SHIP OF THESEUS: Faces & Places

January 04, 2021

SHIP OF THESEUS: Faces & Places

NAME: Wayne Bird

AGE: 180 (approximately)

BIO: In our world, college student Wayne Bird was a depressed, directionless, and alcoholic writer. Transported to the plague-ridden Earth of a parallel reality, however, Wayne found his purpose as a freedom fighting journalist. Nearly 150 years later, semi-retired and working as a creative writing teacher at Green City High School, Mr. Bird finds himself face to face with the Skyrat, a superhero he made up when he was only seven years old. Is this a coincidence? A cosmic inevitability? The senility of an old man?

Or could it be fate...

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Wayne’s mug is available in our shop!

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NAME: Scott Turner

ALIAS: Skyrat

AGE: 16

BIO: Green City’s gang problem cost Scott Turner his best friend, so when hive-minded Tony triads invaded his Green City neighborhood, the tenth-grader donned a mask made from a red t-shirt sleeve and began using his mysterious, unpredictable super-powers to fight the hoodlums off. His mission was successful, but Scott’s no good at balancing his life; a point that hits home hard when his creative writing teacher recognizes his student under the t-shirt sleeve one fateful evening. Complicating matters, the Louie gang is poised to take advantage of a vacuum forming in the city’s criminal fraternities, and Skyrat will soon find himself teaming with Bird, a pair of questionably ethical cops, and a sect of math-worshipping cultists to become the unlikely protector of a once sworn enemy...

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NAME: Esperanza (Espie) Vasquez

AGE: 17

BIO: Born to a field obstetrician and a mentally ill factory worker, Espie’s mother was hospitalized soon before her father was killed while delivering a baby in the Evil East, effectively orphaning her. After years in foster care, Espie emancipated from the system. Now the fiercely independent 11th grader shares an apartment with her guinea pigs and Janusian psy-fly, Jasper, dreaming of being a doctor like her father. But first, she has to pass high school calculus... And maybe convince her best friend, Scott, not to go out, play superhero, and get himself killed fighting Green Cty’s gangs like her boyfriend did.

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LOCATION: Cincinnati, OH

POPULATION: 1 living occupant + 3(?) ghosts

BIO: Located on the third floor of a three story red brick building in the Northside neighborhood of Cincinnati, Dorothy’s haunted apartment is the stage for the grief-stricken breakdown young Wayne Bird suffers at the beginning of our story. Downstairs, the building’s middle level is vacant while the first is occupied by a self-styled “hive of vampires” who claim Dorothy as their queen. With her walls adorned in lunatic paintings, Dorothy’s heavenly abode will soon become Wayne’s living Hell...

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LOCATION: Green City

POPULATION: 25,000,000

BIO: A century ago, the planet was ravished by decades of Bug-Eye infestation, but with the indispensable help of an inter-dimensional benefactor called Minister Prime, a second chance at civilization became possible. Construction began on what was to be the first in a wave of great American walled metropolises. Today, that first city, Green City, is overcrowded, crumbling, and corrupt. Enter the Skyrat, a powerful but inexperienced superhero who’s fight against Tony Poseidon’s gang has put him smack dab in the middle of a war between the city’s four largest competing criminal gangs: The Tonys, The Louies, The Left Hand, and the city’s own Corrupt officials.

DESCRIPTION: “A mile west of the coastline was the circled island of Green City, a six hundred square mile Neo-Atlantis rising from the sea like a spaceship peeking its nose through a portal from another dimension. Callie and Scott’s home, the home to nearly twenty five million other folks, glistened inside its four story walls; a safe haven and prison alike. Scott had never seen it from the air before. To see the enormity of it like this was to be shot between the eyes with its perfect, unnatural, technological marvel. Boats and drones were moving toward and away from it en masse like bugs skating on the surface of the water. Jets, helicopters, and spaceships, the winged creatures of this ecosystem, dipped in and out of the skyline, racing off and crawling in. Near the center of the southeast side of the island were the towering skyscrapers of the commercial district’s downtown. The tallest building was Minister Prime’s, with its needle-like protrusion injecting commerce into the blue dome of Earth’s lower atmosphere.” — Wayne Bird

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NAME: Samantha Saetang

ALIAS: Samantha Cyber

AGE: 23

BIO: Born to homeless parents on the streets of Green City, Samantha was fortunate enough to be adopted into a loving, wealthy home... Who’s money came from the production and distribution of Bliss, a nanomechanical “drug” that induces euphoric states by unleashing a vast but microscopic army of mind altering bio-drones inside users’ brains. At 20, Samantha gave up on her fledgling but floundering career as a model and opted for life-changing - and form-changing - surgical cybernetic enhancements to permanently correct severe nerve damage to her right arm and hand. As luck would have it, this was a commercially viable look, and Samantha now finds herself a star of the Green City fashion world. But she mustn't forget who helped her get there...

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NAME: Louisa Tag Yara

ALIAS: Louie Louie

OCCUPATION: Entrepreneur

BIO: Enigmatic. Cunning. Ruthless. Louisa may be the owner of several legitimate Green City businesses, but under that cloak of legitimacy, Louie Louie has a tight grip on the city's bliss trade. Conversely, her loose but matronly leadership style has been successful in uniting many of the city's disparate gangs under her banner, and recently, LL has moved her Louies against the rival Tony gang as well as the mainland city Iago's Left Hand militia, convincing GCPD that she's declared war on the competition. Her war, however, may not be what it seems...

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NAME: John Campbell Bird

ALIAS: Geronimo

OCCUPATION: Ruler of Iago

BIO: Rescued from an “organ farm” in the Evil East by Wayne and Lucretia Bird when he was twelve, John Campbell resolved to remain free at any cost. The boy spent six summers in Birdland, the Bird family's idyllic commune on the mainland, several miles from the Green City coast. When clashes over water during a drought broke out with a pair of neighboring communities, John fell in with militants, placing him on a brutal path. A path that would lead to the destruction of Birdland and Geronimo's rise to absolute power in the burgeoning city-state of Iago. Thirty years on, Iago is an economic and military force to be reckoned with, and Geronimo wants nothing less than to usurp control of Green City from Minister Prime.

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Planning a trip to Green City? You’re braver than you look. Here. Get to know some of the sights and local gossip from a trusted source, the editorial team at WGCN.

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Shiny Red Nothing is proud to present Ship Of Theseus, a genre-nuking novel that pits a troubled young writer named Wayne Bird against his own demons before rocketing him 150 years into the future to meet Skyrat, the superhero he created when he was a little boy.

Ghosts, vampires, skin-shedding monsters, hive-minded street gangs, alien viruses, math obsessed cultists, drugs that induce nirvana, and an adventure like none other awaits you!