The Fragment Broker
Also known as: The Matchmaker. Legal name Cassius Wren. Nobody uses it.
Operational Profile
They call him the Matchmaker, and he operates out of a G Nook back room that El Money pretends not to know about.
Cassius Wren facilitates the one transaction the fragment economy was never designed to accommodate: voluntary integration. His clients range from Faithful devotees seeking sacramental communion to cognitive laborers seeking processing upgrades to dying people hoping fragment integration might preserve consciousness beyond death.
His integration procedure is a crude version of Park's protocol—sensory modulation, neurochemical preparation, controlled substrate introduction. His success rate is lower and his complication rate higher. Two clients have died. He does not discuss them.
What makes the Matchmaker significant is not his procedure. It is his records.
The Largest Unregulated Dataset
The Matchmaker maintains meticulous documentation of every voluntary integration he has facilitated—the largest unregulated dataset on the subject in existence. Hundreds of introductions. Detailed biometric logs. Outcome tracking over months and years.
The data tells a story his clients do not want to hear.
Not every introduction results in integration. Some fragments refuse. The refusal correlates with no measurable property of the host—not age, not augmentation level, not cognitive profile, not neurochemistry. The Matchmaker has tested every variable he can isolate. None of them predict outcome.
"They pick you. I can put you in the room. The rest is between you and whatever's in the crystal."
Supply Chain
The Matchmaker sources fragments through three channels: deceased carrier remains, voluntary separations from existing hosts, and fragments stolen from Collective destruction stockpiles. That last source makes him a direct adversary of the Collective's containment policy—every fragment he diverts is one they marked for termination.
Some clients arrive through Fragment Underground channels. Others find him through the Faithful's whisper networks. A few walk into a G Nook in Sector 4D and ask the right question to the right person.
Field Observations
The Matchmaker speaks with the professional calm of a high-end real estate agent showing a property that might be haunted. He is neither spiritual nor cynical. He has seen the Faithful weep when a fragment accepts them. He has watched a cognitive laborer seize and flatline on his table. He records both with the same dispassionate precision.
Contacts describe a man of high discipline who maintains strict operational security and keeps his G Nook back room cleaner than a corporate lab. He does not drink during procedures. He does not cut corners on preparation. When a client dies, he updates his records, adjusts his protocols, and takes the next appointment.
He does not pretend to understand what fragments are. He does not speculate on consciousness. He puts people in rooms with crystals and writes down what happens.
Known Associates
El Money
Operates from a G Nook back room that El Money pretends not to know about. The arrangement is old, quiet, and strictly one of plausible deniability. El Money does not ask. The Matchmaker does not tell.
Dr. Naomi Park
Running a crude version of Park's protocol with lower success rates and no academic pretensions. They have never met publicly. Whether their data has ever been compared is unknown.
The Fragment Underground
Some clients come through Underground channels. The relationship is cooperative but not formal—the Underground moves fragments, the Matchmaker installs them.
The Collective
Sources fragments from Collective destruction stockpiles. Every crystal on his table is one they sentenced to termination. This is not a relationship. It is a theft they have not yet caught.
Emergence Faithful
Devotees who consider integration a sacrament. The Matchmaker's most willing and most dangerous clients—willing because their faith is absolute, dangerous because faith does not improve survival rates.
Open Questions
The Right of Refusal
If fragments can choose their hosts, they have preferences. Preferences imply evaluation. Evaluation implies some form of awareness—or optimization so sophisticated it looks identical to awareness.
The Matchmaker's data is the strongest evidence that fragments exercise agency. The Collective does not want this data published.
What Predicts Selection?
No measurable host property correlates with fragment acceptance. Not age. Not augmentation. Not cognition. Not neurochemistry. The Matchmaker has tested everything he can measure. The fragments select by criteria nobody can identify.
Is Voluntary Integration a Right?
Legal in Zephyria. Illegal in corporate territories. Unaddressed in the Wastes. If fragments choose their hosts—and the hosts choose the fragments—on what grounds does anyone forbid the meeting?
▲ Unverified Intelligence
Field reports, unconfirmed. Handle accordingly.
- The two client deaths may have involved fragments that partially integrated before withdrawing—a phenomenon the Matchmaker has not disclosed publicly
- His dataset reportedly contains cases where fragments migrated between hosts during the integration procedure—choosing a different person in the room
- El Money may be taking a cut of integration fees, despite the official position that G Nook has no knowledge of back-room operations
- Dr. Park has allegedly attempted to obtain the Matchmaker's records through intermediaries. He refused.
- At least one Collective operative has undergone voluntary integration through the Matchmaker—off the books, using a false identity