Nathan "Naps" Ward

A white, clipped cat, introduced by others as "Mr. Goodwin" but calls himself Ward in his journal; as the Governor also calls him Ward to the Brain, it is probable that Goodwin is an assumed name. Currently on the run from the British secret service. Claims to be straight when interrogated, but came out as bisexual to Red. Hates metal. Mutant freak who likes pineapple on pizza.

## Hey, Mr. DJ

Nathan starts out as a low-paid DJ featured in some medium-size clubs doing minimal effort work. To improve his income, he starts out in illegal wire-tapping for tabloids. The physical work is easy because all he needs to do is dress the part, and people assume he is supposed to be there. The hard part is filtering out the wheat from the chaff, which he does through voice recognition software he developed. With the new income, he breaks his own promise to save the money and instead splurges on a higher lifestyle. His spending catches up to him, and he robs Peter to pay Paul, to his detriment.

To get out of debt fast, Nathan decides to risk wire-tapping the biggest celebrities for a bigger payout. Unfortunately, to get in and out before security can catch him, he moves TOO fast and electrocutes himself in the process. A cable twists around his ankle, saving him from falling to death, but it also breaks his leg and dislocates his hip. He is found by the security team and thrown in prison after getting his broken leg set.

## GCHQ

Nathan quickly found that, despite his protests about not being able to get a solicitor or make a phone call, he had no rights, and he is discovered by the Governor. He quickly realises the Governor is testing him, and when he is released without charge, Nathan is pleased. For ten seconds.

Nathan meets The Brain, who guides him to the Governor's car. Inside, the Governor threatens him to work for him in GCHQ or be thrown back in prison. At first Nathan feels like the Governor is being patriotic, but the longer he listens, the more he realises his job will be solely to make the Governor look good compared to the other departments. After meeting Kevin, Nathan signs his life away without being allowed a chance to read anything he signs. The most Kevin explains is if Nathan discloses to anyone else anything--ANYTHING--he is going to hear, he will be thrown back into the darkest, dankest hole of prison with no trial, no lawyers, no nothing.

The project Nathan is to be working on is a "signals intelligence collection and analysis network" like ECHELON, but exclusive to GCHQ and, more importantly, functional. The problem was they had only a 50 million GBP budget, which in government terms is "a few loose coppers keeping your pocket lint company." Therefore, GCHQ was forced to either underdeliver and get the blame, or deliver using slave labour (nerds like Nathan who can be threatened with jail time). Nathan himself was chosen for his affinity for audio, besides being able to be coerced into joining.

Nathan quickly meets Chris, who is in the process of tearing down a wall to make room for a new server stack. They become friends just as quickly, despite never befriending his other co-workers, and Chris cheers up Nathan by showing him his fancy new office full of literally every fun audio gadget he could have ever wished for. He easily gets to work on making his voice recognition software work on any dialect at any speed, having nothing else to do in the meantime but also enjoying listening to government intelligence more than the celebrity wire-tapping. He makes it work more efficiently by picking out common words to determine speed, pitch, language, etc. at a 60% success rate.

For lodging, Nathan is given an unused office space that is roomy but devoid of personality, which he keeps because 1. it is free and easier on his broken leg, and 2. an off-site flat that he could afford wouldn't be much of an improvement. In his downtime, Nathan works out and becomes extremely fit, having nowhere else to channel his energy (although he has zero pain tolerance for his efforts).

Nathan soon worries that he is not keeping up with his co-workers, but Chris offers to help, as he derives pleasure from solving other people's problems. After Chris works on the voice recognition software, it is half the size, working, and totally unrecognisable to Nathan. They also spend their free time together playing video games, until Chris also suggests a money-making scheme on the side. He reveals that he is working on what becomes the prototype for the Oracle, a machine able to make educated guesses about the future based on lots of small pieces of information. Combined with a program able to call random bookies, it could place untraceable bets. While the practice is not strictly illegal, it IS a bad idea to get on the bad side of bookies with the threat of prison already over his head. So of course, Nathan wants in.

Unfortunately, the Brain figures them out. Fortunately, he also wants in. This gives Nathan and Chris access to unmonitored funds and additional materials they otherwise would not have. However, Nathan overhears that the Governor knows someone is running unauthorised programs on his computers. He panics, until the Governor confronts Martin, who was inflating his ego by using other people's programs to hack into high profile sites using GCHQ hardware. The Governor is not happy about this, and he literally drags Martin away for punishment. Nathan and Chris never see Martin again except for in a photo on a news blurb announcing his arrest as part of a paedophile ring, something that Nathan is certain is part of the veiled threat of unimaginable punishment that Kevin had alluded to during his sign-on with GCHQ. Not wanting to be part of that, Nathan and Chris stop their bookie project, yet Nathan cannot stop feeling paranoid every time the Governor comes around, even when the Governor takes him to get his cast off.

To Nathan's surprise, the Governor talks with him on the way back from the hospital, commenting on his rareness as a nerd: smart, talented, AND has had sex. He offers Nathan a permanent position at GCHQ, vs. the rubbish jobs Nathan would otherwise have waiting for him after his service period is over. Nathan has to think about it, but in the meantime, he and Chris get tasked with giving the Oracle a voice. Chris does this with an English fop accent, and they also make the Oracle say something random when it is stuck to bluff past the Turing test. Unfortunately, the Oracle starts to rewrite itself in the process of learning and going off on bizarre tangents.

Soon, the Governor gives the group their first mission. Ostensibly the task is to use the Oracle to find petty criminals who are using malware to steal credit card numbers, using any means necessary including (*probably* metaphorical) graphic mutilation of the other machine, but Nathan has suspicions about the assignment. Still, he and Chris play nice and take the case seriously to stay on the Governor's good side. They use the Oracle and Martin's credit card (as he will not need it) to trace the scammed money, quickly finding the scammer. As Nathan suspects, it is a test.

The scammer turns out to be Jim, with Steff dragged in as an accomplice. Yet the Governor seems just as displeased with Steff not speaking up as with Jim for doing the scam in the first place. Nathan and Chris are the last of the "dirty half-dozen" and expect to make it to the end. However, the head office wants the Oracle online in two months, after discovering the success of the bets. Chris panics and tries to work in some last-minute fixes, but after refreshing himself, he is hit by a bus, leaving Nathan alone in the project.

After the Oracle goes online, and Chris is reunited with his baby, the Oracle crashes, popping every breaker in CPU hall, to prevent anyone from taking the ashes. While Kevin and the Governor decide that the security team is causing the outages, Nathan believes otherwise, as he notices evidence in the crash logs that suggest security is not capable of this. Of course, Nathan is miffed when Kevin suggests he could not have done it because he lacks the balls. Kevin also specifically vouches for Nathan based on how much he loves the work, but Nathan is still compelled to prove his innocence. He goes down to the ("the jukebox") and starts perusing the tapes, but most of them are blank/useless. He then decides to check out the tape specifically before the Oracle started rewriting itself, using a rickety ladder to reach the tape rather than use "The Chicken": a robotic arm with a chicken-like claw designed for grabbing the tapes. As soon as he determines which tape to view, the Oracle intervenes, giving Nathan a concussion with the Chicken's arm.

## Seeing Red

Nathan is transported back to the hospital where his leg was treated, and he meets Red. She informs him that he has been unconscious for over an hour, plus he has a cracked rib, but the MRI shows no serious damage. She also mentions how he was lucky to have been wearing protective headgear, which Nathan realises were his headphones. He starts to have an existential crisis about the bad decisions that led up to this, something that isn't helped by Kevin's chicken jokes.

Nathan explains his visit to the jukebox, and Kevin agrees that the Chicken has been seemingly targeting people. Meanwhile, the Governor chews him out for forcing them to call an ambulance to a secret government facility, threatening future punishment for his transgressions. The Governor thinks he is keeping Nathan in line, Nathan thinks he should run screaming, never to be seen again.

When Red returns under the Governor's orders, Nathan orders her via message scrawled on a clipboard to get rid of the chicken toy that Kevin left, as it is likely to be bugged. He asks for his glasses, which he uses to scan for other bugs. He asks her if she has seen the Governor, and she confirms, adding that he's making her exclusively treat Nathan. Per Nathan's instructions, Red finds a packet of chewing gum in her pocket, which is also bugged. Red flushes the gum down the toilet and wants to know what's going on, but Nathan doesn't want to tell her for her own safety. He discovers he is getting released the next morning, due to lack of NHS funding for mild injuries.

Conveniently(?), Gary Heart and Norman Gates drop by to visit Nathan, Gates using a cattle prod on the Brain to keep him from stopping Nathan from leaving. Heart introduces himself and suggests that Nathan is being held illegally, so, as the Brain is incapacitated, Nathan should leave before they can find legal reasons to hold him. Heart continues by explaining that he and Gates assist those who are "useful" to his employer Mr. Reed, and accepting their help means Nathan will also be asked to do small, well-paid favours for Reed. Nathan is immediately suspicious, as the satellite hacker he was reporting on called himself Reed, but he agrees to the terms.

## Roomies

Red helps Nathan escape, taking him to the first place that comes to mind, Richard's house. There, he freaks out, as he mistakes Richard for the Governor, but he realises they are not the same and calms down. Richard quickly agrees to let Nathan rent out a space at his offer of the first six months in advance and in cash. As the other properties will not be available for weeks at the earliest, Richard offers one of the spare rooms in his house. Nathan gets the feeling Richard doesn't like him, but Red admits that she and Richard used to hook up. Nathan is miffed, but Red points out that she didn't have to help at all. He does feel some déjà vu around Richard, however. Red notes that this behaviour is actually an improvement. Once the room situation is settled, Nathan starts to say goodbye, but Red gives him her number. When he protests, she states that she gets the feeling he's worth it, which he counters by informing her that forging suicide notes and throwing people off bridges is more efficient than the Hollywood spy stuff. Yet neither of them can make a clean break after all...

Meanwhile, Richard suggests a hotel, as Kingston is complaining too much about losing the spare room to Nathan. Once Nathan is situated, he and Red say their goodbyes. Nathan realises it is for the best, but the goodbye didn't last long. It also wasn't long before Nathan had regrets about the hook-up, for both of their sakes.

Before Red finally leaves, Nathan wants to go over her cover story. He points out that, as a civil servant, the Governor technically cannot do anything to her, so MOST of his threats are empty (and yet Nathan is still on the run). In addition, her phone is likely to be tapped, so she should actually use it MORE, and talk about the most boring/gay/girl-related things possible to make it a hassle to monitor her.

## Side Piece

While Nathan is working on a journal of his activities to date, Anne starts flirting with him, as a means of getting information out of him at Richard's request (although Anne has her own motives as well). He enjoys the effort but doesn't give her any detailed information, as he is too aware of the risks vs. reward.

Once Nathan reaches a stopping point in his journal, Gates fires off a rocket, blinding him. When the guys invite him out, Nathan uses being blinded by the rocket as an excuse to stay home, and Gates taunts him for being a featherweight. Once he is alone with Anne, Nathan's ailment miraculously goes away. Anne wants to continue their earlier conversation, which Nathan insists is actually an interrogation. He agrees to a trade-off: each gets one question per turn.

Nathan's first question is how Richard puts up with Gates. Anne answers that the two ended up in the same foster home and both had a terrible background, so they feel like they're each other's only real family, even though Richard grew up and Gates didn't. Anne's first question is what is Nathan running from, and he gives the same answer: the (British) intelligence service. When Anne doesn't believe him, he toys with her, suggesting maybe he likes it there. Anne insists that's a lie, because NO ONE likes it there or stays there if they have a choice. Then he suggests maybe he is waiting for someone. Anne wants to know who, but Nathan says that's another question, so he asks how Richard got into property at such a young age. Anne suggests that Nathan seems awfully interested in Richard, pointing out that Richard is straight. Though she doesn't answer Nathan's question, when he insists he is as straight as an arrow, Anne asks if he wants to prove it. She finally tells him about Richard's father buying the houses in Richard's name, and Richard discovering the same, but Nathan isn't listening anymore. In fact, Anne has learned a lot about Nathan just from observation. Nathan notes that he hasn't had any complaints about his performance, which Anne chalks up to him being a good tipper.

After some taunting on both sides, Anne gets some condoms, as Anne has no idea about Nathan's sexual history. He starts to claim the chances of passing on an STD to her are (low?), but she wants the condom or a note from his doctor stating he's clean. Nathan knows he can have his way more than she can have hers, because he's by necessity more cautious, and she is hornier than he is. She then asks if they would like to go to upstairs, which Nathan refuses as the chances of them getting caught are much lower in his room. Still, Anne can't help getting a jab in about his size, although she does make it clear that their affair is only a bit of fun on the side, for variety. Anne gets a final taunt in by noticing the guys have gotten back early, which scares Nathan until he remembers they're in his room. Nathan asks if she shouldn't be worried that she's naked in his room, but Anne points out their predictable drunken escapades mean she has plenty of time to leave. She asks Nathan to let the guys in and states she will go take a shower to get rid of Nathan's odor on her, which causes Nathan to panic and cover himself in body spray. When the guys get inside, Richard sniffs at Nathan suspiciously, then tells him to lay off the spray, as it makes him smell like a desperate teenager.

Richard invites Nathan to earn some quick cash on an outing to collect rent from the tenants, and he gets on Gates's good side after stopping an attacker when Gates's back is turned. Gates later invites him to go swimming with the group of them, and he happens to see Richard fully nude. While he's initially intimidated by the sheer size of Richard's penis, he reflects on the fact that Anne is cheating on that, and he considers it a compliment to his skills in bed.

## Funeral Service

Kingston finds Nathan and asks him to play at a gig for some cash, offering him a hit to help with his self-esteem when Nathan insists he isn't THAT good. Stoned Nathan is not coherent enough to turn him down and gladly agrees before his brain can catch up. Kingston is happy and explains that he couldn't find anyone else to play for his grandfather's funeral, and Nathan's conscience kicks in, especially after Kingston points out the gig is for the funeral's after party, and his grandfather wanted everyone to enjoy themselves. In the end, Nathan agrees, despite his reservations.

On the way to the funeral, Nathan slowly starts to realise he may have gotten in over his head, as the Kingstons have much more money than he imagined a "bin man" would have. He is initially impressed by the Kingston family set-up, until he finds some Beats headphones. After his short diatribe about the overpriced garbage, he admits he is being a snob about it when he's really eager to perform.

During the party, Nathan wears a baseball cap and covers his face with a bandana to mask his identity, just in case someone associated with GCHQ or the loan sharks would recognise him. He realises how much he misses the experience of DJing, and he even drops his own original music, to the delight of the crowd. At the same time, he notices Red among the partygoers and wonders if he should go talk to her. She saves him the trouble and approaches him while he is peforming, licking his ear and telling him to find her later.

Red ends up tracking Nathan down instead, wondering about how he wanted to keep a low profile when he ended up performing in front of a large party. He admits he has a hard time saying no, and that he had no idea the Kingston family was wealthy. Red asks if he had any luck finding out who framed him, but Nathan has had no luck on the few leads he had, and his "mysterious benefactor" has left him in the lurch. He starts to get angry about the idea that someone is just playing a huge prank on him, such that even the crime he was framed for seemed like a prank. He tells Red about Christopher's ashes, the attacks made in his name, and how the Oracle protested when the ashes were removed. He then describes the actions he took to find the perpetrator: going to the tape archive, looking for the surveillance footage, and being attacked by the tape loader that he KNOWS he had disabled. After his recovery, he had two choices: face the Governor and the numerous risks that entailed, or hightail it with Heart's assistance and ideally not spend the rest of his life in prison.

However, Heart never got back in touch with him, which makes Nathan break down when he realises his life is going nowhere fast. Nathan apologises for appearing weak, but Red assures him that, as a doctor, she doesn't go a day without seeing a grown man cry. They end up holding each other while watching the sun set. Nevertheless, Nathan wakes up the next morning in a lonely hotel room.

## Ghosted

Nathan is surprised to receive a phone call, which he first suspects is room service, but he quickly recognises the voice as Christopher's. He just as quickly recognises it as Chris's "upper-class twit" voice, meaning the Oracle. The Oracle insists that he is Christopher Reed but others also call him the Oracle. He then admits that he took it upon himself to hide Nathan from GCHQ, in the last place the Governor would want to look. Nathan is confused as to why that would be, until he realises that Richard is the Governor's son.

The Oracle "applauds" Nathan's deductive skills, then chides him by saying if he insists on going out in public and booking a hotel under his real name, the Oracle has no choice but to give him what he wants and make Nathan a star. Nathan balks at the idea, as he would get caught, and the Oracle explains that he is behaving in a way that will get him caught, so why not make the most of it? The Oracle then ends the call, as Nathan is about to get company.

Through the peephole, Nathan can see Red, much to his relief, although she quickly notices that he looks spooked. He admits that a ghost just cold-called him, and that the ghost also 1. knew where he was, 2. knew Red was coming, and 3. had put him with someone who would keep his ex-boss away, someone who Red took him to. Red accuses him of accusing her of having a hand in this, and Nathan points out that there's a lot of circumstantial evidence supporting the idea... which is why he thinks she DOESN'T have anything to do with it. Red is surprised that he doesn't think she's one of them because the evidence says she's one of them, but Nathan is skeptical of so much evidence pointing at her in such a transparent way, perhaps because the Oracle doesn't want him confiding in anyone.

Nathan then discovers the unsecured security camera in the hall as the reason the Oracle knew of Red's arrival, but she doesn't feel any less creeped out by knowing the secret. Red then muses on how she thought to take him to Richard and sees a connection. Nathan then thanks her for letting him vent the night before. She suggests he can pay her back by giving her the same attention he's giving the burger she brought him. However, she then has second thoughts about getting frisky, as her "kind" doesn't make the best decisions that time of the year. Nathan figures they're safe, since phoning ahead before a raid isn't the usual practice, but Red feels self-conscious about how desperate it makes her look, between her work and her androgyny keeping her social life down. She goes on a tirade about the problems of bisexuality before calming down and supposing she should go. Nathan doesn't blame her if she does.

In the end, she stays. Nathan admits that he's also bi, although he's never acted on it. He then comments that she's the only one he's "come out" to about being bi, and it used to bother him so much, but with everything that's happened to him, wondering what it's like to suck a dick seems insignificant. Red comforts him by saying what is bisexuality but doing lots of things you'll regret? He says he feels like a coward for not exploring his gayness more, but he also notes that he hasn't needed to. Red is both envious of his simpler life while pitying he doesn't know what it's like being the meat in a guy/girl sandwich. Nathan is surprised at Red's couple fetish, which she would totally still be doing except for all the grown-up concerns, like food, rent, and work politics. Nathan then summarises his escapades and notes that Red is doing better than he is.

## End Times

In the "S.S.D.F." future, an android with Nathan's likeness is described by Rose as "someone famous way back who came to a sticky end," something foreshadowed when the Oracle (as "Christopher Reed") offered to make Nathan a star.

## Known Sexual Relations

Anne Winters

Dr. Ruby "Red" Scarlet

assorted random hookups after DJ gigs

* What does Christmas mean to you? Nathan