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**Rad Albert** (born 301) is a figure of the C9 universe, recorded as homo sapiens (umbral-plasma variant), one of the young people who formed the House of Confidence on Aerogaea 347n. He came out of the red desert and industrial shelter systems.
Rad is recorded for tactile telekinesis. His skin is containment vessel. It exists to keep his internal energy in. When he shifts to shadow form, it is not a power-up — it is a containment breach. Raw destructive entropy venting outward. The record notes painful and dangerous. In metabolic terms, he is creating matter or fusing steel costs energy. He doesn't use magic; he uses ATP. To build a steel gate, he needs to consume massively. If he doesn't eat, his body burns its own muscle mass to fuel the forge. He is literally putting his own flesh into the walls. The record notes disproportionately large and veiny. They radiate excess thermal energy when forging or using telekinesis — heat sinks.
The record follows him across 4 periods of life, from year 325 onward.
Rad appears in 9 of the 19 chapters written so far, beginning with The Glass House, chapter 6[1].
## Early life
**Rad Albert** (born 300) is a figure of the C9 universe, the smith and coordinator of the Great Plateau, and the man who built and held the shelter that took in the House of Confidence after the Klak Grove fell. He is an umbral-plasma variant, and his hands are the conduit.
Rad Albert was born in year 301. He was 29 years old in 330, the year the Klak Grove was destroyed. First met after the Klak Grove is destroyed. The records give his origin as the red desert / industrial shelter systems. His development is recorded as resource conservation (he hoards energy because his powers drain him rapidly). His standing at this time was shelter technician / husband. Physically, he deliberately suppresses his power to avoid detection. He takes the beating from Commander Fredrick without fighting back to protect the cover story. What defines him in this period is Mae. He grounds her. She navigates the dark; he builds the light (power/infrastructure). He hides his power because he knows that if BNCY finds out he is a "Living Reactor," they will strap him to a grid and drain him dry. He takes orders from idiots (Commander Fredrick) to protect his wife, Mae. Mae. She is the only one who knows he is holding back an ocean of power.
He is married to [[life/mae-albert|Mae Albert]], and their son is [[life/matthew-albert|Matthew Albert]]. [[life/samantha-grace-albert-nakayama|Samantha Grace Albert-Nakayama]] is his niece. He came out of the Red Desert and the industrial shelter systems, and by year 330 he was running the plateau, its power, its water and its walls.
## Leader of the great plateau (330–339)
## Early life and the shelter years
His standing at this time was leader of the great plateau / shadow smith. Physically, he is working 20 hours a day. He is building the stream processor, the showers, and the defenses. He looks exhausted but unbreakable. What defines him in this period is sam albert. The record notes the family reunion. He likely creates custom gear for her (or helps tune her weaponry). His standing at this time was leader of the great plateau. He stops hiding. He takes 80 refugees into the desert and builds a city from scratch. He works 22 hours a day. He fuses the rock to make shelters. He heats the water with his hands. He becomes a skeletal wreck, burning himself out to ensure "his people" survive the winter.
Rad was born in year 300. He worked as a shelter technician in the years before the displacement and kept his abilities out of sight deliberately, to avoid being noticed, which cost him. When [[life/commander-fredrick|Commander Fredrick]] called him a liar and picked him up by the collar and threw him into the shelves, he took it and did not fight back, because the cover was worth more than the answer[1].
## Settlement elder (340 onward)
He got up slowly afterwards, with the deliberateness of a man who has considered staying down and rejected it, and looked at Fredrick[1].
His standing at this time was settlement elder / defense contractor. Physically, his red hair fades to gray/rust. He moves less, using his Tactile Telekinesis to do the heavy lifting. What defines him in this period is he is the father figure to the 80 souls he saved.
## The Great Plateau
## Later years
He is a large man who takes up space without filling it the way intimidating people do; he simply exists at a scale that makes you aware of the dimensions of the room. He waits with the expression of somebody who has already made the calculation and is letting the other person catch up[1].
Physically, "The Rust." His hair is gone (or white), and his skin looks like cracked iron. He moves slowly. The city is self-sustaining now. He sits on his porch, watching the lights come on—lights he powered for twenty years. He is empty, but the city is full.
He took in eighty refugees and put a settlement around them. When one of them, an older woman with grey at her temples and the bearing of someone who has made decisions under pressure and expects to make more, looked at him about it, he smiled and said happy housewarming[1].
## Abilities
He recognised his niece at the shelter, mid-sentence, and stopped: *Wait. Samantha?*[1]
The mechanism on record is tactile telekinesis.
Through the plateau chapters he is at a console, tracking numbers that are still, barely, in the survivable range[2]. He found [[life/chryssander-randolf-lyall-helvig|Chryssander]]'s temperature professionally unacceptable and put him on a cot, and could tell the particular wrong of an engine that had given more than it had from every other kind of wrong, having learned the difference over years[3].
Rad can fuse materials at a molecular level. He doesn't need bolts or welding torches; he touches two steel beams, and they become one. Must maintain physical contact. He cannot lift a truck with his mind from across the room; he has to put his hand on the bumper. He can infuse "Shadow Matter" into physical weapons, making them lighter, sharper, or capable of phasing through armor. He is turning his entire body into a cloud of high-energy dark plasma. He becomes intangible and incinerates what he passes through. He releases the containment on his skin. He becomes a walking cloud of dark plasma that incinerates matter. Every second in this form burns 1% of his body mass. If he stays in it for two minutes, he will die of starvation/organ failure. It is a suicide switch he only uses to save the family. The effect answers to contact (Telekinesis) / Desperation (Shadow Form). He is entering Shadow Form burns his body's fat and muscle reserves as fuel. If he stays in it too long, he will literally consume himself and die of starvation/organ failure upon reverting.
He read the device out of the cache. Standard issue carries a stamp and this carried nothing, and he had seen the frequency signature once before, three years earlier, on equipment belonging to somebody who was not authorised to be at the first shelter. Somebody had run a parallel operation six months ahead of them[3].
### Novice
At the gate he braced the upper rail and reinforced the hinges through the night, set down the weld when Chryssander came to him, and asked what he needed. He is a full head taller and twice the mass, and he had been looking at Chryssander the same way since the young man arrived on the plateau: as somebody he has decided is worth the attention, with the questioning finished. When it was over he carried him, and did not put him down when asked, and set him against the gate carefully when it was time[4].
He can lift heavy crates. He can heat metal with his hands. Shadow Form is uncontrollable and causes him to pass out immediately.
## Physiology
### Mastery
Rad's power runs on his own metabolism rather than on anything borrowed. Creating matter or fusing steel costs energy, and the energy is his: to build a gate he has to eat enormously, and if he does not eat, the body takes the fuel out of his own muscle. What goes into the walls comes out of him.
He can reshape metal instantly upon touch. Shadow Form can be sustained for combat bursts (minutes). He can forge "Living Shadow" weapons for allies.
His skin is a containment vessel, and holds his internal energy in. The shadow form is not an escalation, it is the containment failing, entropy venting outward, and it is dangerous to be near and worse to be.
### Decline/Shift
He is built broad and heavy through the shoulders, with thick forearms and hands out of proportion to the rest of him, and the hands are the conduits. His eyes are luminous yellow. He wears an aged grey lab coat with the sleeves rolled.
He can no longer shift into Shadow Form (heart can't take the strain). He focuses entirely on crafting and logistics.
Because the power drains him fast, he hoards. Conservation is not a habit he picked up; it is the shape of his physiology expressed as behaviour.
## Character
His perception runs standard / patient. He does not rush. He processes problems structurally. If I move beam A, does roof B collapse? When he touches a wall or a person, he feels the load-bearing stress. He knows exactly how much weight the beam can take before it snaps. The burden: he walks through the settlement and feels the fragility of everything. He knows the water pipe is 90% corroded. He knows the east wall is about to crumble. He carries the anxiety of the entire infrastructure. He thinks in logistical. He connects people to resources. He sees 80 refugees and instantly calculates water rations, bedding space, sanitation needs.
He does not rush. He works structurally: if the beam moves, does the roof come down. Faced with eighty refugees he is not moved first and organised second; he arrives already counting water rations, bedding space and sanitation.
Early in life he held to a lie about hisself: "I am just a mechanic. Let the heroes do the fighting." / “I have to bleed to be useful.” Later he came to hold the opposite: "The fire doesn't have to burn me to keep them warm.". As a young man, his voice was quiet, submissive (tactically), grumbling. "Just keep your head down." In his prime it became authoritative, loud (over the sound of machinery), direct. "Get that turbine moving or we all freeze!" In old age it turned gruff, proud, warm. "I built this house so you could play in it.".
He connects people to resources, which is the whole of his leadership and most of his affection. He thanked Marcus for handing him a box in the ruined library in the way people say things when they mean considerably more than the words[1].
In later years the red in his hair goes to grey and rust, he moves less, and he does the heavy lifting at a distance. He is the father figure to the eighty he saved.
## Family
He is married to [[life/mae-albert|Mae Albert]].
Rad is married to [[life/mae-albert|Mae Albert]]. Their son is [[life/matthew-albert|Matthew Albert]]. [[life/samantha-grace-albert-nakayama|Samantha Grace Albert-Nakayama]] is his niece.
## Appearances
Rad is present in 9 of the 19 chapters written so far.
- [[pages/glass-house-chapter-6-the-arena|The Glass House, chapter 6]][1]
- [[pages/glass-house-chapter-8-the-cave-and-the-guide|The Glass House, chapter 8]] — Rad Albert was a large man who took up space without filling it the way intimidating people do.[2]
- [[pages/glass-house-chapter-10-the-hunter-s-ground|The Glass House, chapter 10]][3]
- [[pages/glass-house-chapter-12-the-new-normal|The Glass House, chapter 12]] — Four hundred kilometers south, Rad Albert found Chrys's temperature professionally unacceptable.[4]
- [[pages/glass-house-chapter-13-the-ally-and-the-ghost-op|The Glass House, chapter 13]][5]
- [[pages/glass-house-chapter-14-the-catch-22|The Glass House, chapter 14]][6]
- [[pages/glass-house-chapter-15-the-crucible|The Glass House, chapter 15]] — Rad heard it before he understood what he was hearing.[7]
- [[pages/glass-house-chapter-17-the-explosion|The Glass House, chapter 17]] — His weld was running on the lower hinge, the gate having taken the detonations without failing, but the lower hinge had cracked under the second wave and Rad had been at it since.[8]
- [[pages/book-two-book-two-chapter-one|The Silent Decade, chapter 1]] — He was on his side when Akio found him, his enormous white wings half-spread across the basalt, the armor Rad had forged still buckled across his chest.[9]
- [[pages/glass-house-chapter-8-the-cave-and-the-guide|The Glass House, chapter 8]]
- [[pages/glass-house-chapter-10-the-hunter-s-ground|The Glass House, chapter 10]]
- [[pages/glass-house-chapter-12-the-new-normal|The Glass House, chapter 12]]
- [[pages/glass-house-chapter-15-the-crucible|The Glass House, chapter 15]]
- [[pages/book-two-book-two-chapter-one|The Silent Decade, chapter 1]]
## See also
- [[life/mae-albert|Mae Albert]]
- [[life/matthew-albert|Matthew Albert]]
## References
1. [[pages/glass-house-chapter-6-the-arena|The Glass House, chapter 6]]
2. [[pages/glass-house-chapter-8-the-cave-and-the-guide|The Glass House, chapter 8]]
3. [[pages/glass-house-chapter-10-the-hunter-s-ground|The Glass House, chapter 10]]
4. [[pages/glass-house-chapter-12-the-new-normal|The Glass House, chapter 12]]
5. [[pages/glass-house-chapter-13-the-ally-and-the-ghost-op|The Glass House, chapter 13]]
6. [[pages/glass-house-chapter-14-the-catch-22|The Glass House, chapter 14]]
7. [[pages/glass-house-chapter-15-the-crucible|The Glass House, chapter 15]]
8. [[pages/glass-house-chapter-17-the-explosion|The Glass House, chapter 17]]
9. [[pages/book-two-book-two-chapter-one|The Silent Decade, chapter 1]]
1. [[pages/glass-house-chapter-8-the-cave-and-the-guide|The Glass House, chapter 8]]
2. [[pages/glass-house-chapter-10-the-hunter-s-ground|The Glass House, chapter 10]]
3. [[pages/glass-house-chapter-12-the-new-normal|The Glass House, chapter 12]]
4. [[pages/glass-house-chapter-15-the-crucible|The Glass House, chapter 15]]