Thomas Mackelroy

Background
From a young age, Thomas Mackleroy was a widespread traveler. Raised in the heady days of the early 1980s from a traveling salesman and an eligible lonely schoolmarm in a small Kansas town, in his youth Tom delighted in accompanying his father on his long car trips to exotic foreign towns and cities (to him) in nearby states. He collected post cards and travel pamphlets, watched in wonderment at the vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens that Thomas Mackleroy, Senior brought home to sell around town, and told his classmates about all the places and sights he'd seen in the local tricounty area. When he grew a bit older, his father would regularly sit him down and talk to him about the family business he would one day inherit and what it stood for: capitalism, entrepreneurship, the American Dream. From then on, Thomas's dreams in life would be simple: inherit his father's business, bring success and honor to the Mackelroy line, and live the American Dream.

But in real life, things are never so easy, nor so simple. The relationship between Thomas Mackelroy Senior and Martha Mackelroy nee Maybelle had been a whirlwind romance and a perfume and heat infused quick marriage, but as they settled down the differences and distance between the two grew larger, until after ten years together in 1989 the two of them divorced, leading to Thomas senior taking custody of his son after a lengthy battle in court and Martha moving away to another state. From then on, it was just Thomas and his father, with his father focusing more and more on his business and slowly getting Thomas to take over more and more aspects of the business. Ass the years went, however, the senior Thomas's lifestyle of beer, women, cheap dinners, and travel began to take its toll. In 1999, Thomas's father had a heart attack at the relatively young age of 45. While he would live, he would never truly recover, and three more years down a line another heart attack would take his life for good, leaving Thomas alone at the age of 23 with a rented house, a small business that was quickly becoming obsolete with the rise of internet-based sales, and a distant, out of contact mother in another state.

Nevertheless, Thomas persevered. He took down the list of contacts from wholesales and regular buyers and made his rounds, promoting the newest televisions, vacuums, microwave ovens, toasters, and As Seen On TV products as best he could within the local tricounty area. When the revenues from these sales started dwindling, he turned to making his own modifications and items, starting off small with interestingly shaped soap bars and sponges to small miniature fans. He'd spend his own defined paycheck into buying books on mechanical devices and arts and crafts books, honing his talents into skills by necessity rather than by leisure. As the door-to-door sales fluctuated, rose and fell with public interest and internet availability, Thomas grew more connected and, after a time, almost confident. While he was living largely hand to mouth, he was acquiring a small but steady stream of cash that could be invested and used for future expansion. He was not just selling retail products, but even a few he had made himself, and he started thinking about trying his hand at bigger projects...better products.

It started, really, when his search for books at the local library in 2008 led him to a book on microfusion for dummies. It was a malicious act, really...most likely put there by a Lemurian who snuck it in in an attempt to spread their views, the book was almost guaranteed to make anyone who read it either giggle at the lunacy of the author and put it back, or get sucked into its contents and begin the long road to insanity. Thomas, unfortunately, fell into the latter category. His mind was entranced by the seemingly wise words of the author, earnestly dictating the wonders that atomic fission and microfusion and artificial black holes and antiparticles could impart to the world. Head filled by the lies of the book's false science, he thought about how he could use it in concert with his sales. It seemed simple enough...just get a few materials from the nearby plants (“barely more radioactive than natural sunlight” promised the book), mix them in the right way and hit them with a powerful enough battery, and create cheap energy that could provide more power in an hour than a normal power plant could produce in a week? Thomas began to go to work.

The Suc-U-Lux 150 wasn't a real Wonder. It was a pseudowonder, a machine held together by just enough of the Mania produced by Thomas to convince him it worked. Powered by a crude electroradion battery and utilizing a microfusion generator to vacuum surfaces, it worked...or, at least, it seemed to. It worked long enough for Thomas to make a single prototype and twenty test versions, and it worked long enough for Thomas to confirm the science behind them to himself, and it worked long enough for him to go around his hometown, demonstrate them to his neighbors and friends, and sell them one at discount price. It even worked long enough for said neighbors and friends to start using them, marveling at their quietness and efficiency.

But, like the last kiss of a lover coming to say goodbye before packing her bags and leaving forever, reality gave one last whisper to Thomas before it fled in the wake of an approaching Catalysis:

Nuclear physics don't work that way.

In the wake of twenty nine people dead, three of them children, and a three day quarantine by the National Guard and CDC to combat the radiation levels, Thomas Mackelroy catalyzed as a Klagen. Devastated by the knowledge that it was his modifications and his sales that had caused such destruction to his hometown and overcome by his sudden change, Thomas fled. His investments were lost, his possessions left behind, and with only the clothes on his back and what he could pack into his car, Thomas drove out of town...and drove, and drove. He drove on until he ran out of gas in Wichita, and it was there, desperately selling what little he had left and trying to hawk his last remaining Suc-U-Lux 150, that Thomas was picked up by the Wichita Modified Auto Sellers Association. They dusted him off, gave him enough money for some food, some gas, and a new set of clothes, and then sat him down in a back office and introduced him to the concept of a Genius...and the Peerage. After a long talk about the powers and the responsibilities of a genius, the warning signs he had to look out for and recognize, and a brief overview of Lemuria and when was and was not a good time to try and look for them, the Association patted Thomas on the back, dropped a handbook in his lap, gave him a business card with instructions for how to get into contact with an International Union of Artificers representative, and then told him to get out of town and find somewhere else to set up shop.

So now, Thomas Mackelroy drifts across the back woods and open plains of America, roaming from state to state but never staying long. He's tried to restart his business, spending long nights trying to figure out what he can make that's real and what is only the result of some impossible reality temporarily manifesting itself through him. He's tried to come to grips with what he apparently now is, but often times the only result is headaches and insomnia from how much his worldview clashes with what is apparently 'truth'. He wants to go big and live the American Dream, but the first time he started to believe he could do it it ended up in Catalysis and destruction. He spends his days inventing appliances in rented apartments with what money he has saved up, slowly perfecting the art of churning out goods with limited resources and time before selling them all and using the proceeds to fund his next stop.

Currently, he's heading towards Georgia. Some strange things have been reported, and there's a population boom going on or something along those lines. Frankly, Thomas doesn't care about the strange things...he's got enough trouble and worries on his plate as is, and he doesn't need any more. He could do with not having more strangeness show up in his life.

But someone's got to sell the good people of Atlanta their vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens, and blenders, and it might as well be him.

Personality
On the surface, Thomas Mackelroy may not seem like a typical genius. He has no particular scientific background, has a way with words, and can relatively easily interact with non-geniuses around himself on a daily basis. Amongst friendly company he's somewhat quiet but easy-going, smiling at every terrible joke and nodding with concern when told one's troubles. When with strangers or making a sales pitch he suddenly turns into a man of action and words, all smiles and nods and pats on the back and a hearty, open laugh. He's a salesman born and raised, trained to lighten the mood and adapt to whatever he needs to be in order to make his pitch work.

But underneath his veneer of friendly charm, some stuff still occasionally shines through. In private Thomas drops the smile and the easiness, becoming focused on how to improve his pitches and his sales or reading up on both mundane and Mania-driven improvements to his creations. While moping about how terrible his life is just wastes time and philosophical realization of his innately tragic existence is a bit beyond his mental abilities, Thomas does tend to get more serious and focused on his work so long as he believes nobody is looking. In addition, the mark of Genius still leaves impressions on his character, even if he tries to keep them hidden: asking how his creations work or the principles behind them will end up in Thomas babbling nonsense about radion posifunctions and atomic quark crystallization resulting in null kinetic flow while being unable to help himself (though through serious effort he can try to spin it into a pitch and shift the jabir into something controllable), and no matter how hard he attempts to reconcile their impossibility a small, small suppressed part of his mind whispers that maybe, just maybe his beliefs are right and there's something else responsible for them not working. His Wonders manifest as brightly colored objects formed from plastic and chrome, with pastel colored grips on the sides for easy pick up and atom symbol-embossed glass to let the buyer actually see the microfusion process work before their very eyes, appearing as though they were the consumer products of the 2000s as viewed by the salesmen of the '50s. The Association member who picked Thomas up in Wichita remarked that his Suc-U-Lux looked like something out of a “chrome-atomic dream”, and Thomas has picked up the term for his partially planned, partially unconsciously preferred aesthetic ever since.

Thomas may know about the Peerage a bit (It's some group of mad scientists that know they're mad, but their science works despite it not being really science, and he should be in it to make sure he stays just not mad enough to realize he's mad...right?) and Lemuria, but otherwise he knows just as much about the supernatural world as every other mundane inhabitant from Small Town, America. If something overtly weird doesn't get in his grill, then he'll try to dismiss it even if he can't ignore it like he used to be able to before Catalysis. If something weird DOES get in his grill, he'll most likely run away or try to pretend he's got the upper hand while wishing he could run away.

Appearance
Thomas stands about 5'9 with an average build, brown hair and medium blue eyes, a weight about ten pounds heavier than it really should be, and a slight belly from years of none-too-healthy eating on the road. His hair is cut short and as cheaply as possible in whatever the current fashion for 30-ish men is, his face is shaved every other day and smells of inexpensive aftershave, and his fashion sense trends towards neutral tones and cheap suits, with a variety of crumpled shirts and hats for informal wear. A single genuine well-worn Suitsupply navy three-piece is kept pressed and stored away for when working or at formal occasions.

Sheet:Thomas Mackelroy