Lt. Conrad Carls Jr.

Lt Conrad Carls Jr. (played by Dan Posluns) is, at the start of the show, a young and naive officer fresh from the Naval Academy. The events he faces with the crew change him, but his sense of duty remains intact.

## Background

Lt Conrad Carls Jr. graduated first in his class at the ICA Academy headquartered at the Genius Bar Planet in the Cupertino System, which trains *the Best Boys and the Rest Boys of the Guardians*.

## Show history

His first mission is a milk run to protect three scientists during their investigation of a mysterious space object and keep an eye on the crew of the ship chartered by ICA to take the scientists on site. A milk run...

After said milk run ends in disaster and he is admonished by his Admiral and father in front of his long-time rival Lt. Wendy Santiago, Conrad switches his first name to Kenny, in memory of his deceased brother Kenneth Frederick. Conrad decides he can no longer use his father's name until he has earned it. After all, as he says:

> *It's my fault. I've put the entire sector in danger because of my own incompetence.*
>
>

The rivalry between lieutenants Conrad and Wendy reaches new heights when the latter comes to arrest the former and bring him to a court martial for desertion. Wendy opts to go with Xe'anna's lie that he died in the explosion of Gennus Landing after Conrad himself contacts her to discuss the terms of his surrender.

Despite his deep distrust of psionics and mind control, he bonds with Tsarin through Ary.

Conrad goes MIA during a heist on Maera, and reappears later as Jeremiah Bisquick Heinz the spirate. He has acquired a new arm that can various shapes he doesn't have full control of.

When he learns how to pilot Tsarin, he starts saying strange things. His Bat'leth crewmates initially attribute this behavior to mushrooms he was given by Rachel Lucas and Theea.

Maybe due to his initial role on the ship, Kika has this to say about him when he wonders whether Rachel Lucas, whom he had met a little earlier, hates him:

> *I think everyone hates you when they meet you, and then we realize how great you are.*
>
>

## Dunkin Dronuts

Conrad has a drone called Dunkin Dronuts. It plays an important role in the attempt to retrieve parts off a thread drive on Usvedi by monitoring Kika's progress and injecting her with Spountain Dew.

Here is how the story of how the drone was named, told by Conrad at a moment when there was apparently nothing more important to do:

> *The answer is that Dunkin was a friend of mine at school and we used to have a thing we called dronuts.*
>
>

> *I wanted to remember him, which is why I named it Dunkin Dronuts.*
>
>

Despite this background story, Conrad explains when first deploying it that this drone is disposable.

## Maera and Bisquick

When a run on pleasure planet Maera goes sour and they all risk being sent to a pleasure prison, Conrad stays behind to cover the flight of his friends. All acknowledge that he saved them, and mourn him. His probable death causes a deep rift between Xe'anna, who ordered their flight, and Theea, who had just started a passionate relationship with him.

Conrad emerges later, first in a message left with the Andartan fleet, and then as spirate Jeremiah Bisquick Heinz. He first acts as if the Anguilin captain of the spirate ship has brainwashed him, until pain helps him overcome whatever influence he was under. His eye-patch turns out out to be the doctor's order after surgery for astigmatism he has kept it on much longer than needed.

By the time things settle down after his rescue, the only real mystery that remains is his cyberware arm. This arm is not a standard piece of machinery, it is made of a semi-solid substance that can convert into shapes. Conrad knows little about it and the capabilities of which he discovers little by little.

## Slurpee

After a fallout with Ary regarding his deep distrust of psionics, Conrad stumbles upon one of the many cleaning critters that roam Tsarin. After a failed Know & Wisdom check, a lot of petting and meat-o-stik'ko (a.k.a. trash) giving, he fancies he manages to get through to the creature whose texture is *surprisingly smooth*, *a little oily*, *squishy* and *pretty elastic* in a way that allows it to squeeze out of small spaces and change its shape. He convinces himself he has established a reciprocal bond. He calls it Slurpee and keeps it around despite its squirming until duty forces him to leave it with Ary, who knows better. Theea is not enthusiastic about this deluded friendship.

## Trivia

To Theea, he always was, and remains, Salmon Bars.

Conrad has many surnames, including Best Boy (or Best Boi).

Conrad owns, in addition to his Guardian uniforms, civilian clothes: slacks, and a gray, tucked, V-Neck tee-shirt, fitted enough to showcase his pecs. The language of fashion is foreign to him.

   To help make him less noticeable on the Bumfuck, Nowhere space station, Kika sanded off the serial number of his combat rifle. Then Theea competently painted over the ICA logo, making the rifle actually stealthy.

After being torn into by the claws of a Hollow and healed by Ary, Conrad's shoulder has kept a purplish region. This scar is shaped like the face of his brother, Kenny, and also contains his initials, KFC, as if it were a tattoo. Or, as the GM put it, it's just a blot. Only Conrad believes it's his brother's face.

He has kept the perfect abs he acquired in the incident, too.

## Notes

1. ↑ See Ep 3, Ep 12.
2. ↑ See Ep 1.
3. ↑ See Ep 4.
4. ↑ Initials: KFC. Mere coincidence?
5. ↑ See Ep 5.
6. ↑ See the very end of Ep 11 and the first hour of Ep 12.
7. ↑ See Ep 29.
8. ↑ Tentative, unconfirmed spelling.
9. ↑ See Ep 8.
10. ↑ Besides, of course, the trivial matter of keeping the Bat'leth away from turrets' cannons until completion of the disassembly of a thread drive.
11. ↑ See Ep 8.
12. ↑ See Ep 14.
13. ↑ See Ep 24 to Ep 28.
14. ↑ See confirmation of the spelling here.
15. ↑ See Ep 27 and Ep 28.
16. ↑ See Ep 6.
17. ↑ a.k.a. Gennus Landing.
18. ↑ And signed her oeuvre with a small smiley face on the butt of the rifle.
19. ↑ See Ep 6.
20. ↑ See Ep 10.
21. ↑ See Ep 11.
22. ↑ See Ep 12.