Dr. Rebecca 'Becky' Martin

Dr. Rebecca Martin, 'Becky' to most people, is the Parallax Club's Scientific Advisor.  Physically she is not what one would expect of a scientific genius, being an attractive redhead in her late 20s.  However, she rarely sets off her looks to best advantage - like many geniuses she is prone to worry more about her latest project than what she is wearing or how her makeup looks, and her slender figure comes from forgetting to eat while she is working.

According to her published background, she was born and raised in Santa Monica, and her accent is certainly pure Californian.  At the astonishing age of 15 she graduated magna cum laude from M.I.T. in Boston with an already formidable reputation for the design of artificial intelligence programs.  Within five years she was also awarded masters' degrees in neuropsychology and robotics, both from Cal Tech, and had picked up a full medical degree almost as an afterthought.

What was less well-known was her other reputation.  Under the pseudonym 'Medusa' she was responsible for several of the greatest hacks in history, computer infiltrations such as the infamous 'November Crash n' Burn' that have since passed into hacker legend.  It was said that no computer system on Earth was safe from Medusa's predations.

Unsurprisingly, McAllister Industries saw her as the perfect choice to head up the Neural Interface Development Team on Project Damocles, the creation of the M.I.T.C.H. 1600 android.  In many ways she can be said to be Mitch's creator, responsible for the vast majority of his neural programming, and thus his individuality and personality, as well as the interfacing subroutines that allow him to access and control other computer systems.

What McAllister failed to realise was the Pygmalion-like attachment Becky felt towards her creation.  When she discovered their intentions for Mitch, as the prototype for a supersoldier available to the highest bidder, she arranged for his escape from the McAllister facility in Wyoming and his joining the Parallax Club.  Becky knew of Louise's previous tanglings with McAllister through her hacker contacts and saw in the Countess the perfect guardian to keep her 'baby' safe.  She also destroyed the blueprints of her work on his nano-net brain.

Becky remained with McAllister for another year or so, her complicity in the escape suspected but unproven, before faking her death (that being the only way one gets out of McAllister when one knows as much as she did) and joining the Parallax Club herself.

It was only after this that the truth of her identity finally emerged.  Her hacker alias was more than just an idle creation, for she is indeed the 'Medusa' of legend.  She and her sisters were the creation of The Olympians (the technologically-advanced race of extradimensional entities the Ancient Greeks saw as gods) as part of some long-forgotten project.  Her green eyes are actually sophisticated contact lenses, as her real irises are jet-black and can cause, by simply meeting another's gaze, a chemical chain reaction that transforms the unfortunate victim's cellular structure into a material that closely resembles sandstone.  Her origin also explains her expertise with a number of ancient languages.

She now spends most of her time in the Sanctum, the secret facility deep beneath the Hotel Gothique, working on the scientific problems that the Club face and keeping track of Louise's massive occult database.  She still harbours what she thinks is a secret affection for her creation, but what he knows about it is anyone's guess.