Clarence Underwood

Clarence Underwood, known by his screen name as 'Mamba', is a British computer hacker from Leeds, who has been part of the hacking community since its infancy. He's had numerous exploits in uncovering The Goldfinch Society.

## Information

### Born

September 17, 1989
Leeds, United Kingdom

## Technical Information

### Bionics

Sturman nanofiber hand tendons, model 841Sturman hand accelerator, version B, model 4

## Background

### Early Life

Clarence was born into an impoverished family. His father would lend him to a sweatshop that would manufacture PCB's and other electronics. Numerous solder burns on his hands later, he would later tip off the police about the sweatshop. He left with a lot of knowledge of electronics, even for a child. He would make small gadgets and projects, and in highschool won in the robotics competition two years in a row.

The third year, he would meet his match, a person who used advanced programming techniques to make his bot. Clarence and Barrie would become good friends. He would eventually be able to spend more time on his bots by hacking his grades. After highschool, Clarence and Barrie would form the hacker group "Escann sec", or "Eel Sec", with several other people. Barrie would write a programme that would completely format a network's computers, Clarence would modify a thumbdrive to autoexecute that script, and give it to someone to plug into a target's computers.

They would go on to cause several thousand pounds of damage around the UK, but it would eventually end when Barrie was mysteriously shot to death in a driveby shooting. Escann sec's head was cut off and they would scatter out of fear of being next, but Clarence was not afraid to get revenge. He would tap into the city's network of cameras back to where the shooting took place, trace the licence plates of the car that killed Barrie, and follow it back to where it parked. In the end, Clarence killed three people tied to Barrie's death, the later skipped town upon finding out that a large criminal organization was tied to the hitmen, who were hired by a company that Escann Sec targeted earlier.

### Lindsey

He fled to Chicago and worked for various groups on the deep web, taking odd jobs. Clarence would find himself working undercover at SYSNA (SYnaptic Science and Neurology Academy), where he was hired to expose any dirty dealings they had their hands in. Bionics at the time were relatively primitive, any sort of evidence that they were working on them would make top dollar. He followed the development of MAIA-CETO (Mnemonic Acclimation through Integral Adjoining of Combined Egos and Trained Operation). The project would involve transplanting the consciousness of a fetus' mother into its brain, thereby combining the two egos. Clarence feared the worst, but was afraid of doing anything because of the delicacy of the equipment. Lindsey was born that day, and helped her escape the facility with her father. He would take a plane to Seaoko, where he would get recruited by The Zenith Collective. Using their resources, he would attempt to uncover the old Goldfinch Society and reveal the truth to the world.

**Conversation between Damien Lewis and Clarence Underwood on Lindsey's capabilities**

> "Lindsey's VR/AR set isn't your average VR/AR set. Sure you can play games on it and look like a massive tool wearing it, but hers can actually read brainwaves. But it gets even... better or worse. Lindsey's brain can actually interpret Machine Language. It's code that isn't readable by humans, only by computers. Think how you write a program in a language readable to you, when you compile it the program gets translated into a language computers can better understand. It's like directly talking to the computer."
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> "Having that ability lets her... 'talk' to computers without actually having authorisation. Nobody else in the world can do that... and you can probably understand how destructive having that ability can be. No vendor expects an attacker to understand machine code, like they never expect a human to decipher a 512-bit hash on their own. You can imagine how destructive this kind of power can be, to be able to strike at any system by giving it direct commands... but as to how she got this ability..."
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> "You know that Lindsey's mom is dead, right? That's the official way she died... but, she's not dead in the way you'd expect. See, back in the 20's, Chicago was hit the hardest during The Second Korean War, because they were dependent on trade from the West. Lindsey's parents were laid off their jobs, and would do anything for money. That's when SYSNA offered them an opportunity to be part of an experiment. The project was called MAIA-CETO, Mnemonic Acclimation through Integral Adjoining of Combined Egos and Trained Operation. SYSNA was interested because Lindsey was already 6 weeks along. That's usually around the time that a fetus begins to have brain activity. Minuscule, but enough. They agreed to have Lindsey and her mother undergo neurological tests. Such tests were dangerous to perform, but the money was their lifeline. They said that they were simply trying to compare a new brain to a mature one... but as these sorts of stories go it wasn't the entire case. They were attempting to merge their minds into one brain, so that the brain would essentially be two brains. It'd be like upgrading a computer, more processing power, memory, storage, the works... but the computer you're upgrading is also linked with an entirely different computer, with its own architecture. When Lindsey was around 8 months along, they were successful in transferring thinking power to the fetus from the mother, which was when they decided to hook Lindsey up to a computer, to see the capabilities of what they could do. Of course, a computer's architecture is wildly different than a human's, but is set on a strict set of rules. That being said, the rules were able to be parsed in Lindsey's mind, because their shared consciousness was able to become powerful enough to interpret it. I didn't want to do anything about it until I was sure she would be unharmed by being unplugged from... whatever it was they were plugged into. And that would be when Lindsey was born. SYSNA made the appeal of free child delivery seem lucrative to her dad, who was completely unaware of everything that's been happening. So, on the 11th of March, 2022, Lindsey was born, they took her mother's consciousness and moved it into her. It worked just as they would expect, the surrogate consciousness would be separate from the host consciousness. Like two partitions on the same disc. Her mother's body is alive, but it's just a husk. They planned on keeping Lindsey for other purposes, which was when I decided to cut in and steal her back and gave Lindsey to her father, saying that his wife died during childbirth, and the research testing was off. I cleared their records from SYSNA's database, and they haven't come for them since then..."
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> *"So... why are you still lying to her?"*
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> "Because... if I tell Lindsey the truth behind her ability to process machine code with her brain, she's going to become reckless in helping her mother."
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> *"Could such a thing be done? Pull her mother's consciousness from Lindsey back into her mother's brain?"*
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> "It... hmm... how can I explain this... did you know there's a small operating system inside each processor? Lect's processors have 'Lect Management Interface', which runs parallel to any operating system you own. You can't touch or remove it without damaging the processor, or losing the ability to boot. Handles things like telemetry and statistics, vulnerable as all hell too. What I'm saying is, their consciousness is basically merged to the point where it is almost impossible to pick out what is Lindsey and what is her mother. Trying to transfer any of them would cause near irreversible damage. That's why I'm hiding all of it from her... because I've known her literally since the day she was born. She would do something that reckless."
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He kept a close eye on Lindsey, and when she was old enough he introduced himself to her as if they had first met. And years later they would both live in close proximity together, fulfilling their interests and the interests of The Zenith Collective.

### The Vancouver Island Incident

During his research into reimplementing the old IEEE 802.xx protocols in the abandoned city of Victoria, BC, he would intervene and save the life of Cristal Bellamy, who had happened to be looking for him in reference to the drones around the island. While he wasn't responsible, he still offered his assistance in the matter. His involvement helped the Vancouver Island Interlopers understand their enemy better. Understanding that public opinion would heavily sway the war, he would task the journalist Damien Lewis to cover the story and reveal the truth of the Vancouver Island Incident.

### 2045 - The Scoop

Clarence was involved in assisting journalist Damien Lewis uncover the true identity of The Benefactor. He would also begin implementing the SPWAN Network around Seaoko, which offered a private, open internet alternative using the old IEEE protocols as opposed to the JUPITER system.