Callum Crown

### Occupation

Former Mayor of Dialtown, state Senator, UN leader, chief architect of the Dialup, founder of Crown Prosthetics, inventor, best friend, loving family man

## Physical description

### Gender

Male

> *"Is the war over yet? I can't get a signal..."*
> - **Callum Crown**
>
>

**Callum Crown** is a mysterious yet undoubtedly important character in the universe of Dialtown. As he is not an available NPC to speak to, most of the information is pieced together from in game dialogue, DirectDoggo, and the ending of chapter 3.

**WARNING: THIS WIKI PAGE FEATURES MEGAGINORMOUS SPOILERS FOR THE FULL GAME GET THE the FUCK oUT OF HERE**

## Appearance

During his political campaigning, Callum is usually depicted as wearing a dark-colored suit (purple, black, or brown with stripes), and a white undershirt with an American flag tie. He has prosthetic legs and a prosthetic right arm as well as a phone head made of a few different metals, mainly being copper-colored rusty metal, iron or perhaps steel, and gold, that are bolted together.

As a businessman, he is depicted to wear a white button-up shirt with suspenders, rolled up dress pants, and occasionally a hat. After his memory wipe, one drawing shows him with a purple tie as well. In most images there are a few effects layered on top (mainly high contrast, purple coloring and jitter, however some images have inverted colors or a glow effect too).

## Information

Callum himself doesn't appear in the full Dialtown game, only shown when talked about by other characters: most notably, Gabby, Mingus, Norm, and God. However, he is shown in easter eggs that appear upon booting the game or on the chapter select screen. He is the creator of the first phone head, and former mayor of Dialtown, former 35th president of the US, and former leader of the United Nations. As much as his career is over, he is still referred to the most dangerous man alive in the Dialtown universe by DirectDoggo.

He had a wife named Marla, and had one son with her. Additionally, he had an extremely close relationship with his Vice President, Milton R. Wallace, although the degree of which is unknown.

## Personality

Ever since he was young, Callum Crown was full of bright ideas and reached even brighter heights. He was always motivated and determined to reach his goals, although his biggest fault was his paranoia, being both the reason nobody was able to try and repair his phone head after he had accidentally wiped his own memory and also the reason why all of his plans were lost. Clearly, this motivation seems to have resonated with people as he is described as "infectious" by Gabby. Everywhere you went, something built by him or influenced by him was present, like Mayor Mingus also talks about in the ending of the game.

## Backstory

Callum Crown was born in Dialtown, in 1923. Growing up in an era of depression and change, Callum found himself transfixed with the technology that was becoming commonplace at the time, mainly the telephone. Callum was born with a severe deformity, only having one complete limb, his left arm, and while extraordinarily bright, he lived a solitary life, watching other kids outside perform feats he could only *dream* of.

When the early 40's rolled around, Callum signed up to fight in World War 2, but wasn't accepted on account of his disability. He had to stay home and bitterly follow the war alongside the others who were unfit to fight via hazy radio transmissions. "If only I could walk!" Callum thought to himself. "If I could walk, I could serve!". It was at that time that Callum put his garage workshop to good use, and making use of just about any metal he could get his hands on to forge himself a pair of prosthetic legs, which, while crudely assembled, were virtually unheard of at the time. He sent the army registration office a note, vouching for his new metallic appendages, but he never got a reply. So he sent another. And then another. What started as one letter quickly became dozens.

Always a motivated guy, Callum decided to use his head, think of something new. Callum bought his first telephone. After getting through to Dialtown's head enlister, Callum found out that to his shock, every single one of his letters HAD hit their mark, but was simply thrown out en masse. "I'm here to recruit the best of the best this country has to offer!" the recruiter stated over the phone, "Not some FREAK with metallic legs who'd slow the rest of my boys down!". With a single disconnecting click, Callum's dreams were obliterated yet again.

Callum, now full of spite and determination, decided to better himself further. He built himself a right hand, out of just about every metal he could find that was left over after the construction of his legs, connected the copper wires to his own nerves and made the first fully working prosthetic hand. With the war winding down, Callum decided to patent his designs. People at the patent office looked at him as though he were a *freak*, with his rusted iron clanking hand and his bulky metallic legs. Callum bitterly listened to the end of the war, now disillusioned, now tweaking his prosthetic limbs to be more functional.

Come 1948, Callum decided to sell his metallic limbs to war veterans, many of which had returned in the coming months after the war. Initially, they sold like hotcakes, allowing Crown to move from his garage to a small manufacturing plant. Sadly this did not turn out to be a sustainable business model, as once each soldier bought one limb or two, they didn't need to buy more. Come 1950, Callum struggled to move even one limb. This lead him back to the drawing board, his inventions had dramatically improved his own quality of life, he wondered if he could offer his fellow man an upgrade or two. Advanced metallic limbs that had tools built in that increased strength or flexibility. Limbs that could even *change humanity*, even the world as he knew it, just as he changed his own life. Callum took into the public, parading his new models around on the streets using himself as a test subject. He was laughed off as a self-mutilated idiot trying to sell his own misery to people. They looked at him as if he were a monster, someone who made himself a freak for show and not as a talented and determined visionary who paved the path that he needed underneath him to walk. "I'll prove them wrong! I'll prove the whole WORLD wrong if I must!"

Callum gradually became more cynical. Began reading more into the market with the vain hopes of copying success, and sure enough, he figured it out. Sadly, America turned into a luxury market. Washing machines, televisions, refrigerators, always selling faster than the nearby factories could churn 'em out. Callums idea to integrate organics and inorganics wasn't taken to right away, with the lack of sales revenue, Callum had to all but shut down Crown Mechanics Inc. and let each and every one of his workers go. Callum soon became something of a *town oddity*. A door-to-door salesman made of clanking rusted metal. A vendor of that which was unwanted. Callum somehow felt lonelier than ever before, even more so than when he was back in his garage, watching the rest of the world movie outside his window. He reflected on his loneliness, once again being bound to his workshop, next to his phone, desperate not to miss a single opportunity for his dream to take off. His phone, it connected him to the world outside the workshop, to the rest of Dialtown. Perhaps, it could again...

That's when he realized. "I've got it now!". Callum spent a full year on his new design. A telephone that's built into your own head, could be swapped and traded for other such devices and has a 5-year warranty, no re-purchases required. Surprisingly, despite their clunkiness and novelty, the practicality of having complete and portable phone access anywhere in the world through air-wave frequencies wasn't lost on people, and interestingly, the phones caught on quickly. A typewriter alternative had even become common allowing text to be printed from ones own head, as if the user was having a conversation with the very paper itself. Unpredictably, these phone-heads caused a massive boom in employment, with young men and women getting hired left and right as not just manufacturers, but as operators and switchboard exchangers. This economic boom made Callum extraordinarily popular, which he used to run for mayor, the senator of Wisconsin, and eventually President: all 3 roles he *walked* into, seen as a *visionary*, a man who could change the face of America for a *second* time.

While campaigning for Senator, Callum met Milton R. Wallace for the first time after a rally. Mentioned that he was a recent graduate and that his university thesis had involved combining organic and inorganic materials within a single system. Simply put, the two hit it off in a way that's abnormally rare. In a very practical sense, it was more than evident that Milton, growing up during the Great Depression too, had strong progressive leanings. When Callum took office, Milton became his Vice President. On their first day in D.C., Crown gifted Milt one of his prosthetic hands, the very first he'd forged. With it, Crown included a note: "For my right hand man.", a joke of sorts, as Crown's right arm was the missing one.

During the summer of 1966, Callum enlisted one of his most trusted astronauts and air force veteran, Sgt. Norm Allen, on a mission in through a recently discovered wormhole.

Milton and Callum had a very close relationship, Milton being the only person Callum trusted with his d ream for the whole world. However, as Callum gained more and more power and had to make more difficult and messy decisions, they started falling apart and getting into verbal fights and harsh disagreements. After the last argument they had occurred, Callum demanded his hand back.

Not deterred, he became leader of the United Nations and proposed to the world his vision for the future. His idea of a wonderous, functional and inclusive mechanical world where all problems from famine, to animal extinction, to societal conflict, to resource shortages, all could be solved, preventing future wars and creating worldwide harmony. However, due to paranoia, he refused to write the plan down in its entirety. The only person he confided in with the plan was Milton, who reacted negatively whenever it was brought up.

Needless to say, the vote in favor for it won by a landslide.

In the coming years, the whole world was converted to have in-organic heads. Women, children, and animals too. On January 1st of 1967, the day after the official date of the Dialup, Callum stood on the highest podium given to a human being to date... and fell the hardest for it. He began to give his ultimate speech, his oratory opus. "My fellow humans, now for the moment you've all been waiting for! Without further ado, the full details of my plan to substantially improve the *whole* world-"

Callum had accidentally wiped his own answering box, which in his model of telephone, was being used to store his memories. During his speech, he was wearing the hand he demanded back from Milton; it was with this hand that he accidentally pressed his erasure button. The reason for this is when you attach foreign extensions to appendages, you often overshoot. Foreign. Callum never felt like the hand was his again, still in his heart believing that it still was Milton's. The guilt caused him to slip.

With the memory wipe, Callum had given himself a total amnesia in an instant, stunning the whole world. Life was made fundamentally different for everyone, all for a promise never kept. The changes, the thought process behind these sweeping modifications, now a mystery. So, the world just picked up the pieces, without Callum, of course.

Doctors tried all they could to restore his memories. However, due to his paranoia, the schematics for his phone head were also lost, meaning that any attempt to fix it was fruitless. The only person Callum trusted with the plans for his head was Milton, who was obviously no longer around to ask. Professionals let him go to live out the rest of his life like this, not knowing that he had actually also modified his internal organs which made him live longer. He is additionally kept alive through his granddaughter, Mingus, who continues to hire professionals ranging from neurosurgeons to a person who specializes in repairing Swiss clocks. All of them refused to operate on him. Even God himself turned down Mingus when she hounded him into attempting to fix him.

Nowadays, he sits in an old nursing home, alone, tuning a busted radio, asking anyone that passes by him, "I-Is the war over yet? I can't get a signal..." Some would say this is a fitting end for Callum Crown.

## Trivia

* The first time Callum appeared was in the (now taken down) Dialtown Personality Quiz along with a heavily distorted version of his theme (that you can listen to here).
	+ This is also the first time we got his quote "Is the war over yet? I can't get a signal..."
* On August 13th 2020, on the Dialtown Discord Server, DirectDoggo posted an image of Callum Crown above the lyrics to the iCarly opening theme. Due to the fact that people weren't instantly able to tell it was iCarly and assumed it was an actual teaser, it was an inside joke in the server for a while.
* On the 24th of July 2021, while a conversation was going on also on the Dialtown Discord, the nicknames of the people talking started changing.
	+ This included things like "Story cut short", "Surplus to requirement", "DIALTOWN IS MINE", "Sgt Allen, is that you?" and "can't get a signal...". Due to these quotes, this was likely intended to be Crown himself, or someone connected to him.
* Track 32 and 33 of the Dialtown Official Soundtrack are titled "Crown, rhzyy qptsfmucse lhp noyp puuizyuda" which, when translated with a Vignere cipher using the key word "Callum" reveals the full title to be "Crown, phone enthusiast and lone visionary."
* Callum was president from 1960 to 1964.
* Both of the prosthetics Callum is pictured with in edit are stock images of gauntlets, found here and here.
* The body model of Callum used for the easter egg image within the game is an edited photo of Calvin Coolidge.
* As of November 19th, 2023 he is now 100 years old.
* His favorite cake flavor would be oreo.

## Gallery

Callum sitting, current day.Close-up of Callum that Gingi hallucinates.Portrait painted by Mingus, as seen in-game in her office.Unedited version.Incomprehensible.Callum head references.Callum sitting by his fireplace from the matchmaking quiz, Art by JennerationI love you, [ ]. For all of eternity, I love you.AAAAAAAAH!Appears in the Matchmaking Quiz. Thumbs up!Distorted version of one of the images that appears in the background of the Mingling.Callum with the iCarly lyrics."My dear Marla..."Callum both in past in present, in life and in memory.The postcard itself!
## Misc.

2022 Birthday image by DirectDoggo2023 Birthday Image by DirectDoggo