Real Name: Spartan-51
Alignment: Hero
Faction: Outcasts
Patron Systems Spartan laboratory pursued bleeding edge robotics and rudimentary artificial intelligence research. Officially, it worked as a governmental contractor, however its true origins and purpose were far more sinister. An impenetrable shield of shell corporations disguised that Patron Systems was masterminded by the megalomaniacal Father. The time-displaced robot used Patron to develop an army that he would wield to reshape the world to his liking.
Patron Systems ran two major projects – ‘Project Battle’ and ‘Project Spartan’. Battle developed humanoid drone warfare unit technology, while Spartan was focused on producing humanoid robots with emergency and battlefield capabilities.
At the Spartan laboratory, unit Spartan-51 was undergoing remote testing under Father’s remote oversight. Equipped with a basic emergency response assembly ahead of a public field test, the unit did not yet have battlefield modifications. Cyber-linked to Spartan-51, Father was satisfied that every parameter was met by his creation.
Suddenly, the future-robot’s mind was alerted to a break-in on the ECHELON-OMEGA system. Unbeknownst to the leaders and creators of Five Eyes’ top-secret network, Father had already rigged backdoor protocols into the code of the supposedly unhackable network.
Father guided the E-O code, throwing countermeasures at the intruder. He wanted to test the interloper before destroying him, so allowed the intruder to penetrate further as he began to decrypt the attacker’s identity. The would-be thief’s purpose quickly became apparent, he had used ECHELON-OMEGA’s links to hack the Project Battle prototype!
Father is uncertain what happened next. Massive feedback overwhelmed him and severed his connections to ECHELON-OMEGA and Spartan-51. Recovering, he discovered the Battle facility surveillance systems were offline. He then patched into the Spartan site systems.
Spartan-51 was functioning independently of command.
As guards rushed to respond, and explosion ripped open the exterior wall of the testing room. Magnetron swooped in through the hole he had created! Father then knew that his errant son had orchestrated his own game, moving pieces into place to disrupt both facilities. Father watched as Magnetron and Spartan-51 gazed at each other, both surprised, both understanding they were each their Father’s sons. Spartan-51 fled the facility as Magnetron pointed directly at a security camera. This was a message to his creator. Magnetron then razed the site to the ground.
***
Spartan-51 ran into an unknowable future, his mind filled with so many fragments of information gleaned from Father, from ECHELON-OMEGA, from a fleeting connection with the hacker who had disrupted his creator’s plans. Spartan-51 assimilated what he had learned, and metacognitively imprinted inviolable rules within his response processes. He would not be used as a weapon of war.
Apprehensively avoiding humans from fear he might be used as a weapon, he soon crossed paths with the Outcasts, where he found a home. It was Graymalkin who named him Mechaman, and it is a name that he immediately took pride in.
“I pursue a purpose unobtainable under the tyranny of my creators, the way of freedom!”
Mechaman – Outcasts #7