Dr Austin Oppermann
Many people say the world is going to shit; people used as weapons to advance their government's agendas, Primes, whatever - it's total chaos!
Few people in these times spend the effort to think rationally; the Primes will do it for them, or the governments that control them - it is a sad fact that everyday people have little control over the momentous events that carry the tide of time forward, and most are content simply to ride the currents.
Dr. Austin Oppermann is not one of them.
Oppermann is a resolute rationalist; he is a nobel-prize winning theoretical physicist, and to him, the advent of these Primes and these disturbing trends in human behavior requires more thinking, and more of the everyday person than has ever been expected. But he also believes in science being the tool of the everyman; that given enough grit and calculation, anyone can use the discoveries of science to their benefit. Instead of praying to win a genetic lottery to be the next Fist, he works at raising the understanding of all humanity.
Oppermann postulated shortly out of grad school that artifacts produced in Loop Quantum Gravity calculations actually reconciled it with string theory, and that the artifacts were quantum ties to n other objects. For this he won a Nobel Prize, as it was the first concrete step taken in decades towards a unified quantum phyiscs and relativity. Throughout his career he expounded on this theory, eventually coming to the conclusion that through exhaustive mapping and calculation, any one particle was related, through one or more quantum connections, to every other particle. He proposed the radical idea that with the appropriate competing stimuli to the appropriate particles, any particle could be induced to any behavior, and that it was only a matter of math.
Austin was freakishly good with math; able to solve complex equation matrices of immense size almost instantly; hence, it followed that he considered his theory to be an extremely important development. Unfortunately, the math required by his theory was too complex for even his colleagues to follow, so his colleagues recieved his revolutionary ideas with some reservation. Their approval mattered not to Oppermann; he continued doggedly pursuing his research.
A few years after recieving his Nobel Prize, Oppermann announced that he would demonstrate the ultimate application of this theory: that by doing nothing other than firing neurons in his brain, he could affect anything. Turning mass to energy and vice versa was the basis, but after a few tests that only amazed the scientists, he did something unbelievable. He flew. Then he disappeared and appeared a moment later with a chunk of the moon. Then, he split into four Austin Oppermanns and began discussing simulatenously the various processes that allowed him to do so.
Austin Oppermann was no longer the champion thinker of the people, he was one of them. He was a New Man.
He denied it vigorously - this was simple science. Well, maybe not simple, but with enough time and graph paper, anyone could do it! But even his colleagues, whom he had convinced of the paramount importance of rational, exhaustive critical thinking, saw an explanation that didn't give them headaches or make them feel like dunces: He was just a superhero.
To Austin, who had always seen himself as the underdog, not neccesarily the smartest and certainly not the strongest, such an ostracization is the cruelest of insults. He had worked tirelessly all his life to prove he belonged to society, and now, society had all but cast him out.
Public Stature
Austin Oppermann is currently a maverick professor at the University of Washington. He's smart enough that they keep him on board, but he's a little intense. Given that his more extravagant theories are frowned on for most of his teaching assignments, Oppermann also volunteers at Jake Cannon's school, where he has the opportunity to nurture the minds that society deems too volatile.
