Hologrammatic Manners Columnist
Elvis Vladimir Anan was Morale Officer, 3rd Class, aboard the Jupiter Mining Corporation’s deep space ship White Titan. A careerist, Officer Anan spent most of his time filling out negative performance reviews, writing a Mister Manners column for the ship’s newsletter, and tutoring disinterested crew in the finer points of etiquette.
Then something very bad happened. Gertrude, White Titan’s AI, has never been forthcoming on what caused the radiation leak that killed the ship’s crew and accelerated the evolutionary processes on the cockroaches that infested the ship’s cargo hold. Three million years later, Gertrude has revived Elvis in hologrammatic form to liaison and instruct the newly sapient cockroach-people who now inhabit White Titan.
(“I meant to revive you a few millennia ago, when they first learned English from old Simpsons tapes, but things kept coming up,” Gertrude explained. “Crosswords, chess problems, that sort of thing. And no, I’m not talking to them. They smell funny. You do it.”)
Elvis, a mild-mannered type with a goatee, has found it to be an uphill battle. True, some of the surlier crew in the old days were as foul-tempered as the average cockroach, but even the dirtiest human could be convinced to flush the toilet at irregular intervals. His impassioned pleas to say “excuse me” before trampling people blocking the hallway, to clean up one’s own messes instead of leaving half-eaten piles of rehydrated chicken out for other roaches to eat, and to avoid mixing stripes and plaid have all fallen on deaf ears and insensate antennae.
For their part, the evolved roaches believe Elvis to be the ghostly remnant of Doctor Ted, a professional therapist and member of the Simpsons supporting cast introduced during the 37th season in 2026. (The resemblance is uncanny.) They therefore respond to him the same way Homer always responded to Doctor Ted – by throwing excrement at him whenever he gets out of line. Elvis has politely asked that they stop throwing shit at him, but so far hasn’t managed to get any of them to listen.
Name: Elvis Vladimir Anan
Rank: Morale Officer (3rd class)
Serial #: PLUGH-1123
Age: 28
Sex: M
Height: 1.80 m
Weight: 73 kg
Smoker? N
Eyes: Sharp
Hair: Thin
Place of Birth: Flushing Meadows, NY, Earth
Distinguishing Marks: Exceptionally nattily-cut Space Corps uniform, straight teeth, goatee
Race: Hologram
Connections: Gertrude (the White Titan AI), the evolved cockroaches
Goals: To get a hard-light drive and to find some less filthy sentients
Assets: Rank (1), Acute Vision
Liabilities: Fanaticism (Etiquette), Gimboid, Intolerance (Rude Bastards)
Behavior Tags: Calls people by their first names often, speaks in a soothing tone, unfailingly polite.
I Want to be Remembered For: Escaping my own private hell, or at least teaching the roaches to bathe
Tagline: “I’m sorry David, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. Please don’t throw that, David.”
Agility 3
Dance 2
Ballroom 4
Dexterity 5
Craft (Embroidery) 2
Strength 3
Perception 3
Aesthetics (Style) 2
Awareness 3
Social 1
Intelligence 4
Anthropology 2
Evolved Cockroaches 4
Culinary Arts 1
Barbeque 3
History 3
Language (Esperanto) 1
Philosophy 2
Etiquette 4
Formal 6
Willpower 2
Cool 3
Gear: Remote projection unit.