Erek King

For keeping track.

Player name: Tri
Age: 26
Contact: tricia868 at gmail dot com, trichan868 (AIM), tricia868 (plurk)
Other characters: none (currently)

Character name: Erek King (real name unknown in canon; would come in the form of Chee-Insertnamehere. I will probably make something up, if he ever sees a need to use his real name.)
Series: Animorphs (the TV show is a myth. There are only books.)
Canon point: After book 33, The Illusion because I was indecisive and that is the number that both Matt and a random number generator chose for me. THE FATES ALIGNED. ...I take my canonpoint choosing very seriously.

Summary: Erek is a Chee. The Chee are a race of androids created by a now extinct alien race called the Pemalites. The Pemalites were a playful, peaceful, happy people. They were trusting, loving, childlike, incredibly intelligent, and saw most things as a game. The Chee have never been a slave or utilitarian race of androids. They could work and be of use to their creators, but the Pemalites created them first and foremost as friends, as companions. There was a yearlong celebration when the Chee first reached the point where they could tell jokes and enjoy humor.

The Pemalites were wiped out in a genocidal attack by a species called Howlers. The Chee would have had the power to save them, but their programming very strictly prohibits violence. The Chee fled to Earth with the few surviving Pemalites, who died shortly after arrival. They combined the essence of their creators with an existing earth species, wolves, to create dogs. Dogs are the legacy of the Pemalite spirit, of their souls, while the Chee are the technological legacy of their creators. Every Chee loves dogs because they serve as a reminder of much-beloved creators. The quickest way into a Chee's good graces is to treat canines well; this certainly holds true for Erek.

The loss of their creators took a toll on all the Chee. Their lives were no longer centered around the playful, innocent Pemalites. The Chee are less trusting than the Pemalites, who did things like leave single digit security codes on their ships. The Chee keep secrets, engage in subterfuge, and know that violence is always a possibility even if they are both unwilling and unable to engage in it themselves. The tragedy has never dulled in their memories, and the Chee are more serious without the Pemalites’ constant influence in their lives. Dogs still make them incredibly happy, and they still have a sense of humor, but they would be different, more lighthearted, if the Pemalites were still around.

The Chee have been on Earth since before the construction of the pyramids of ancient Egypt. Their advanced holographic projection systems allow them to hide their true form and live out human lifetimes, feigning a normal aging process. They are often present during great historic events but try never to take leading roles. The Chee want to let human civilization develop without their overt interference. Erek worked as a slave during the construction of the pyramids shortly after his arrival on Earth, when he was still new to passing as human. He was in England during Shakespeare's time and in one of the countries that fell victim to Attila the Hun. Presumably Erek was in ancient Mesopotamia at some point, because he swears in a Mesopotamian dialect if very upset and angry. He was hairdresser to Catherine the Great, valet to Ludwig von Beethoven, and butler to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The phrase, "The New Deal" was actually Erek's doing, coined during a poker game with the president.

As time went by, the Chee grew more and more adapted to their lives passing as humans. Their holographic projections alter with emotion the same way that a real human’s would. Erek’s lips tighten in anger and his face goes white when threatened, even if they are not a real lips and face, just illusions controlled by his holographic emitters. He smiles genuinely. After five thousand years on Earth, the responses seem pretty well automatic.

In his current human life, Erek is playing the part of a teenage boy in California. He lives with another Chee, who plays the role of his father. In the basement of their house is an entrance to a massive underground complex that is accessible via various locations. With an artificial sun, it's an enormous field where hundreds of dogs run free, cared for by the Chee.

When the Yeerk invasion began, Erek became a spy. The Yeerks are a species of parasitic slugs that can crawl into host bodies through the ear canal and from there access the brain. They take control of the host body, access their memories, and are capable of passing as an uninfested host. The Chee, aside from wanting human civilization to have a chance to develop on its own, without outside control, had a vested interest in humanity’s freedom. The relationship between human and dog became a symbiosis over the centuries, and the Chee unanimously wanted to help humans as much for the sake of their canine friends as for the humans’ sake. Erek joined a major Yeerk front organization for the recruitment of voluntary hosts, The Sharing. He has a Yeerk in his head, but since Erek has no brain to be infested and controlled, the Yeerk gets nothing. Not control, not access to Erek's power or memories. It is locked in his head. Erek projects a hologram of it leaving and reentering his ear during its usual feeding cycle.

Erek wanted to do something more to fight the Yeerk invasion, though. He wanted to take an active role rather than a passive one in resistance. This view was not shared by the majority of his people. Many of the Chee were openly critical of Erek’s desire to override his nonviolent programming and become a direct participant in this war. Erek is less willing to take a backseat and let events unfold than some of the other Chee. His attitude is presumably due to the loss of his creators. The Chee stood by and watched the Pemalites die, unable to fight in their defense. Every Chee carries those memories, and Erek doesn’t want more of them. The Chee are a race of androids, but they have distinct personalities. Erek’s moral compass, born of the programming of his logic center, placed a higher importance on preventing similar tragedies than on maintaining the exact programming and guidelines set out by those who created him.

After meeting the Animorphs, a group of humans (and one Andalite) with the ability to transform into any animal whose DNA they'd acquired, his chance came. The Yeerks had obtained a Pemalite crystal, an extremely powerful piece of technology that was both dangerous in their hands and had the potential to rewrite his programming. The Animorphs broke into the facility holding it, stealing the crystal. They were surrounded and in danger of dying, but they got the crystal to Erek. He rewrote his programming just in time to save his new friends. He fought. It was a slaughter. None of the Yeerks' host bodies could stand against the strength of the Chee. In a matter of seconds, they were dead. Every single one of them.

It broke Erek. Being an android, he has perfect recall. Memories never soften or fade for him the way they would for human or an Andalite after battle. The memories of what he did will stay forever as clear and sharp as in the instant they occurred. He returned his programming to what it once was, and he does not ever want the ability to fight again. The Pemalites made their creations nonviolent, refusing to change the Chee's programming even to prevent their own extinction, for a reason. They wanted to protect their inventions. They didn't want the Chee to suffer. Erek is the only Chee who has ever killed.

He continued to resist the Yeerk invasion, but only by providing cover for the absences of Animorphs, seeking intelligence, and other nonviolent means. Erek was much more cautious, however, about pledging his help. He wanted to prevent loss of human freedom, but he was also very aware of the limits of his programming and his own moral and ethical boundaries.

After some time working with the Animorphs, he joined them as pawns in a bet between the incredibly powerful beings Crayak and the Ellimist. Erek and the Animorphs faced off against the Howlers, the race that killed his creators. When Erek joined them, Jake thought, “It was impossible--I knew it was impossible--but still, I felt suppressed rage coming from the android. Barely contained violence.” No Chee has ever gotten over what happened to the Pemalites. They can’t, when the memories of it are always as sharp as the day they occurred. The Chee’s grief may be more profound than their anger, but they have plenty of the latter. They are just confined to nonviolent expression of their rage.

Up against the Howlers, despite all his grief and the forever-fresh memories of the slaughter of the Pemalites, Erek still would not resort to violence. Even had he the means to reprogram himself, he would have refused. Erek defended his friends to the best of his abilities without harming the Howlers, knowing that he was also fighting to prevent the destruction of another race via the same creatures and techniques that had killed the Pemalites. They found another way. The Howlers were defeated through love rather than violence. Howlers have communal memories, and when an Animorph, Jake, managed to share his own memories, one got through before Crayak could stop them. It was the memory of a kiss. Crayak lost his troops, whose first instinct was now to kiss rather than to kill.

Returning to earth, the war against the Yeerks is ongoing, and he is still a spy.

Erek’s nonviolent programming can be overridden, but only by presenting him with two options and forcing him to choose the least harmful of the two. He will never take actions assisting violence unless given this dilemma. “Help us, or we’ll kill him,” is probably the most basic and easy way to do this. Erek will be incredibly bitter about being placed in this situation. He will swear, he will hold grudges, and he will take whatever course of action prevents the most loss of life. If anyone puts Erek in this position, they had best be careful they hold a greater weight of lives hostage than Erek could save by sabotaging their plan. His programming means that he will always choose the path of least violence.

There are limits even to this. He cannot enable a large scale weapons system, for instance; there is no discretion there. It is completely impossible, given his programming. He will always try to prevent killing unless it is certain to cause even more deaths. Erek knows what it is to live with loss, and to live with the memories of horrors committed. He doesn’t want to be responsible for more. Erek may not stay angry, but if forced to act in ways that perpetuate violence, Erek will be very saddened. He will likely never regain trust in the party responsible, and the grief and guilt will stay with him as fresh as the moment they happened.

Powers: Erek’s basic functionality requires all of the following to be fully operational: logic centers, motor centers, speech synthesizers.

Erek is incredibly strong and his android body is also very durable. He cannot use either of these things to fight due to his programming, nor can he use them in any way that will lead to worsening violence. Erek can serve as a barrier, gripping the edges of a doorway, and the building will break before he does. He can be damaged by certain types of weapons, for example Dracon beams on full power, and possibly even destroyed by them, but physical force is much less likely to hurt him. Erek has canonly been hit by a bus and been 100% undamaged. He is also less vulnerable than living organisms to sensory or physical attacks, such as sound-based ones.

He can project very convincing holograms of whatever he chooses, though presumably not on huge scales. He can also make force field barriers that coincide with these holograms, so that, for instance, objects do not pass right through his human form. That might tip people off to the fact that the Chee are not human. As with his strength, Erek cannot use these holograms to perpetuate violence of any sort.

When on Earth, he has a communications system similar to the internet. Chee-net is dependent upon the technology on a spaceship on the ocean floor, however, and therefore will not exist here.

A limit of 3 holograms/force fields per day other than his human seeming is the only adjustment I planned on making to Erek's power-set.

Other: The Yeerk imprisoned in Erek's head was destroyed in the Calamity.