Maria Wolfe
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[edit] Origins
Maria Wolfe is the main character in a variety of different science fiction universes written by Victor Sheckels and members of the speculative fiction writers' organization Ghosts of the Antipode. Maria's first appearance in print was in a school magazine called Iridescence, published at Cherry Valley-Springfield Central School in Cherry Valley, New York in May of 1997. [1] Since then, the character has been seen in various forms in a variety of speculative-fiction universes including:
- Tarazed Chronicles (her original appearance)
- Legacy Universe (a fan-fiction expansion of Dynamix's Starsiege universe, written by the Ghosts of the Antipode)
- Lines Universe (a science-fiction RPG created by the Ghosts of the Antipode)
She has also appeared in a variety of short stories written by members of the Ghosts, not related to these universes. Finally, she was used as an online alias and pen name by Sheckels from 1999-2004.
[edit] Biography
Maria's character varies somewhat depending on the universe in question. Many elements of the character--especially physical appearance and general origins--are shared between the various universes, however. She is described as being about 178cm tall with a slender build, large black eyes with long, straight lashes, high cheekbones, and long, straight black hair. Her father was Spanish and her mother French American and she possesses Spanish features but relatively fair complexion.
[edit] Tarazed Chronicles
In the Tarazed Chronicles, her full name is Maria Sofia Perez (later Wolfe) and she resides on the fourth planet of Tarazed. She was born on 2178.04.25 CE in Madrid, Spain to a neurosurgeon and a botanist. On 2210.07.10 CE she left the Solar System aboard the SSS Eagle, a colony ship bound for Tarazed's companion star, known in this universe as Sys. Maria serves as the ship's chief medical officer. Eagle arrives to find that Sys has no habitable planets and subsequent surveys indicate that Tarazed's main star was the source of the habitable planet signatures that prompted the mission. Despite Tarazed being a red giant and a very young system, the fourth planet is found to be a paradisaical--if geologically active--world and the Eagle establishes the Garden of Eden Colony on 2798.06.21 CE. Three years later Maria consumes a native fungoid, falls ill, and is quarantined when it is discovered that her body is being mutated by a complex retrovirus. She returns to health and discovers that her cells and tissues are regenerating and that the aging process appears to have stopped, if not reversed. Over the years her physical body including her nervous system undergo major changes; her appearance does not alter but she becomes stronger, faster, smarter, and as the years turn to decades, immortal.
The colonists discover themselves unable to reproduce and their cloning facilities are found to be non-functional. Over the next few decades the colonists die off--it is found that the immortality virus has either no effect or fatal effect on the other colonists. In 2893 CE, Maria is alone on the planet, where she remains, falling into a fugue state that she will later call The Dream.
On 3406.09.21 CE, a militant faction within the Solar System's space force uses a device which causes the Sun to supernova, destroying all life within the system. There are a few survivors who were based in the Oort Cloud, as well as a man who was out of the system testing the first faster-than-light starship drive, Captain John Wolfe. He returns to find the Solar System devastated, and, distraught, immediately flees. He finds himself at Tarazed later that month, where he encounters Maria. She recovers from her fugue--able to do this only due to the expansion of her mind thanks to the neurological alterations from the virus--and she and John, believing themselves to be the last survivors of the human race, begin a relationship and eventually marry. On their wedding night, John receives the immortality virus from Maria and after a brief illness it is found to affect him in the same way it affected her.
Over the next few years they discover they are not alone, and, indeed, that many of the other survivors are hostile. The Wolfes defend their homeworld from multiple attempts at invasion, and eventually discover allies within the forces attacking them, as well as a thriving colony in the Canopus system. Maria finds that her parents and sisters Rosalia, Jenica, and Jocelyn traveled on the SSS Carina, which colonized Canopus, and that her parents and Rosalia both suffered extensive radiation exposure during the journey, necessitating them being kept in hypersleep until a cure could be found. Armed with more modern medical knowledge from Earth, Maria is able to save Rosalia.
The Wolfes have a daughter named Rosa in 3408. The Wolfes, Rosa and her husband Ricardo Rosales, Rosalia and her husband Carlos Zorro, and the Admiral Edward Zhallata (the leader of the faction which destroyed Sol) and his wife Mira, all are discovered to be susceptible to the immortality virus. In 3446, however, Rosa and Ricardo are killed by Admiral Zhallata in his quest for vengeance on the Wolfes for exiling him some years previously. The latest story written in this universe deals with the aftermath of Rosa's death and its impact on her parents. [2]
[edit] Legacy Universe
In the Legacy Universe, Maria Sofia Perez (later Wolfe) was born on 2564.04.25 Devastation Era (9th Iyyar 6340 Hebrew Calendar or 2580.04.25 CE) in Madrid, and died on 4112.04.25 DE in her Sanctum underneath Fantasma City on Mercury. Maria was a member of the Immortal Brotherhood created by Solomon Petresun to save humanity from the global wars brought by the cybernetic hybrid (or Cybrid) artificial intelligence Prometheus, which Petresun created. The Brotherhood was a form of secret police that made use of a conscious-transfer and artificial, swappable brain system developed by Petresun and Prometheus, and Maria received this treatment and thus immortality. After the second of the three wars between Humanity and the Cybrids, Maria (along with her sisters Rosalia and Jocelyn, Jenica having died in the first war) broke ties with the Brotherhood as Petresun became more unstable and megalomaniacal. Petresun later became the Emperor of the human race and the sisters went into hiding as they discovered a way to heal, within themselves, the spiritual rifts caused by the immortality process and suffered by other members of the Brotherhood.
Maria would encounter, on Venus, a being of substantial psionic power who would guide Maria toward liberating her own power and free her to engage in non-linear manipulations of time and space. Indeed, over the centuries Maria often had fleeting encounters with her own self from the future who helped guide her to realize the many physical and spiritual paradoxes her life would encompass.
In 2797 DE Maria was a captain on an Imperial Navy torchship Farsight and, guided by visions, she diverted the vessel to Triton. On Triton, she apparently fell through the ice into a liquid nitrogen sea and died, but found herself naked on the ice and apparently alive and unharmed despite the inhospitable environment. To hide this dangerous manifestation of power from the Brotherhood and others who might misuse it, she killed the bridge crew of her ship, returned to Earth, and arranged to be killed in a duel. This failed and she was awakened by the Brotherhood. Resigned, she submerged her growing abilities to the best of her ability and joined the Imperial Knights, traveling the Solar System, helping train new Knights, and manipulating events to fall in line with her visions.
At the time of the third war with Prometheus in 2829 DE, known as the Starsiege, Maria was on Mercury when the Cybrids assaulted the planet and killed almost all the planet's residents including her daughter and, later, her husband John. She fought a guerrilla war, raiding and scavenging supplies from the Cybrids and destroyed human facilities. She discovered other survivors and created a rag-tag group of guerrillas that called themselves the Ghosts of the Antipode. These Ghosts would liberate a large group of human slaves from the Cybrids and create--and defend--an underground city called Fantasma.
In 2834 DE Maria's psionic powers manifested and caused similar powers to manifest within members of the Ghosts. In April of that year she caused a solar flare and later that month apparently died in combat with a Brotherhood force desecrating Fantasma's gravesite. She was discovered the next month deep underground in a non-corporeal form. On 2834.06.10 DE, the Ghosts' growing powers culminated in the Shift, a psionic event in which Mercury was transported, humans, Cybrids, and all, to a star system near the Eta Carinae Nebula and a similar planet took Mercury's place.
In 2838 DE it was revealed that human events were being altered by an artifact of great power, a spiritual force that manifested in human history as a cyclical destruction of people and societies that reached a certain level of spiritual awareness and arrogance in believing spirituality could be controlled. This cycle was cited as the ultimate cause of the destruction of Babylon, Rome, America, and eventually Petresun's Empire and, later on, even the Heartworlds, the society that the immortal Ghosts set up around the Shifted Mercury. Maria's purpose--as well as that of the Ghosts--was revealed as an endless quest to protect and hide this force, which came to be known as Devastation's Legacy.
Maria's manipulations of the fabric of space and time to protect her people as well as the Legacy led to the channeling of the energy of the Eta Carina Supernova into a variety of timestreams to influence events, such as the killing of Petresun in an alternate timeline and the victory of the Heartworlds over an artificial intelligence called the Paradigm. As a result of this channeling, Maria was forced to end her own existence to prevent further damage to the fabric of the universe. She walked into a singularity--and death--in 4112 DE.
In the Legacy universe, Maria used a variety of call signs including Quicksilver and Mercurial. [3]
[edit] Lines Universe
The character is found in the Lines Universe as the captain of the Black Star Line probe Infinity Unseen. She was born on 3964.04.25 on an oceanic moon in the Maia system in Alcyone Maru. As she is a member of Black Star Line and such members do not typically use their birth names, she is referred to by the syllable Xa and her birth name has not been stated.
In September of 3989 Xa was one of two survivors of a Black Star Line expedition that ran afoul of a gravitational anomaly near Beta Sagittae. She and her captain, aboard the Quiet Light, survived, but she suffered neurological and physical injuries from tidal forces caused by interaction of the ship's drives with the anomaly. Over coming years she would suffer random, crippling pain and paralysis caused by quantum microfractures in her nerve sheathing and bones. These problems are not treatable, and they manifest consistently when she is engaged in many spiritual pursuits such as meditation, prayer, and yoga, making these pursuits nearly impossible. However, Black Star Line considers her fit for exploratory duties. [4]
