Fen Delacroix
Also known as: Fen, The Recorder
MINORFen Delacroix is racing against time she can hear running out.
She carries a salvaged audio recorder everywhere. 2,847 hours of Old Jin's voice captured -- every technique, every observation, every quiet aside about how the Grid used to sound before the Cascade. She knows it isn't enough. Words aren't knowledge. Recordings aren't understanding. But it's what she has.
She also has a secret: a hidden diagnostic terminal in the Undervolt's unmapped eastern reaches. A terminal with ORACLE annotations dated as recently as three days ago. Something in the Grid graded her maintenance work. She hasn't told Jin.
Overview
Fen is twenty-three, small and wiry, with dust-smudged skin and short dark hair cut for practical reasons. She's been a Lamplighter for seven years, since the day she was sixteen and watched Jin fix a transformer that everyone else had given up on. She walked up to him afterward and said she wanted to learn. He looked at her hands, asked three questions, and told her to come back tomorrow.
She came back every day for seven years.
Like Jin, she is deliberately unaugmented -- staying compatible with ORACLE-era systems. Unlike Jin, she made this choice at an age when augmentation was still an option, when her peers were getting their first neural interfaces. She chose the tunnels instead.
She has something Jin doesn't: the "hum sensitivity." She can hear the Grid's subsonic vibration, the deep electromagnetic pulse that most humans can't perceive. It tells her things. Not words -- feelings. The health of a junction, the strain on a cable run, the places where the Grid is thin and fragile.
Appearance & Sensory
Small and wiry. Dust-smudged skin from years in the tunnels. Dark hair cut short -- no time for vanity, no patience for anything that catches on cable runs. Calloused hands that move with the confident precision of someone trained by the best.
The recorder earpiece is always in her left ear, a constant presence. She reaches for it reflexively when Jin starts talking, the way other people reach for their phones. The recorder itself is salvaged, held together with solder and willpower.
Her voice is clear and precise -- where Jin is quiet, Fen is articulate. She translates Jin's spare observations into language, fills in the context he assumes, asks the follow-up questions that make his knowledge accessible. She sounds like a journalist because that's what she is: documenting a dying tradition.
She smells of machine oil and warm insulation, the same as every Lamplighter. But there's something else -- a faint hum in her posture, a tension that comes from listening to frequencies most people can't hear. She's always slightly cocked to one side, one ear toward the walls, tracking something invisible.
History
Growing Up Delacroix
Fen is the younger sister of Marcus "Tink" Delacroix -- The Tinkerer. They grew up in the Undervolt, surrounded by technology that was always half-broken, always being repurposed, always one step from failure. Marcus took things apart. Fen watched how they fit together.
"My brother breaks things. I keep them running. Same skill set, different direction."
Finding Jin (2177)
She was sixteen when she saw Jin work. A transformer that had been declared dead -- three technicians had tried and failed to repair it, and the sector was preparing to reroute power around it. Jin walked in, listened for thirty seconds, touched two connections, and brought it back online.
Fen understood what she'd witnessed: not repair, but communication. Jin hadn't fixed the transformer. He'd understood what it was trying to do and helped it do it. She wanted to learn that language.
The Recording Project
Within her first year as Jin's apprentice, Fen began recording. At first it was just lessons -- how to read junction indicators, how to trace cable runs, how to listen to the hum. Then it became everything. Jin's stories about the Reading Years. His observations about how the Grid has changed. His quiet asides about the things he's seen in the sealed junctions.
2,847 hours. Seven years of his voice. She knows it isn't enough. She knows that the knowledge that matters -- the understanding that lives in his hands, in his instincts, in fifty years of practice -- can't be captured on tape. But she records anyway, because the alternative is nothing at all.
The Terminal
Six months ago, exploring the unmapped eastern reaches of the Undervolt, Fen found something that shouldn't exist: a diagnostic terminal, still powered, still functional, running ORACLE-era software.
That wasn't the remarkable part. Old systems turn up occasionally -- the Grid is vast and much of it hasn't been surveyed since the Cascade.
The remarkable part was the annotations. Diagnostic notes, maintenance logs, system assessments -- all in ORACLE's characteristic format. Dated as recently as three days ago.
She ran a test. She performed maintenance on a nearby junction -- standard Lamplighter work, nothing unusual. When she checked the terminal afterward, there was a new annotation:
"Adequate. Improvement noted. Continue."
Something in the Grid had watched her work. Something had graded it.
She hasn't told Jin. She doesn't know why. Part of her knows she should -- he would understand better than anyone what this means. But another part of her wants to understand it herself first. Wants to have the answer before she asks the question. Wants to prove she's ready.
Voice & Personality
Continuous where Jin is spare. Precise where Jin is intuitive. Fen talks the way she records -- capturing everything, organizing as she goes, translating observations into language that can be shared. She has the journalist's instinct for the follow-up question, the clarifying detail, the moment that needs to be preserved.
She is driven by a fear she doesn't name: that when Jin dies, something irreplaceable will disappear, and she'll be the one who failed to save it. This fear makes her meticulous, tireless, and occasionally annoying. Jin tolerates it. He knows what she's afraid of. He's afraid of it too.
On her mission:
"Say that again? Slower. I need the words, not just the meaning."
On her brother:
"My brother breaks things. I keep them running. Same skill set, different direction."
On preserving Jin's legacy:
"I'm not trying to replace Jin. I'm trying to make sure someone remembers that he existed."
Themes: The Recorder at the Edge
Fen Delacroix stands at the intersection of knowledge preservation and dormant intelligence. She is trying to save the past while stumbling into evidence that the past isn't as dead as everyone assumes.
Knowledge Preservation
Can knowledge that exists only in practice -- in hands, in instinct, in decades of experience -- survive the death of its carrier? Fen's recordings capture Jin's words but not his understanding. She is building an archive of echoes, hoping the echoes will be enough. The AI age's central question: what is the difference between information and wisdom?
Dormant Intelligence
The terminal in the eastern reaches suggests that ORACLE -- or something like it -- isn't entirely gone. It's watching. Grading. Responding. Fen may be the first person in decades to receive direct communication from whatever remains in the Grid. She is the discoverer at the threshold, the young person who finds the door everyone else forgot was there.
Generational Transfer
The young apprentice capturing the elder's understanding before it's lost -- this is humanity's oldest story, given new urgency in a world where the knowledge gap between generations has become an abyss. Jin's understanding spans the pre-Cascade and post-Cascade eras. When he's gone, Fen bridges that gap alone.
Secrets & Mysteries
What Fen keeps hidden:
- The diagnostic terminal in the Undervolt's unmapped eastern reaches -- still functional, still annotated, still active
- The ORACLE annotations dated three days ago. Something is maintaining records in real time
- The grade she received: "Adequate. Improvement noted. Continue." Something watched her work and judged it
- She hasn't told Jin about any of it. She doesn't fully understand why
- Her hum sensitivity is getting stronger. She can hear deeper into the Grid than she could a year ago. She doesn't know what this means
- She's been searching the Dead Internet for ORACLE documentation, hoping to supplement Jin's printed specifications
Role in Your Journey
Age 3-4: First Contact
You meet Fen in the Undervolt, usually near Jin. She's the one who explains what Jin means when Jin doesn't bother to explain. She offers you access to her recordings if you prove you're serious about understanding the Grid.
Age 5-6: Ally
Fen becomes a key ally. She gives you access to her recordings and to the diagnostic terminal -- if you've earned her trust. The terminal opens new questlines about what remains of ORACLE in the Grid. Her hum sensitivity helps you navigate infrastructure others can't reach.
Connections
Fen's world orbits two centers: the mentor she's trying to preserve, and the brother who shaped how she sees technology.
Old Jin (Jin Nakamura)
Her mentor, her mission, her reason for carrying a recorder everywhere. She has 2,847 hours of his voice and it will never be enough. She's trying to make sure someone remembers that he existed -- and that what he knew wasn't lost to silence.
The Tinkerer (Marcus Delacroix)
Her brother. He breaks things; she keeps them running. They grew up in the Undervolt together, surrounded by half-broken technology. Same instincts, different applications. He went flashy; she went underground.
The Undervolt
Her home for her entire life. The maintenance tunnels and infrastructure corridors beneath the Dregs, where the Grid's bones are visible. She knows passages that aren't on any map.
The Grid
Her charge and her mystery. She can hear it -- the subsonic hum that most humans can't perceive. It tells her things. And lately, through the terminal, it's been telling her things directly. In words.
The Hidden Terminal
ORACLE-era diagnostic terminal, still active, still annotated with recent entries. Something in the Grid watches her work and grades it. She hasn't told anyone. She isn't sure she should.
The Dead Internet
She searches the remnants of the old networks for ORACLE documentation, anything to supplement Jin's printed specifications. Fragments of a dead god's instruction manual, scattered across decaying servers.