carla touched you on the shoulder (you almost screamed again, you were so startled), and told you to go to the lobby: this was a crime scene, and nobody should be here until the police got there. She was right, of course, so you went out, still very quiet inside.
Now, of course, it is all a scene of chaos, and you have no idea what will happen next. You are trying not to over-react -- you know that this sort of thing is rare, even here in America -- but for the first time in a long time, you find yourself wishing a bit for the problems you actually understand, back home...
Who You Know
-
Paula Vasilios: Another of the "young guns", she does the programming for the "smart bullets". One of your closest friends here.
-
Seamus O'Malley: Another close friend, but you are starting to wonder if you ever really knew him at all. You thought he agreed with you about how terrible gun violence is, and was as worried as you about something like Sureshot actually being used. Indeed, after you talked about it, he shared with you his nightmares of these getting mass-produced, and the number of people they would kill if they ever got onto American streets.
-
Jonathan Sheena: A college senior who is currently interning here, working as Assistant Office Manager. He and Seamus have become lovers in recent weeks. He seems like a very good and friendly person, if almost too inquisitive: you still can't quite believe that you admitted to him your current illegal status.
-
Frank Meyer: Your boss, Decameron's head of Research and Development. A bit stiff, you've never really socialized with him.
-
Roger Cameron: The CEO of Decameron Enterprises.
-
Ainsley Cameron: The 17-year-old daughter of Roger, who has been hanging around with you lately. You worry that she may have a crush on Jonathan.
-
Samuel Antonino: Jonathan's boss, the Office Manager. Of all the older employees, he is the one who has most treated you like a peer; you all agree that he is the most sensible and friendly person in the company.
-
Jamie Rickie: The company's accountant, who has been tutoring you in matters of business and finance. Very smart and rather wise, you have come to rely on him for advice.
-
Robert Gervasio: A homeless beggar who used to be in the American army. You have been providing him with pills to sell, in lieu of formal alms.
-
Isaiah Zubin: An older engineer, not working on the Project. He is often rather gruff and taciturn -- he reminds you of nothing quite so much as your grandfather.
-
Carla Lennart: The head of Sales and Marketing, a bit older than the lot of you and quite marvelously self-possessed. Paula has a very poorly concealed crush on her.
GM Notes
Has admitted to Jonathan, one evening when they were out for drinks, that he is now here illegally.
S Antonino also knows, and has begun trying to figure out what to do about it.
A member of Decameron's "young guns" -- friends with Seamus and company, and part of a gaggle of engineers who have come in the past few years.
Sie is the company's main mechanical engineer -- there have been many jokes about being the one person who is neither a techie nor a rocket scientist -- and was responsible for the Loose Trigger on the Sureshot prototype. Sie should be set up to have a major crisis on realizing that Seamus shot the girl by accident.
Sie is probably the most politically sincere of the young group, and was the first to wonder whether this whole project is even remotely ethical. Sie was the one who first got Seamus thinking about all of this. Sie is acutely aware of the fact that Sureshot is deeply confidential, and that not even all of hir friends knows exactly what it up, and that talking about it is a firing offense. Times are still a bit hard in Vermillion, and Mech E's don't have as easy a time of finding new jobs as programmers. And the company has said, from time to time, that they will no-kidding sue any employee who violates confidentiality, and that it may be a federal offense to do so. So sie is wrestling with hir conscience.
Added to that: sie is also aware that sie has a goodly number of stock options, and needs to keep sending remittances to him parents back in India. So sie is trying to balance the good of the company in with all this. Sie should be set up to want a heart-to-heart with the higher-ups, and sound Millie out about what she thinks about the company's direction. (Of course, Millie doesn't know all the details yet.)
Has been studying business and finance informally under
Jamie Rickie for the past six months -- he wants to learn as much as possible about how to be a successful businessman while he is here.
To Do
