“Just because I’m a brain in a vat, doesn’t mean I can’t fall in love. It just means that I can’t get it up because I don’t have one.” –Mr Fuse

District: Megacorp Valley

Occupation: Cyber Dater. But what on earth is a Cyber Dater?

In Cyberia, all Ubercomputers are rigged to an underground network of other Ubercomputers, of which there are millions. This network is known as “The Cyberspace” (very much like the cyberspace we have today except with a capital letter) and was originally conceived as a utopia where users can find “like-minded friends to party with”.

At the beginning of The Cyberspace’s inception, Saps assumed an alternative identity and explored a fully generated alternative world with its own economy and nerd culture. It was a safe haven where Cyberians could escape the cacophony of high-tech machinery, casual violence and the clumsy Trashbots first thing in the morning. They could walk their digidogs or play video games with their neighbour, they could buy cute clothes and friendship token which could then be used to tip their favourite users.

However, over the span of several years, it gradually mutated into a paranoid hellhole. Some users would hack the mainframe (is it even the mainframe?) and wreak havoc, steal tokens from other users and destroy digital assets such as celebrity artwork and e-crib wallpaper. Soon it was virtually no different to the very world everyone was trying to escape.

Yet because people had invested not only years of their lives but also huge amounts of candy to enjoy their alternative identities, they didn’t want to unplug and face reality. Mr Fuse, like many other users, had also found the love of his life in The Cyberspace and refused to say goodbye to her (her being an AI knicker smudge). Instead he stuck around, and the two lovers got caught up in all sorts of trouble. Hence Cyber Dater which is a rubbish name for anything.

You might also be wondering what’s going on with Mr Fuse. As we can see from his profile photograph, he’s nothing more than a brain in a microwave which is trying its hardest to look like sophisticated cryogenic hardware.

A few years ago, just before dying, Mr Fuse had paid the tech company SKARS Corp to preserve his brain on the proviso that it will be planted in a new living creature should future technology develop this type of operation. In the meantime he’d be able to connect to The Cyberspace. But to this day, nothing has materialised. To the contrary, Lord Garf has imposed monthly insurance premiums which, if missed at any point, will see people like Mr Fuse getting unplugged from his life support machine.

From some early notes we have read, we think that the Mr Fuse character was going to join the growing anti-megacorp alliance assembled by Scotch Mike. He probably had a vendetta against SKARS Corp for lying to him about their cryogenics capabilities. Or something.

However, like several characters in this collection, he remains a dead duck. We can’t find any information on what would bring him into the wider Cyberia Universe with just a teaspoon’s worth of dignity.

Preferred Weapon: Cybervenom and his partner in crime Mrs Fuse.

Top tip for dating AI honeys: They love intelligence so try and watch as many documentaries as possible and memorise the interesting parts. And don’t dress like a metropunk.

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