Jodie? What can I say about Jodie. I’ve known Jodie since she was a piglet, squealing and crying when everybody else had already learned how to ask for food like the humans wanted us to. I helped her then, just like I’ve helped her ever since. The irony of our upbringing is that it was I who was called the failed experiment and euthanized as a child, whilst she, barely able to function as an adult in transhuman society, seemed to pass every test. I suspect that by the time Cognite realised their error, the experiment was already over, and Jodie would become a tool of the corporation, buying a fork of me to use as her MUSE. I thought that was sweet.

I think the most important thing to remember about Jodie is that she is a pig. Not just the way she looks, waddling around in that neopig morph, but inside as well. When Cognite uplifted us, they tried to make us as human as possible. Their failure with Jodie is exceptional. Despite being ‘raised’ with humans, she still thinks like a pig. The best analogy I can use to explain it is that, like any smart pig, she can be trained to understand certain human concepts, such as credits and work, but her comprehension is that of a trained animal at best. As a pig, she felt a strong social connection to the other piglets, but in transhuman society, such touchy feely casual contact was considered awkward at best, and the resulting social stigma has landed her with a realistic fear of social interaction.

Perhaps this lack of human thinking was her greatest asset, in the end. Once they were done with their tests, Cognite turned Jodie into a tool of murder. They made her earn her freedom, charging her the cost of her own uplifting, with interest. And earn it, she did. I’ve never seen a sniper so adept at picking out patterns from a miasma of churning bodies and lights. Once she learned to control what she had become, she was unstoppable.

My biggest criticism of Jodie isn’t her transhumanity, or lack there-of, it is her obsession with her past. On the record, I was against her transition into gate-crashing, but it paid the most money. She wants to buy my ego, and the rest of the piglet children who were destroyed as failed experiments in the Cognite laboratories. She feels, in a very literal way, haunted by the ghosts of her childhood friends and through them, she is pushed into danger, and combat drug addiction. I cannot help but wonder what price she will pay, before the end.

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Jodie is my character, made as part of an Eclipse Phase campaign <3

She is exceptionally awkward, and feels vulnerable when she's not in her suit of heavy armour <3