Eric Strand

* **Name:**Eric Jonathan Strand
* **Position:**Chief Meteorologist at TransForum InfoMedia
* **Metatype:**Human  (*Homo sapiens sapiens*)
* **Education:**North Fargo High School, class of '42, Masters of Meteorology from Saint Cloud State College.
* **DOB:**3/17/2024, Fargo, ND, USA (now Region 3, RRDMZ)
* **DOD:**7/25/2075, 51, Fargo, Region 3 RRDMZ
* **Family:**Crystal [Hornung] Strand (mother, Harwood, Region 3, RRDMZ), Brian Strand (brother, Grand Forks, Region 2, RRDMZ), Brianna Strand (sister-in-law, Grand Forks), Barbara Strand (niece, Grand Forks), Frank Strand (brother, Fargo), Graham Port (brother-in-law, Fargo), Joanna Kramer (ex-wife, *deceased*)

Oh, come on, you know Eric Strand. The most comforting voice in Region 3 media. He's stood, calm, cheerful and knowledgeable in the middle of every weather crisis to hit the Zone for the last twenty-five years. He was an institution in the way that a weatherman can only be in a midwestern city. People looked to him for knowledge, to plan their days and give them comfort in times when the weather was trying to kill them.

As a boy, Eric wasn't the sort you would have pegged as one of the top scientific authorities in the region. Amiable, active, funny, popular and just smart enough to not have to work very hard, more interested in baseball and girls than jetstreams and convection currents. He was still breezing through keggers and general studies at MSUM  when suddenly everything came into focus in the most violent way possible. He was caught at home when the Great Manastorm of '43 hit the area. He helped dig him mom out and always being a helpful kid, spent his time making sure his mom's neighbors were safe. But, as he later said in an interview, it "really showed me the power of the weather". He transferred to STSC the next year and began studying meteorology.

Eric didn't have much of a scientific background, but he threw himself into it with his characteristic energy and graduated into the top three of his class in spring 2046. He returned to Fargo and did a couple of years doing analysis and planning for Crystal Ag before getting an assistant radio weather gig at TransForum LiveCast, predicting how the day would be for commuters in drivetime. His pleasant voice, quick wit and real talent for boiling down complex chaos mathematics and weather patterns to relatable terms won him a loyal following among TF's main audience and by 2050 he was beginning his regular appearances on TransForum's main news broadcasts, where he defined what it was to be a weatherman in the Zone for a quarter of a century.

2050 was a good year for him, as it was also the year that he married his college sweetheart Joanna upon her graduation from law school. They made a local power couple, him rising in the ratings and she rising through the rankings of local prosecutors and would do so until their divorce fifteen years later in 2065.

But his private life remained just that, private. In public, everything just stayed, well, sunny. What nobody knew, well until very recently, was that he was also a major operative for Matrix Free Fargo, using his media influence and fame to gather information for the media arm of the PPU  that nobody else could get at. He'd been doing that for years, a self-taught investigative journalist who'd never had a formal journalism class in his life. And nobody knew outside the inner circles of the Prairie Public Underground, he was their ace in the hole. Nobody who knew the man outside that could tell you where his taste for radical politics came from. In public he had no political opinions that anyone else could detect. And maybe, that was on purpose.

For most of 2075 it appears that he was involved in investigating 'Neuro-vid' the brainwashing software that TransForum uses to control its employees, which he had spent years circumventing, an investigation that led to the shadowy recesses of TANNIN's more obscure researches on behalf of The Old Man, TANNIN"s then-master, which then somehow led him down the rabbithole to find the truth of the Old Man's death, at that point only a few weeks previous. And that is what led to his death at the claws of what we now know as "Wailers".

But like all great investigations, his death was only the beginning of the results of his actions...

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