Lika

True name: Lika.K.Spunks.

A renowned hacker and engineer. He serves as a senior engineer at QuarktoLabs, while also running power-grid verification at the Saint Tranya Information Research Substation No. 10.

Lifespan

He has lived for over 1000 years—while everyone else in this world fails to reach a hundred. No one knows why only he lives this long. He doesn't know either; he's searched for over 1000 years without an answer.

His memory has gaps. Over the millennium, his life has accumulated hundreds of 'fog points'—stretches of time where he knows he was doing something, yet can recall no detail of it whatsoever. In the past he chalked these up to 'having lived too long.'

Past Aliases

He changes aliases roughly every 40 to 60 years—living too long means acquaintances eventually notice 'how are you still so young.'

One of them: Allen Trist (Kaiyuan 901–932, investigator for the Dawn Continent Observation Bureau). 31 years. He himself isn't even certain what coordinates he actually walked through in that frigid climate zone back then.

L.K.S._Core Signature

Eight months ago, he set a private signature L.K.S._Core within QuarktoLabs’ internal protocols. It was never made public, never submitted to Spectra's main repository—not even his own assistant knew the string existed.

Yet one early morning he saw this signature inside Spectra—appearing on an error message from eighty-five years ago.

The K Tattoo

On his left arm is a tattoo of the letter K—one he has never shown anyone in his life. Even the scan data from QuarktoLabs headquarters' physical-exam system was altered by his own hand—he hides not only himself, but the data too.

He doesn't remember when this tattoo was inked. For as long as he can recall, the K has been on his arm. For a thousand years.

Technical Background

For the past twelve years he worked in Spectra's engineering group, and once rewrote the entire underlying protocol with his own hands. While doing so, he left a backdoor in Spectra.

Over his life he has left a total of 7 backdoors across different systems.

CV-1A

Registered under his name is a private test airship mass-produced by Magnetar Transport—the CV-1A (Cross-Vector Type 1A, the first cross-boundary vessel). The market touted 'cross-boundary' as a slogan, but it was actually a purpose Lika secretly wrote down himself while drawing up the design back then—he wanted an airship that could fly to places no one else could reach.

Character Voice

Cold, plain description. The technical type. Few adjectives. Over a thousand years he has come to trust only terrain, air vents, rock strata, magnetic declination, the engineering logic of tomb chambers—he does not believe in gods.

In the past, he always read this world—read code, read data, read other people's backdoors.

After 1,000-odd years, the trouble is not the length of it. The trouble is that every stretch has to be closed out.

He changes identity every 40 to 60 years. Half a year ahead he starts appearing less, hands off his projects, moves the end of a lease forward, lets acquaintances grow used to his absence. Once it is done he does not look back, and does not ask how the old place turned out.

He keeps no mementos. His living space is held to what one case will carry, and the furniture is always rented. The habit has held for centuries. There are two or three exceptions, and he does not explain why he keeps them.

On friends he settled the question early: permissible, but not the kind that would require him to explain himself.

He calls the blank stretches in his memory fog points. Not forgetting—forgetting means the detail will not come. A fog point is a span where the frame is intact, where he knows he was doing something, and the inside of it is empty.

He first noticed during his third identity. Against his own work records, which showed him at the same station every day for 3 months, he could not recall a single colleague's face.

He keeps a file. Each fog point logged with start and end, the identity in use, and whatever external record can still be found. The file lives on a medium that is not networked, and by now runs to several hundred entries.

He has searched 1,000-odd years without an answer. He logged that part too—at the end of the same file, in a column that has stayed empty.