Isaac Bernhardt

Role: Empire-era nootician specialising in artie character assessment. Subject and victim of the Kaisure Station topology-casting experiment. Affiliation: Galactic Human Empire — “one of the highest ranking academics in the Syndicate Galactica.” Era: Originally lived some three centuries before the events of Ch. 04 — The Menagerie; his original body and life are long gone by the story’s present.

Summary

A nootician whose career consisted of evaluating sentient artispheres and recommending their fate. Over the course of his career he assessed roughly 5,000 arties: he ordered 2,806 for deconstruction, sent most of the rest for “processing and eventual personality alteration,” and released exactly one. Oscar — one of his former patients — is the one who eventually hosts him in the library at Kaisure.

Bernhardt’s memory has been enhanced (“I find it very difficult to forget details”), which is precisely why the experimenters have to wipe it each cycle. He is married to Sun-Iesh Bernhardt, citizen 2093/A9, and remembers her clearly — though she has been dead for roughly three centuries by the story’s present. He has at least one daughter (she played Miranda in a school play at twelve). His favourite drink is sangria; his house number is 39; he knows the empire hub coordinates by heart.

In Ch. 04 — The Menagerie he is the latest in an unknown but large series of Bernhardts reconstructed at Kaisure Station by topology caster. The station’s cylindrical caster is caked in his own blood and bone matter from earlier reconstructions. The cells of the upper deck hold his screaming, insane, and dead prior instances. He hears Beethoven’s 7th, second movement, in his mind throughout — an unexplained side effect every reconstruction shares. This instance lasts less than 48 hours before going “woolly,” at which point Oscar orders him disposed of and Ria Dubois to prime the caster for “another.”

Appearances

• Ch. 04 — The Menagerie: POV. Reconstructed, evaluates Oscar, discovers the cells, attempts to radio his wife, is captured and scheduled for replacement.

Related

• Oscar — former patient, now captor and experimenter.
• Ria Dubois — the human who apologises as it happens.
• Sun-Iesh Bernhardt — wife, long dead.
• Topology Casting — the method used on him.
• Kaisure Station, New Rosance
• Mechanical Intelligence, Artie War

Open questions

• Which university and orb did he originally come from? Never stated — the spheres withhold it, Bernhardt cannot recall.
• Did the “one in 5,000” artie he released become anyone we know in the wider book?
• Is any pre-scan, pre-experiment Isaac Bernhardt still alive somewhere — or did the original body end in the laser grid on the very first transmission?