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BASICS
nameDr. Augustin Jean-Pierre Chevalier-Desjardins
alias
Auggie, Dr. C-D
division
Research & Operations
occupation
Atmospheric Physicist
Co-Owner of The Space Between
Author
Science Communicator
age & dob
48, August 12, Leo
pronouns
he/him
family
Jean-Pierre Desjardins, father, retired delegate-general for the Quebec Government Office in Brussels
Elodie Chevalier, mother, socialite from a prominent Québécois family.
Two older and two younger siblings.
Calanthia Moss, late wife.
CONCEPT
Literal know-it-all can't remember what it's like to forget.POWERS
tactile knowledge assimilation ;Augustin can absorb information simply by touching the page it's written on. This could mean the pages of a book or a report, or maybe just the washing instructions on a sweater. The information has to physically be on the page, which is why computer screens and e-readers don't work as well for him. Sorry for using the printer so much in Research, but someone just sent him a fascinating report. He can only access the obvious stuff — what's clearly written down versus meaning and symbolism — which works great for hard science, but really hampers his contributions to book club.
panmnesia ;
Everything that Augustin has ever learned or experienced, every stupid thing he's said, seen or thought, has been indexed and carefully stored in his mental filing cabinets. Accessing this information can be tricky sometimes—soft, abstract questions, like his favorite song or poem, are messy, and answering means he has to comb through the thousands of poems and songs he's absorbed in his time. Concrete facts, however, he can pull up almost instantaneously. Trivia nights were hell when he was allowed to play.
sleeplessness ;
Augustin does not need to sleep. While he can sleep if he wants to, the only thing it really does is pass the time for him. This power developed later than the others — about ten years ago — like his brain got so full, it just shoved that necessary function right out his ears.
PERSONALITY
gregarious, friendly, chatty, generous ; Augustin loves people, loves to mingle and schmooze and make others happy. Here, have a drink, you've paid him in conversation and passing the time. Sometimes his generosity can be a little over the top because his concept of money is pretty skewed, but he means well when he brings someone a brand new bird bath for their apartment balcony just because it's Earth Day.curious, frustratingly open-minded, good listener ; It's really annoying to debate with Augustin because he genuinely does want to know more. If you have information that might change his mind then by all means drop a source on him! His mind is primed for taking in data, and he enjoys listening to people infodump as much as he enjoys a good long chat about their childhood.
privileged, spoiled, loves his lil creature comforts ; Augustin thinks he's low maintenance and his upper class upbringing didn't really have that big of an effect on his tastes, but that's just because he hasn't been forced to face it. He just couldn't live without his first edition books and top of the line cigars and talented tailors and of course he has his own shoemaker, you don't??
logical, black & white thinker ; Something about having so much goddamn information in his head makes it hard for Augustin to think about everything with nuance. Most of it is just raw data, unprocessed and with no emotion attached to it, and for the sake of efficiency he sorts it into Useful or Not Useful, Good or Bad, Logical and Illogical. Oh he's certainly capable of sitting down and thinking about all the subtleties of a situation, but it really gets in his way when he's solving a problem and he has to remember that sometimes all solutions are bad, or all suggestions are worth thinking through.
overthinker, needs people ; It's damn near impossible to shut off Augustin's mind. Something is always buzzing in the middle of his brain, collecting information and filing it away, processing and working and sorting all day and night. The easiest way for him to quiet the buzz is to drown it in other people, be it watching them, talking, listening, or just being with them. Please, bury him in your memories, he's tired of his own.
adaptive, rolls with the punches ; Probably due to his privilege, nothing ever really seems like the end of the world to Augustin. When something goes wrong, there will always be a way to keep going, be it because of money, therapy, or just changing what it means to keep going.
rascal, dad jokes, big brother energy ; Augustin is a big old dork who loves to tease, loves to razz, loves to laugh and make others laugh. He really respects and cares about everyone he knows and works with and who's contributed to his research, and he wants to look out for them in whatever way he can.
APPEARANCE
4'5". Squarely built. Brown hair, blue eyes, scruffy aesthetic. His clothes are often relaxed and fashionably distressed, but tailored specifically for him so it doesn't look sloppy. Though his wife died over twenty years ago, he still sometimes wears his wedding band.HISTORY
CONTENT WARNINGS: spousal death, sympathetic portrayal of the richBorn in Brussels to a Montreal-based diplomat and socialite, Augustin Jean-Pierre Chevalier-Desjardins was brought up in privilege. His mother's family was steeped in old money, with their names slapped on hospital wings and university libraries across the province. Promises that Augustin could do or be whatever he wanted to be in the whole world weren't empty old platitudes; as a Chevalier, there were no limits as long as money and clout were still accepted.
He found his niche in school as the Smart Kid, hungry for knowledge and starving for positive attention from adults. Of course, it was easy for Augustin to seem smart when he could get a tutor in any subject and a tour of any scientific institution that wanted to keep their research funding coming in. Ignorant to the true extent of the leg up the world had given him, Augustin rode that label through his university undergrad. Teachers loved him! Other students tolerated him! And at least he was friendly and brought coffee and donuts to study sessions.
As his undergrad years gave way to graduate work, Augustin quietly married his oldest friend, Calanthia. It wasn't love, just like it wasn't passion that kept him grinding away at academia, but inertia and comfort. He and Calanthia enjoyed each other's company and had a shared interest in keeping their parents off their backs about continuing their legacies. Augustin's dear cousin had married into Swedish royalty, after all, and there was no way he had a chance of keeping up with those Joneses.
The marriage didn't last long. Just a few years later, two months into Augustin's PhD program, Calanthia unexpectedly passed. Unsure what to do with himself, unwilling to dig through his baggage and unpack his grief, Augustin buried himself in studying and work. When his house felt quiet and lonely, he filled it with books who didn't ask questions and kept his wedding band on to prevent anyone else from trying to fill that silence.
By 2003, Augustin had finished his PhD in Atmospheric Sciences and moved to the US to work for NOAA. His work, largely tedious and often uneventful monitoring of space weather, was interrupted one Monday afternoon by the sky literally tearing open in front of the world. If he even had the ability to forget things anymore, Augustin would never forget that sight--or the evening that followed. As agencies scrambled for answers and gathered together every scientist they had on their payroll, Augustin gave himself a nasty paper cut.
And his blood was purple. Information that, at 9:00 PM on July 14, 2003, fucking no one knew how to handle.
Augustin was quickly quarantined, examined, his blood tested hourly. Reports of others with purple blood came in, some of them exhibiting unusual abilities and qualities, and the attention on Augustin only intensified. They waited for him to turn into a monster, or to deteriorate from some kind of radiation poisoning coming from inside. He didn't tell them that he could perfectly recall every second he'd been sequestered in his room, and that he'd read every magazine and book in here in a matter of seconds. They were already treating him like a freak; no need to exacerbate the situation with facts.
Within weeks, Augustin's family came knocking at the front door of his well-intentioned captors. Sorry, but even if he's extremely dangerous, even if it's in another country and the entire world is experiencing unprecedented levels of panic, one does NOT keep a Chevalier imprisoned indefinitely. They spirited him away, back across the border where they could keep him safe.
But the experience had changed Augustin, in more ways than just his blood. For the first time in his life, he'd been treated as a second-class citizen, his considerable privilege swept under the rug in the face of the unknown. Determined to get involved and understand what was happening, Augustin went to the Canadian government and told them who he was, what he'd seen, what was happening to him, and that he was ready to get his hands dirty in order to make things better for everyone. Whether that meant closing the rifts or just figuring out how long they had left until they completely took over.
The last two decades of his life have been dedicated to this cause. Augustin traveled the world to study rifts and talk to other Liminals, writing books and giving interviews before most of the world had accepted the rifts were going to be here for a while. He moved back to the US to work with IRIS, as if he was trying to recapture the life he'd had just before the rifts opened and his blood turned purple. Every time IRIS built a new station, he would inevitably pop into their research department to gather information, see what unique brand of weird they cultivated there, then pop off again.
Enodia was the first time he actually wanted to stay somewhere. Vermont was close to home, that was probably why, but there was an energy there. A strange energy that spoke to him. He came shortly after it first opened, and when that odd pulse wiped out the station for a brief moment, he knew he would never leave for long. The break just gave him enough time to publish his latest book, trot out a few interviews, go on just the teensiest book tour before heading back. He has a bar to co-run, after all.
NOTES
📚 His bouvier des flandres, Choupinette, goes absolutely everywhere with him and eats only the finest foods.
📚 Ineffectively banned from trivia nights at The Space Between because of his powers. Carlene, the former owner, said she included him as an owner just to get him out of the pool.
📚 Polyglot. Native fluency in French and English as well as conversational fluency in Dutch and German. Also knows Latin, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Japanese to some extent. Memorizing languages by rote is very easy for him with his powers, learning the cultural contexts and nuances of languages is fun for him as an extrovert.
📚 Has read anything published by an Enodia employee, including Cairo Montana's study on Liminal grass. He actually read them, too, he didn't just absorb it!
📚 Recently wrote a book with cultural anthropologist Snow Wolfe on the social changes brought about by the rifts and subsequent mutations, called Betwixt & Beyond. Returned from the book tour at the end of July.
📚 Has a ?playful? Twitter rivalry with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
PERMISSIONS
WRITING: i love it all! i tend to lean toward shorter gdocs (like 3 pages is in the sweet spot) because i like it when they feel like an excerpt with a purpose, and i'm also all about doing threads on posts. any tense, though i default to third person present.
BACKTAGGING: go for it!!! i've been known to backtag things from like. years ago. do what makes you happy!!!
THREADHOPPING: love it baby.
PRIVATE FILTERS: go for it man, if i stop paying attention to it i'll just delete or archive the emails as they come in.
SENSITIVE TOPICS: sibling deaths, teen/child deaths are rough ones, so i'll probably dip out of specific situations/discussions if it gets Too Real. if it's handled sensitively and without feeling like grief porn it's usually okay, but sometimes i just need to dip. i can make that call myself though!
SMUT: fade 2 black 4 me pls. pretty much the only reason i ever write scenes that go past smooching is to embarrass my children.
CONFLICT: love it, makes the world go 'round.
VIOLENCE: while i don't anticipate augustin starting any shit, i will never turn it down.
BADMOUTHING: please call him pretentious. (100% on board with all of it basically)