Arete

Arete in the network

The first successfully coded D-per.

Appearance and Personality

Codeform is a brown feline woman (some say she's a throwback, genetically, to the original, undifferentiated people of the Exodus). Her eyes change color, and her hair is an unrealistic sheet when she manifests to other D-pers. When manifesting to flesh-and-blood people, she is usual a woman who looks "normal," with hair severely pulled back, but with eyes that change color.

In personality: reserved and a loner. Busy with her own thoughts, which are constant. Most D-pers take her presence for granted as a sort of 'lighthouse' they can see flickering all the time, like the northern lights.

Biography

Development of Arete began in 317 BA, and took much trial and error before Arete's successful launch in 350 BA.

Cecil and Arete

She met Cecil Mayer in 414 BA, (when she is 64 years post-launch) during the Crispin/Acron affair, which began their lifelong (for Mayer) association.

Arete now works with the Pelted engineers on the D-per coding project, with Delilah as her assistant. Arete's the one who's decided to limit the number of D-pers (with the approval of fellow D-pers, and mostly based on their perception of their ability to police one another, and their use of Alliance resources).

Quotes

• "[...]either I have a soul, attached to me by a creator at my inception, and the manner of that inception is moot… or I don’t, and am myself merely an extremely sophisticated simulacrum. Either way, I must conduct myself as a responsible citizen of the Alliance, albeit one with a very different life experience than the norm."
• "Our home is with one another. We are few, and I doubt there will ever be many of us. The network is vast, but not infinite, and we are resource-intensive luxuries, even for the Alliance. But we are home when we are in touch with one another."
• "Cecil Mayer was my friend. He and I wrote the directive together."