Public Profile for Henry 'Cain' YeagerFrom Novapedia, your nova encyclopedia
Name: Henry Jones Yeager
Occupation: Former T2M Auxiliary member, known Teragen member, freelance private investigator (unlicensed).
Legal Status: American citizen currently sought for questioning regarding a series of crimes by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, MI5, and the BKA.
Location: Unknown. Known teleporter who seems to have no permanent address.
Identity: Public.
Nova Name: Cain, aka Cain the Kinslayer
Place of Birth: Northern Napa Valley, California, United States
Age: 27
Eruption: Unspecified Psychological Trauma.
Height: 1.83 meters
Weight: 102.5 kilograms
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Dark Brown
Distinguishing Marks: n/a
Approximate Power Level: As an early eruptee, Henry was at one time estimated to be in the top 30% of known novas in terms of raw destructive capacity, though no appearances he’s made publicly since his joining the Teragen have indicated a dramatic or even incremental increase in power. Adjusted for the current global climate, he is estimated to be in the upper 40% of mid-range novas in terms of destructive capacity and quantum channeling.
Known Quantum Powers: Cain is colloquially known in various circles as
“Hard Luck Henry”, “Mr. Bad Luck”, “Curse”, and “Shit Magnet”(citation needed), and his powers reflect that. He’s most known for what he calls his “Poltergeist”
[1], a manifestation of
Quantum Backlash Syndrome that causes various “nuisance” occurrences in the general area around him such as doors opening or closing, glass cracking or breaking, objects falling or breaking, or odd noises that seem to come from nowhere
(citation needed). The effect is something that Henry has learned to refine and focus, to the extent that he is capable of outright destroying complex machines by affecting a single component within
[2]. He is also capable of opening
spatial gates, or “portals”, which he used most famously in the
Tunguska Hotel Hostage of 2002.
It has been speculated publicly by sources within
Project Utopia that Henry has some form of erratic and undisciplined control over probability, but this has yet to be corroborated by medical scientists, who reported having difficulty even running experiments on a nova whose
quantum expression tends to break most fragile machines that enter his periphery. He has been recorded deflecting bullets
[3] several times in the past, notably in defense of other novas on his team during his brief stint with
T2M Auxiliary.
Henry’s intellect has scored off conventional IQ tests
[4], in terms of both response time and reasoning faculties.
Abilities/Special Skills: Although he has shown some aptitude for combat in field situations
[5], Henry claims his greatest aptitude is as an investigator
[6]. His clientele – if he has any – is unknown publicly. Even prior to his joining the
Teragen, Henry was known as a publicly and professionally private person. Little is known and verified about his interests and aptitudes.
Weapons Used: As a member of the Teragen and a self-styled private detective, Henry has been seen carrying an unspecified pistol
[7], though he has never been known to use it, and it has been speculated that he could not use such a weapon, as his ‘Poltergeist’ would likely break it. The only weapons he has been known to use publicly are his hands and his quantum powers.
Appearance and Personality: A handsome if somewhat plain young man, Henry has been compared by
NovaPhile Magazine to baseline cinema stars
Edward Norton and
John Cusack [8]. He wears his dark brown hair cropped short in a very general style and has brown or hazel eyes. He has a medium build and no visible abnormalities, scars, tattoos, or distinguishing marks, though he is generally bestubbled, and most pictures show him a couple days from having last shaved. Since his first public appearance with T2M Auxiliary, he has worn the same general outfit, consisting of black slacks, black wingtip shoes, a white dress shirt, black trench coat, and a necktie. Of small note is that the quality of Henry’s clothes appear to have improved over time (a speculated side effect of his time spent in proximity to
Raoul Orzaiz [9]) and that the plain black silk ties he wore during his time serving with Team Tomorrow appear to have been replaced in recent months with series of ties artfully emblazoned with the Teragen
”Null” symbol on them. Shortly before his split with
Project Utopia in 2003, he was asked in an interview with
N! Magazine to account for his somewhat unconventional and static form of dress, to which he quoted the Phil Foglio comic book version of Ambrose Bierce, “You learn the basics, have a hideous experience in a graveyard, they give you a trench coat and steal your razor. Like an assembly line, really.”
[9]In person, Henry is known for his somewhat roguish demeanor. He is quick with a joke or some biting bit of invective and tends to take things easily, although he’s easily stressed out and prone to fits of anger where he lashes out at anyone close by
(citation needed). His brash nature and somewhat edgy, aggressive personality have gotten him compared with
Andre ‘Bender’ Corbin, and it has been suggested that Corbin’s friendship with the
T2M Americas nova Jennifer Landers might have been sparked by his similar manner to Henry
(citation needed). His mood seems to have dropped considerably since his public falling out with Jennifer Landers, and it has been suggested by prominent nova psychologist
Dr. Romanalov Chesterfield that he may be suffering from acute depression. Henry’s reputation as a nexus point of bad luck and trouble is something he claims to bear with good cheer, and he has cheekily stated in the past that “I should have picked ‘Charlie Brown’ as my nova handle.”
[10] Early Life -----------------------------------------------------------
Henry was born to a salesman and his wife in California’s Napa Valley on April 20, 1981. Now public interviews from the
San Francisco Rashoud Clinic he entered after his eruption indicate that he grew up in a labor-class family that occupied a trailer park up until his late teens. He was an intellectually gifted child who excelled at school up until high school, when social alienation both forced and voluntary lead him to become an academic dilettante, who spent most of his free time studying literature, history, art, computers, medicine, science, and a variety of other subjects. At the age of sixteen, he transferred out of public high school and into a private home study program after being stabbed by a fellow student. He worked several part-time jobs in his small local area and made enough money to purchase a vehicle and make frequent road trips around the Pacific coastline, where he claims to have developed a love for “travel, shitty motel rooms, and tiny venues”.
[11]Eruption(See Main Article: Eruption) -----------------------------------------------------------
Henry’s eruption remains a matter of speculation. He claims to have erupted during a road trip somewhere between 14 March and 17 March 2000 and walked from somewhere outside Vallejo to the San Francisco Rashoud Clinic after his vehicle, a 1988 black Chevrolet Beretta, broke down from his own ambient quantum and was discarded near I-101. At that time, he disclosed no details of his eruption to the attending clinic staff, and further attempts to get him to discuss the matter have been met with plain refusal
[12]. The only other comment he’s made on the issue was in an interview with Henry Rollins on the International Film Channel in July 2006, where he said “The truth is, it’s stupid, and I don’t like talking about it. Nobody died or anything like that. I think Jenny’s the only one who knows all the details. Maybe you could get her to talk about them, now that we’re done.”
[13] Relationship with Slider and T2M Auxiliary Membership(See Main Article: Jennifer ‘Slider’ Landers)(See Main Article: Team Tomorrow Auxiliary)-----------------------------------------------------------
After arriving at San Francisco’s Rashoud Clinic on 20 March 2000, Henry was admitted and stayed at the clinic for sixteen days, during which time he met and befriended
Jennifer ‘Slider’ Landers, also a recent eruptee who had been visiting the Bay Area with her family from their home in Salt Lake City, Utah. During their overlapping stays, they became fast friends, and when Landers told Yeager that she planned to put college on hold to join Project Utopia, Henry decided to follow. Shortly after, both novas were placed in the
Team Tomorrow Auxiliary group, and it was announced in a press conference with Landers in November 2001 that they had been dating for “several months, now”.
[14] In Februrary 2002, Jennifer Landers was promoted to the newly created
T2M Americas branch, while Henry remained a member of the Auxiliary team. Despite a solid service record, a spokesman for Project Utopia indicated that the erratic and untested nature of Yeager’s powers made him too unstable to make a member of a core team, although it was also suggested by many that Henry made a less than ideal team player who seemed to be primarily concerned with the safety and security of Slider.
(citation needed) Any such misgivings harbored by the Project Utopia administrative staff did not reflect the reality of Yeager’s working life: of twenty-six missions that Landers was sent on between February 2002 and July 2003, Yeager volunteered for and was assigned as backup on twelve of them, and further volunteered for eighteen missions working with other branches in that time.
As a team player, Henry filled the role of emergency evac who was known especially for his innovative use of portals, which he credited to his unique understanding of spatial dimensions.
[15] While lacking the raw power of Slider or similar teleporters, he possessed an uncanny knack for tactical use of his dimensional gates, shown most elegantly during the
Club Riot Siege of 2003. Team members regarded him as a worthy strategist and tactician, albeit sometimes brash, affable, and arrogant. He is seen by many people as the spiritual predecessor to Team Tomorrow members
Andrew ’Skew’ Parker and
Andre ‘Bender’ Corbin, with whom he shared a similar temperament.
(citation needed) On 14 July 2003, it was announced by a spokesman for Team Tomorrow that Yeager had formally resigned, who was quoted as saying “Mr. Yeager has opted to resign from the Team Tomorrow Auxiliary team for a mixed bag of personal and professional reasons. We bear no grudge and wish him only the best in all future endeavors.”
[16] In light of Yeager’s joining the Teragen just over sixteen months later and immediately after the issuance of
The Null Manifesto, it has been speculated that Yeager opted to leave on the grounds of philosophical differences, though this remains a matter of conjecture.
What is known is that even after his resignation, Henry continued to see Jennifer Landers, whom he was frequently seen in public with, even at official Project Utopia functions. In May of 2004, they were seen attending a Project Utopia charity fundraiser for the
Ethiopian Terraformation Project in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Slider was seen wearing a diamond ring on her finger. When questioned on it by photographers, she demurred, smiled, and replied “Let’s not jump to any conclusions just yet, fellas.”
[17] Six months later, in November that year, Landers was seen attending the
T2M Americas Toys for Tots Charity Drive in Manhattan without the ring. In an appearance on Oprah two days later, she confessed that she and Henry had stopped seeing each other recently for reasons she refused to discuss.
[17] Yeager could not be reached for comment on this matter until his appearance on the Henry Rollins Show in July 2006, his first interview since shortly after resigning from T2M Auxiliary. During this interview, he expressed grief and sadness at the breakup and said that he was “still not over her”, though he confirmed that “it was necessary. There was really no other way.”
[18]Joining the Teragen (See Main Article: Teragen) -----------------------------------------------------------
Infamous Terat spokesperson and socialite
Raoul Orzaiz was one of the first to come out in open support of the Teragen after the issuance of the Null Manifesto on Halloween Night, 2005. In interviews with the
BBC the following day, the Count identified himself as a sympathizer and member of the nova separatist group headed up by
Divis Mal, and made entreaties for like-minded novas to join them. One of the novas who felt compelled by this new group was Yeager, who used his teleporting abilities to take himself to the
Orzaiz Manor in Spain. The details of Yeager and Orzaiz’s meeting has never been made public, though it was mentioned briefly in an interview with Orzaiz held on the FOX program
The O’Reilly Factor, where the Count responded to an assertion that the Teragen’s philosophy was comparable to that of the Third Reich by pointing out that many civic-minded and decent citizens had seen the virtue of the Teragen philosophy, and named Yeager, a former member of Team Tomorrow, as an example. He went on to say, “I didn’t have to sell Mr. Yeager onto our philosophy or inculcate him to our teachings. The day after the Null Manifesto was issued, he was on my doorstep asking to become a part of our circle. It’s clear that he’d harbored thoughts similar to my own for quite a while.”
[18]For the six months that followed, Yeager was a regular resident of Orzaiz Manor and frequent patron of
The Amp Room, where he built a reputation as an outspoken advocate for
nova rights, especially in situations where novas were forced or otherwise coerced to mute or shunt off their
quantum expressions for the comfort of others. While his stance was seen as radical by some, he denied advocating violence to achieve his desired ends, and was known to quote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Karl Marx extensively in his rhetoric.
[19] The r0xx0r Liberation Incident (See Main Article: Jan ‘r0xx0r’ Schlicting) Of most critical note was his advocacy for the release of
Jan ‘r0xx0r’ Schlicting , a German nova who had been committed to a mental institution by him family after they learned that his quantum expression created a constant stream of animated, holographic cartoon characters that surrounded him at all times. After numerous rebuffed public appeals to the German government to release Schlicting, who had passed a battery of psychological evaluations to certify his sanity, Yeager took the matter into his own hands by setting up a series of “portal traps” throughout the hospital used to imprison the staff in one large room, at which point Yeager walked inside, opened the door, and escorted Schlicting outside, after which teleporting himself and Schlicting off the building grounds and to an undisclosed location.
[20] r0xx0r’s current whereabouts are unknown, though it has been speculated that he is living in Japan.
(citation needed)Repercussions of the so-called ‘r0xx0r Liberation Incident’ have been far-reaching in Germany as well as elsewhere in the EU. The German government and the BKA came under heavy fire in the court of public opinion over what was seen in retrospect as the forced commitment of an otherwise sane individual who happened to have a socially awkward manifestation of QBS. The German government has been roundly criticized for years for their treatment of novas going back to before
The Newsman Incident, and the discovery of Schlicting’s forced imprisonment was leapt upon by the global press. Currently, the BKA still seeks both Yeager and Schlicting for questioning, and no formal apology has been issued.
Life as Private Investigator In August 2006, Yeager moved and set up permanent residency in Manhattan’s
Blackburn Hotel, where he established a private investigative business that catered exclusively to novas, and most frequently members of the Teragen. While originally licensed in the state of New York for this function, his license was revoked in June 2007 after he fled the country in connection with the death of Nepalese nova
Tenzig ‘Sutra’ Norge, a matter he is still wanted for questioning in.
[21] Since that incident, Yeager has continued to operate as a private detective to various novas who have managed to track him down, generally via contacts within the Teragen. It is unknown where he may be operating out of currently, though it has been speculated that he may be based somewhere in eastern Europe.
(citation needed) Identity as Cain In September 2007, a business card bearing the name
‘Cain Investigations’ surfaced in the hands of an unnamed Chinese businessman who, according to MI5, had been seeking to order an assassination on his wife, a foreign diplomat. Apparently believing the business card to be that of a professional hitman, he called the number on the card and had a brief conversation with the person on the other end. Shortly thereafter, screaming could be heard from the man’s hotel room in London. Police were dispatched to the scene and found the man dead when they arrived. Both the business card and the man’s cellular phone were used to corroborate his intentions, and it was determined that his time of death was less than five minutes after the phone call terminated. The wounds the man suffered were consistent with multiple lacerations, and the official result of death was blood loss and tissue trauma. It was subsequently verified that the business card belongs to Yeager and that he is currently operating under the name ‘Cain Investigations’, but it has not yet been determined whether he was capable of inflicting the wounds or if, indeed, he had anything to do with the incident.
[23]Public Image-----------------------------------------------------------
Since his first public appearances with T2M Auxiliary, the apex of Yeager’s popularity occurred when he was dating Jennifer Landers. They were ranked #3 on
The SUN’s ‘Top Ten List of Hottest Nova Couples’ in 2003. While neither had much marketability alone initially, the idea of a nova couple in the T2M Auxiliary ranks was quickly picked up on by the public, and the pair made appearances in the official Team Tomorrow comic book as secondary characters until Slider herself became a core character. Both Yeager and Landers were favorites of the age 15-25 female demographic, and Yeager himself ranked very well amongst that same group, a rarity for a male nova without any
cosmetic quantum enhancement. There are three versions of the ‘Henry Yeager’ action figure currently available from the 2002, 2003, and 2006 lines. The 2002 and 2003 versions from the ‘T2M Aux’ line are remarkably similar, and were the subject of criticism by
ToyFare Magazine for their bland design. The 2006 design, however, featured the figure in the ‘Villains and Rogues’ lineup, and was markedly different, featuring a darker profile, sinister look, and a series of add-ons. Yeager was reportedly unhappy with the decision to make the 2006 figure, himself, stating that while it “looked kinda cool”, he was also “glad that the rights on my image ran out for the Project this year.”
[24]Despite what one could perceive as the radical changes in his personal philosophy and his split with Jennifer Landers, Yeager is proud that he seems to be taken more seriously as a member of the Teragen than he was as a member of T2M. While the focus of any attention on him while with Project Utopia seemed to center around his relationship with Slider and his
quantum abilities, since joining the Teragen he has been interviewed by numerous blog authors of note and opnet sites catering to radicalist and counterculture groups such as
Philadelphia City Paper,
NPR’s This American Life,
VICE Magazine, and
The AV Club, chiefly on subjects revolving around philosophy, politics, and nova rights.
Yeager’s recognition is highest amongst various subculture and counterculture groups, especially graphic novel aficionados, gamers, body artists, hardcore and punk musicians, high school girls, and fans of crime dramas. He was ranked number 7 on the
New York Times poll of ‘Teragen Members You Wouldn’t Mind Your Child Admiring’ of July 2007
[26] and has rather broad appeal amongst fans of the Teragen, although Pandamoinon has yet to produce any merchandising with his likeness on it.
Known for his bitter and sardonic sense of personal style and wit in person, Henry has a reputation for being thoughtful, with a well-developed sense of
schadenfreude. This image of the world-weary private eye archetype became complete In October 2005, when he began to be seen smoking Djarum Black cigarettes. The Djarum corporation has subsequently sought to seek his endorsement, though he has reportedly not responded.
Tributes and Portrayals-----------------------------------------------------------
- Appeared in issues 4-10, 13, 22, & 27 of T2M Adventures!, the officially licensed Team Tomorrow Auxiliary comic book.
- Portrayed by baseline actor Geoffrey Prince Andrews in the OpNet drama ”Slider Under Fire!”.
- At a Dropkick Murphy’s concert in 2004, the band performed a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s song ‘Fortunate Son’ which they dedicated to “Hard Luck Henry”.
- The September 2003 issue of the men’s magazine HUSTLER featured a ‘Jane & Hank’ photo spread featuring actors in various sexual poses who resembled Landers & Yeager.
- In January 2008, the Irish folk-punk band Flogging Molly covered Elvis Costello’s song ‘Blame it on Cain’ with the lyrics rewritten to strongly indicate they were referring to Yeager’s new moniker.
- Douglas Kleiner’s spy thriller ‘Yuri the Butcher’ features a private detective character bearing Yeager’s appearance accompanied by his secretary, a spunky, red-headed girl.
- The unlicensed ‘Teragen’ 2007 calendar showed Yeager in a group photo for the month of May.
- The 2006 multi-platform fighting game release ’Teragen Unleashed!’ featured Yeager as a character available as downloadable content for a small purchase price, and he ranked third for highest number of downloads behind ’Synapse’ and ’Prodigy’.
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Estimated Power Levels:
Strength: 3
Intelligence: 6
Speed: 5
Offense: 5
Defense: 6
Versatility: 7
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