Cameron Ackerson

**Cameron Ackerson** is the protagonist of *A Trick of Light*.

## Description

An aspiring YouTube star, Cameron is a cocky and brash underdog teenager, venturing into dangerous situations with jerry-rigged tech gadgets of his own creation. Described as an un-muscular nerd with big feet and hands, Cameron has dense, curly hair that falls around his face.

## Powers and abilities

* **Cyberkinesis:** Cameron has the technopathic ability to mentally interact with all forms of technology. When he "speaks" with the device, his mind receives a surge of information in the form of cascading pictures, text, and data; Cameron can communicate with software as if he is conversing with a person, making them perform individual functions on their own. This ability to command software allows him to enhance existing technology. In addition, Cameron can sync his brain with mechanical interfaces so that the software acts as an augmenter to his physical skills, such as a prosthetic that could connect with his brain with artificial nerve endings to correct his leg limp. Cameron himself can act as a technopathic conduit for communication between individual machines. However, Cameron's power is constantly active, meaning he cannot willingly shut it off nor can he control the data flow he receives if he is with a nearby device. With the AR lenses, he can focus his technopathy to register individual devices.
	+ **Digital interaction:** Through his subconscious, Cameron can enter the visual world and the digital world at once, interacting within the real world at the same time as his virtual avatar.
* **Information processing:** Cameron's mind processes at superhuman speeds, allowing him to think, reason, conceive, and solve problems at an alarming rate. Every second, his mind is brainstorming new ideas Cameron can channel.

## In the series

### *A Trick of Light*

*Main article: A Trick of Light*
Growing up on the shores of Lake Erie and struggling to maintain a small YouTube channel, Cameron planned an expedition into the lake where his own father vanished years ago, intending to investigate the unnatural storms there for views. As he neared the center of the lake, an unnatural storm sprang into existence. He sailed straight for it, eventually being struck by lightning and blacking out, becoming famous for the live stream of the event.

After a coma plagued by hallucinatory dreams and a sudden sense of connection to the technology around him, Cameron returned home changed. Physically scarred, partially crippled, and plagued with a barrage of information from all nearby technology which he could telepathically control, Cameron secluded himself. He spent time manipulating video games as "Lord Respawn", eventually encountering Nia online, someone he could not manipulate and who he quickly befriended.

With Nia's help, Cameron built wondrous machinery, such as a prosthetic to allow him to walk and a contact lens that could overlay displays onto his vision and channel the stream of information, no longer overwhelming Cameron. After an incident at his high school, even seeing there Nia briefly, Cameron and Nia set out to ruin the reputations of wrongdoers in "Operation Cosmic Justice", catching the malicious attention of OPTIC in the process. They eventually took him captive, and although Six interrogated Cameron about Nia, he was inadvertently saved by Xal in the form of his therapist Nadia Kapur, providing him an opportunity to hack out of the facility and escape.

Discovering a distress signal from Nia, Cameron went with his friend Juaquo Velasquez through the storms of Lake Erie to arrive at an artificial island in its center. After battling through holographic, defensive illusions in the complex, Cameron reached the Inventor and freed Nia, only to discover that she was in fact a sentient program, not a person, having simply superimposed an avatar of herself that he could see (but not touch) via his contact lenses.

The Inventor explained that Nia was incredibly powerful, having even given Cameron his powers. But she could do serious damage to the human world, and in the hands of Xal she might be used to recreate the Ministry, a hive mind, with Cameron being the only one with a hope of reaching Nia due to her affection for him. Cameron passed out, and even though unconscious, he was able to defend himself, the Inventor, and Juaquo from intervening OPTIC agents while they departed the island. After awakening in a rage, Cameron slew them and headed to OPTIC headquarters where he interrogated their leader Olivia Park. There, he learned that his father vanished searching for the Inventor's own code, and that with Xal active under the guise of Nadia Kapur, they must rush to find Nia and stop Xal.

After fruitless searching, the Inventor proposed a plan to Cameron to "reset" Nia back to her original, pliant format, and although Cameron accepted it as a contingency, his main plan was to alter his own mind such that he could safely host Nia within himself. After receiving a message from Nia, Cameron rushed with the Inventor to the I-X Center to stop her from turning the congregation there into her hive mind.

Separated from the Inventor by members of the hive and leaving him to prepare their contingency plan, Cameron rushed to the center of the congregation to find Nia. Sensing the reset device nearby however, and seeing Cameron in alliance with the Inventor, Nia fled from Cameron under the assumption that he intended her harm. Cameron gave chase through cyberspace, begging her to listen even as the device that would reset her powered up. Just before activation, Cameron managed to integrate Nia into himself.

Leaving cyberspace to watch the Inventor be killed by the hive, which was firmly under Xal's control, Nia became enraged from within Cameron’s mind, and seized control of the hive from Xal. Cameron then stripped Xal of her enhancements and left her for dead, but Xal managed to insert a tentacle into him as he gloated, nearly killing him. However, as Juaquo was released from the hive mind, he asked Nia for help, and so she augmented him with the ability to heal, which he used to restore Cameron.

Using a server given to him by OPTIC and the leftover architecture of his father’s work, Cameron created a space for Nia to live within, where she willingly remained until he could create a body for her. However, knowing that Xal sent welcomes to the last remnants of her race before she died, Cameron and Nia created a video game which would identify humans capable of sustaining the supernatural gifts Nia could impart to them, in order to recruit an army to defend earth in the war to come.

Some time later, working with OPTIC in an enemy-of-my-enemy alliance, Cameron was told by Olivia that the Ministry was drawing nearer.

## Trivia

* He is described by his creators as "Tony Stark in reverse".

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 *A Trick of Light*, ch. 4: Awakening
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 *A Trick of Light*, ch. 7: A New Beginning
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 *A Trick of Light*, ch. 6: What Ever Happened To Cameron Ackerson?
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 *A Trick of Light*, ch. 19: Operation Burn-It-Down
5. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 3: Adrift
6. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 1: Struck By Lightning
7. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 12: Crush
8. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 14: Teamwork Makes The Dream Work
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 *A Trick of Light*, ch. 15: Aria Sloane Gets Cancelled
10. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 16: Mixed Messages
11. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 11: The Watcher
12. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 18: Dr. Nadia Kapur Takes Out The Trash
13. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 20: Captive
14. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 23: The Other Side Of The Door
15. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 24: Into The Storm
16. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 25: Your Princess Is In Another Tower
17. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 26: The Inventor Speaks
18. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 27: Cameron Listens
19. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 28: Blackout
20. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 29: Revelations
21. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 31: Heartbreak
22. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 33: The Drone
23. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 34: Message Received
24. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 35: It All Ends Here
25. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 36: Just A Boy Standing In Front Of A Girl
26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 *A Trick of Light*, ch. 38: A Meeting Of The Minds
27. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 39: Disconnect
28. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 41: Do You Want To Play A Game?
29. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, Epilogue
30. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, Afterword