CHARACTER Anthony Arthur 'Daub' Andrews

PERSONALITY
Daub is described as "manic" by casual acquaintance and involved party alike. He barrels through his life with reckless speed, jumping into things with little forethought, following his instincts and gut reactions even when they lead to cliff's edge.

This is hardly the type of personality typical of someone charged with making sure history is not rewritten, but almost paradoxically, Daub seems to possess the most uncanny luck for somehow getting things right despite leaping forward without looking. He has a great mind for improvisation, so even when things don't go as planned, he manages to end up on top, or at least somewhere safe off to the side. He's a quick thinker, maybe even the quickest. He constantly responds to changes in the world around him, adapting and shifting in nanoseconds.

Daub's father was distant, his mother absent, and throughout hsi childhood he clamored for attention he never seemed to get unless it was a teacher or headmaster disciplining him. He was the class clown, keeping everyone laughing so no one would notice how truly sad his childhood was. He grew up generally lonely, with only his dream of becoming a temporal regulator and a few good mates to sustain him. (Well, that and the joy that can only come out making most of the authority figures in your life look like complete morons in front of your schoolmates.) He still acts out and does things to get attention, craving the guidance of authority figures, a need that is filled by n'Barit's presence.

N'Barit and Kirkcaldy have been a godsend for Daub. Turning up at the moment when he needed them the most, they have quickly become the one thing Daub was missing all his life: a family. Though younger than Daub, n'Barit is rather strict disciplinarian, very much a father figure, and Kirkcaldy is the shining beacon of life Daub always imagined his mother would be. As a result, Daub loved them both fiercely, though he sometimes worries they'll leave him because he occasionally gets so out of control and can't stop himself. So far, no matter how bad things get, n'Barit and Kirkcaldy haave shown that they will stick with Daub no matter what.

Daub has a fantastic imagination. It shows in his adaptability and the inventiveness of his many tricks. At the same time, he often has trouble distinguishing imagination from reality, a fact made all the more difficult when you have grazed the surface of a dozen times and lived a hundred disguises. He used to be able to distinguish fantasy and reality. Then his reality became too bizarre and painful for him to handle, and now Daub flits through life without knowing quite who he is. He's ephemeral, fleety, switching between modes of behavior with very little control. Before he did things to hide his true feeligns from others. Now he does it to hide his true feelings from himself. He still harbors a great deal of guilt for the deaths of Lucy and his mother.

Daub can be wonderful and brilliant sometimes, but just as often he's simply uncontrolled and crazy. Only thanks to the support of n'Barit and Kirkcaldy does he have any semblence of continuity in his life.

HISTORY
Daub grew up not knowing his mother, who died shortly after his birth. His father was a professor of Psychology at the University of Geneva. Daub grew up in a boarding school in Cambridge, only seeing his father at holidays and on special occasions. As a child, he thought that if only his mother were alive, everything would be perfect. His father never answered any questions about the subject and there were no pictures of her anywhere. The only thing he had to remember his mother by was a music box with a crack on the side. From his birth certificate, he knew her name was Emily. When he was about four, he decided that he wanted to be a temporal regulator so that he could go back in time and meet his mother.

Daub was a fairly good student, bright but troubled. He was the class clown, always pulling that stupid stunt to make his fellows laugh so they wouldn't notice how much pain he was in. He egged the headmaster's car, then later the headmaster. He stole one teacher's speech and rewrote words in strategic places. Had it not been for the fact he was a top student and his father a very prominent and famous professor, he would probably have been expelled.

By the time he was sixteen, Daub was resolved to the fact that he would never meet his mother, because interfering in your own life is against the laws of time, but he still wanted to be a temporal regulator. He studied history at Oxford, specializing in Europe, seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. He did his postgraduate work at the College of Temporal Regulation in Geneva and completed the examination to become a certified temporal regulator with the Agency.

As a regulator, Daub was responsible for preventing malicious changes to the timeline. The Agency monitored the past and whenever fluctuations were noticed, dispatched a regulator to deal with the problem. Mostly this involved fixing damage done by tourists and temporal vandals. Daub was meticulous about the rules, never revealing information about the future, always striving for historical accuracy.

Then he met Lucy. A fellow regulator, she specialized in European and American history, 1800-1970, so their specialties overlapped in 1800s Europe. They met through their work. Lucy was actually born in 1500 ET, a hundred and forty years before Daub, but at the time of their meeting they were nearly the same age, close as they could estimate. (Temporal regulators usually lose track of their age, as they may spend days or months on an assignment, and then jump back to thirty seconds after they left. This also gives them very short lifespans relative to their own time, as they experience an average of seven years per year of service.)

Lucy brought light to Daub's life. Smart, funny, pretty, and someone who understood the difficulties of being a temporal regulator. Daub called her Diamond, a reference to the Beatles song she was named after, and she called him Bunny, in reference to both his nickname, Double-A (as in Energizer batteries), and his manic personality. As good as they were alone, they were even better together, and they fell completely in love.

When their assignment ended, they were forced to bid tearful goodbyes, as it was unlikely they would ever see each other again. Only, they both starting looking specifically for 1800s Europe missions and saw each other again almost immediately. Happily, they realized that so long as they both stuck to 1800s Europe, they would probably see each other a lot, and their romance continued. So long as it did not disrupt the flow of time, there was no harm in them doing so.

The time he spent with Lucy was simply electrifying. Daub felt happier and more alive than he ever had. Unfortunately, Lucy became pregnant and had to abort the child before it caused any problems, as there was the smallest chance the child might be Daub's ancestor given the lack of data on his mother. Lucy never quite recovered from the experience despite Daub's efforts to cheer her. At best, he could make her laugh through the tears.

After the mission during which she had the abortion, Lucy stopped taking 1800s Europe missions for a short while, but then she was back. She was still upset about the abortion, but she loved working with Daub too much to give it up.

On an otherwise routine mission in 1831 AD, Daub and Lucy were tasked with stopping a fugitive from their era. In the course of chasing him, Lucy was shot. She was wounded so badly she could not use her own modulator, and the modulator required someone actively tuning it for at least three minutes. Daub was faced with a choice. If he stayed to activate and tune Lucy's modulator, the criminal would escape and further damage the timeline, perhaps irreparably. He chose to go after the criminal. He succeeded in apprehending the man, but by the time he got back, Lucy was dead.

Daub was distraught. He could not even send Lucy's body back to the future where she might be saved, for regulations stated that when an agent died on mission, the proper thing to do was incinerate the body to prevent temporal corruption. So again he did the right thing, and incinerated the woman he loved.

Devastated, Daub shuffled through his next few missions, going through the motions but totally devoid of the joy he had once felt traversing history. He was having a nervous breakdown, but no one could distinguish it from his usual manic personality, and he had no friends who knew him well enough to tell the difference.

He decided to kill himself on his next mission. It was a boring, routine mission: shadow a group of tourists across Europe for three months, but it started off in 1790s Germany, a decade Daub had always liked, which seemed as good a place to kill himself as any.

On the first night of the mission, he was preparing to jump off a building when one of the tourists, Spork, approached him. She managed to get him talking, and once he had started he could not stop. Feeling some sort of a connection to her, Daub told her his entire life story and she listened. She did not leave him that entire night, nor the next day when the tour commenced. Instead, she stayed with him and they continued to talk.

They talked about everything, from the great questions of philosophy to food. When Daub mentioned he loved liverwurst sandwiches with red onion, Spork started making him sandwiches and sneaking them into his coat pockets. During the day, he'd reach into his pocket, usually to check his watch, and find her sandwich there.

She wasn't Lucy, but he loved her all the same. She was shy and cute and laughed at all his jokes, even the really bad ones. She was well-attuned to his moods and knew when to cheer him up and when to let him be sad. More than anything, she stayed at his side, so that he never felt alone and never had the chance to try and jump off any buildings.

They were in Austria when they passed a shop selling music boxes, and Daub insisted they go inside. There, he found a set of music boxes just like the one his mother had left for him, only without the cracked side. When he opened one, it played the same tune, so he bought it.

He and Spork also had a conversation involving the laws of temporal regulation. During the conversation, Spork asked Daub if there were ever any situations under which he thought a person should be allowed to change time, for example, to save someone's life. Daub's answer was a resounding no, and he went on to say that he could never forgive that sort of thing.

It was the last day of the three-month tour. Daub was trying to prepare himself to say goodbye to Spork, only to his surprise, it turned out she was not part of the tour group. The tour group had assumed she was a temporal regulator like Daub -- it was not uncommon for regulators to show up in pairs, as Daub and Lucy often had. Daub was still trying to process this information when three regulators appeared and announced that Spork was under arrest. They also used her real name. Emily. Spork was Daub's mother.

Somehow, Spork knew that Daub was going to kill himself that first night and she went back in time to save his life. How she came into that information was never discovered, but merely possessing the information was crime enough. Spork had compounded her guilt by travelling through time to change events. She did not protest to the charges or try to escape. She did not do or say anything, merely stood silent as the charges were read. The penalty for her crime was death.

Daub was too stunned to speak. He had been preparing to give the music box to Spork as a farewell present, but in his shock he dropped it, and the side cracked before he handed it to her. Daub was sent back to his own time without ever saying anything more to Spork. He was put on indefinite hiatus from his job, but not before he managed to get his hands on the sealed files involving Spork's trial.

He learned the terrible truth. Spork had gotten a stay of execution because she was pregnant, and the Temporal Authorities would not murder an unborn child when doing so would corrupt the timeline. While awaiting her execution, she was involved in a study on temporal crimes being conducted by a psychology team from the University of Geneva, a team which involved the man Daub knew as his father. They had a paper marriage while she was incarcerated so that he would gain custody of the child.

Worse, Daub was born five and a half months after his mother's incarceration, and whether Spork had been pregnant before traveling back in time was not known. Genetic tests were inconclusive. There was a chance Daub was his own father.

Daub tried to reconcile these facts but his mind could not handle it, and he came down with temporal fracture disorder, his brain unable to sort his memories into any sort of timeline. He did not leave his apartment for over a month and barely ate. At some point, he either fell asleep, knocked himself unconscious, or just fainted from lack of eating. When he woke up he was somewhere else and feeling much better.

Until Spork showed up, anyway. Only it wasn't Spork, it was someone who looked and sounded like her. And then there was another apparent Spork clone, and Daub decided he had quite lost his mind. The two Spork clones said he had to help them fight an enemy called Deity Command, and, deciding to play along with his delusion, Daub did as he was told. He took the tools they gave him and went off to fight, never quite believing any of it was real and surviving mostly out of dumb luck. He figured if he had lost his mind, he may as well have fun with it. He earned a well-deserved reputation as a dangerous wild card, barrelling thruogh dimensions and into trouble.

After some months of this, the Spork clones said he could stop fighting, because some other Spork clones in some other universe had negotiated a peace treaty, which meant the war was over. Furthermore, they didn't really want him around anyway, so would he mind very much going to live with the other Spork clones on the other side of the mirror?

It was impossible for Daub to even begin to understand, but he went along with it. Thus, Daub came from the Mirror Universe into this one and joined the Triumvirate. He was given a house, and suddenly people seemed to care a lot about what happened to him instead of just sending him out to fight, and life calmed down a bit.

Calm life did not much suit Daub, who now had too much free time on his hands to think about the people he had lost, as a result becoming very, very depressed. He decided to kill himself by wandering into the Wilds. He made it as far as the Bridge, then he lost his nerve, remembering the time Spork had talked him off the ledge in Germany, but because his mind was so fractious, Daub didn't have the mental focus necessary to get away from the Bridge, so he just sat there.

It was then he was discovered by n'Barit and Kirkcaldy. N'Barit might have left Daub there, but Kirkcaldy insisted they help this lost man get back to his home, so they did. After too many hours of wandering around the neighborhood they finally located Daub's house and Daub insisted on giving them some food for all the trouble he had caused. Daub and n'Barit got to talking, little Kirkcaldy fell asleep, and Daub had spare rooms so he convinced n'Barit to stay the night. All he had really needed was someone around to talk to, someone to be in charge, and the next day Daub begged n'Barit not to go, even giving n'Barit his house. N'Barit promptly kicked Daub out, but after a few hours of considering the problem, decided to stay and help Daub, who clearly needed a lot of direction. Thus, Daub took on two lodgers -- or was permitted to stay in the house, since he had technically given it to n'Barit.

It was a bit touch and go at first, but Daub found n'Barit utterly fascinating and loved to listen to n'Barit tell all about his homeworld, Yuul. Kirkcaldy was an absolute angel, spreading light and happiness wherever she was, and after a few months they had the nice beginnings of a little family unit. It wasn't a family in the traditional sense, but it was exactly what they all needed. There were momentary upsets -- like the night Daub, more than a little drunk, tried to bring a hooker home -- but it was a slice of perfection despite the occasional issues.

To keep the house to n'Barit's exacting standards, Daub hired a maid named Laceana. Quiet and a tad surly, Laceana was standoffish but very good at her job, and perhaps most importantly, she was someone to whom Daub could talk to, giving poor n'Barit a break from Daub's curiosity and questions abotu Yuul. Laceana rarely spoke back, just hummed and nodded most of the time, but Daub didn't mind that she wasn't completely listening. She was letting him talk, which was what he needed.

So when Laceana suddenly quit without warning, Daub was upset, and tried to find out why. He could get no good answer from her, finally going to her apartment and refusing to leave until she explained. He was out in front of her apartment for a day and a half before she finally opened the door to reveal the problem: her body was in a state of rot. Laceana possessed a superpower: she could heal any wound, but her body was in a constant state of healing and cell replacement, so every few months she would enter a state where all the dead cells being replaced would just seem to rot off her, giving her the superhero nickname "Zombie." Daub let her be alone as she wanted, but made her promise that she would come back to work when the rot had passed, which she did.

Daub made a few tries after that to start a relationship, but nothing too serious. He instead decided to put a lot of his time into writing a history of the Yuulani, their culture and religion, and in raising Kirkcaldy, and teaching n'Barit to read and write (as n'Barit was functionally illterate). It was a good life. Watching Kirkcaldy develop into a happy and beautiful young woman was a reward unto itself.

When Kirkcaldy was old enough, she asked about Daub's history, and he told her his whole story, even the parts about Spork and Lucy. She was distressed that Daub did not know who his father was. Five and a half months wasn't a lot of time, she knew, and she decided there was no way Daub was his own father and they needed to investigate to find out the truth.

So they went back to Daub's home universe and tracked down Thomas Willoughby, one of Daub's childhood friends who was now a successful politician with access to the Temporal Authority. They posed the problem to him and convinced Thomas to access Spork's sealed files for them. They discovered that Spork had in fact travelled in time before she met Daub, but to the future, not the past. Kirkcaldy insisted that they had to travel forward to the same time as Daub's mother in order to ask her the question, since there was no way they'd be able to go back in time undetected.

So they went nearly to the limits of time travel: 1600 years into the future, the same place as Spork had gone. It was a vastly different world, full of terrific advances, enough to terrify a person. The journeyed through this confusing new world until they found Spork.

She wasn't alone. She was with a man, tall and orange-eyed, wearing clothes unlike any ever before seen. Daub was shocked, but he knew this person had to be his father. He had not committed some unforgivable temporal crime. Spork still had, yes, but Daub's conscience was now free from suspicion.

The man's name was Alan, and he was from 1600 years further in the future: a massive 3200 years after Daub was born. Spork had travelled 1600 years into the future, Alan had travelled 1600 years into the past, and they had met and fallen in love in the middle. Daub had a lot to talk about with his parents.

Once the complete story was told, Spork got up and insisted on going back in time. Daub begged her not to. "If you go back, you'll be incarcerated. They'll kill you." Spork only kissed him on the forehead. "If I don't go back in time, you'll die. What mother wouldn't give her life to save her child? I'm glad I got to meet you, I'm proud of the person you've become." So Spork went back in time, and then back in time again to 1790s Germany, where she talked Daub off a ledge, sealing her fate.

Daub and Kirkcaldy returned to the time they had left to tell Thomas the full story, but when they got there, there was a surprise waiting. A teenaged girl was there, looking very angry, and she introduced herself as Arcadia -- Daub's daughter.

Arcadia had come to find Daub after the death of her mother, Jane, whom Daub had dated in school. Shortly after Daub dumped her for another girl, Jane discovered she was pregnant. She ultimately kept the baby and Arcadia was born.

Jane came down with a rare, incurable form of hypercancer, and told Arcadia who her father was and that she should find him. Jane had wanted to tell Daub all this herself, but Daub had been off playing dimension-hopping war games with the Triumvirate, and Jane had passed away waiting for him to get back. Jane's particular strand of hypercancer had a known genetic component, so doctors had checked Arcadia, and discovered that as flawed as Jane's genetics were, Arcadia's were perfect. The doctors said, "your parents' genes combined to make you as near to perfect as any human could want to be." Arcadia, naturally, blamed Daub for this anomaly, and hated him all the more. If her mother had possessed such genetics, she never would have died. To make matters worse, now Arcadia had found Daub and he had another daughter who even had the same nickname: Cady.

This was a lot for Daub to take in at once. Arcadia was furious with Daub and proceeded to hit him, a lot, and hit Kirkcaldy when she tried to intervene, and finally Thomas had to physically restrain Arcadia. Daub and Kirkcaldy looked at this sad, angry girl, not so different in physical age from Kirkcaldy, and decided that they ought to help her. They took Arcadia back with them to the Triumvirate, with a bit of help from Thomas, who had to drag her all the way there. (But it was a trip Thomas wouldn't have missed for anything. Travel in time, sure, but travel through universes? That was the stuff of science fiction!)

Then they had to explain the situation to n'Barit, which took a while. Eventually they managed to get Arcadia to calm down. She was really more upset that her mother had died, and Daub and Thomas both cheered her up by telling her their memories of Jane. Arcadia stayed with them for a few weeks, eventually forgiving Daub as none of it was really his fault, and then went back to her own universe. Thomas, though, started hopping back and forth between the universes with mad enthusiasm, loving this chance to explore the Triumvirate and meet aliens. (Again, the stuff of science fiction!) He fashioned himself ambassador to the Triumvirate for his universe, a wholly satisfying position, once he had gotten the UN to approve it as an actual (very, very top secret) posting.

Then Thomas turned up with news for Daub: there was a second kid claiming to be Daub's, and genetic testing confirmed it. Not that there had been much doubt -- the boy, named Alistair, had the same orange eyes as Daub and Arcadia and Alan. Daub had dated Alistair's mother in college. While Arcadia's arrival had been a highly upsetting event, Alistair's appearance was much more pleasant. He was a happy, well-intentioned kid, just glad to be able to finally meet his father.

By this point, a few things began to surface. First, Daub's own father possessed some mind-bogglingly good genetics, thanks to genetic engineering 3200 years in the future. Daub had inherited much of those genetics, including the obviously dominant orange eyes gene, and had passed on a measure of these genetics to his children, which was why both Alistair and Arcadia were remarkably healthy, as Daub had always been. (Temporal fracture disorder is a nongenetic mental illness caused by excessive time travel, so Daub's suffering from it had nothing to do with his genetic makeup and everything to do with his atoms getting a bit scrambled from all the travel he did as a regulator.) Apparently, these good genetics also made Daub very, very... potent. Luckily, it seemed Alistair and Arcadia were the only results of his youthful indiscretions.

Alistair ended up visiting Daub on weekends, usually with Thomas as an escort, and Daub was happy to be able to meet the charming little boy and get to know him. It was even more gratifying when Arcadia started showing up on occasion, too. Long ago, Daub and Lucy had wished for children, and being able to see that little dream of theirs become a reality made Daub happy and fulfilled.

RELATIONSHIPS
n'Barit Kinmera - Daub's housemate, n'Barit comes from a very strict alien culture, a fact that interests Daub to no end. Though n'Barit doesn't have much in the way of manners, Daub admires n'Barit for his strength and resolve and, most of all, discipline.
Kirkcaldy - Daub's adopted daughter (though it was Daub who was adopted by Kirkcaldy, not the other way around), Kirkcaldy is a constant reminder of all that is good in the world. Sweet and caring, she could never wish ill on anyone. she loves to play with Daub, since her other father, n'Barit, isn't exactly the playful type. Kirkcaldy also looks after both Daub and n'Barit, doing her best to keep them both happy.
Laceana Brown - Daub's housemaid, and friend, albeit begrudgingly. Laceana doesn't open up easily to people, but Daub's well-mannered persistence evevntually won out. Daub had a crush on her, but she turned him down, making it quite clear that while she'll tolerate him as a friend (her only friend, in fact), she doesn't like him romantically.
Lucy - A fellow temporal regulator, they were once in love, but Lucy had to abort her pregnancy because she was a figure from Daub's history and could not risk contaminating the timeline. Daub did his best to keep Lucy happy after that, but they were on a mission together not long after and Lucy was fatally wounded. Daub left her side to catch the criminal and Lucy died.
Spork - Daub's mother, and, for a time, his best friend who saved his life. She was also apparently an avatar of the Duchess, or perhaps an avatar of an avatar. She was executed for breaking temporal law, which caused Daub to grow up not knowing his mother, and which later led to him meeting her one fateful evening on a rooftop in 1790s Germany.
Thomas "Wills" Willoughby - A schoolmate of Daub's, now a politician. Probably Daub's best mate from his school days. They eventually fell out of contact when Daub became a temporal regulator, but regained contact when Daub went to solve the mystery of his parentage.