Fiction: The Line: Characters
(The Statesman)

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Name: Bryce Oliver Bartley

Height: 5'11"

Weight: 175 pounds

Hair: Light brown

Eyes: Blue

Occupation: Futurist, adventurer, entrepreneur

Ethnicity: Caucasian (American citizen of English extraction)

Known relatives: R.P. Bartley (father, deceased), Emily Bartley (mother, deceased), Julie Bartley (wife, deceased)

Education: Dropped out of M.I.T. his junior year, dual majoring in computer science and robotics

Aliases/nicknames: Bartman, Richie Rich

Skills/abilities: The Statesman is one of the world's pre-eminent software engineers, personally coding the kernel and core elements of Chipware LiveOS, which runs 65% of the world's personal computers. He's also a world-renowned expert in robotics and rocketry, two "hobbies" he's had since childhood that have blossomed into professional opportunities, with his work being used by NASA, JPL, Lockheed Martin and many others. He utilizes a jetpack of his own design that uses a hyper-efficient process to take in and propel air at massive volumes, allowing him to fly at speeds of 80 miles per hour for a distance of at most 200 miles. His uniform is a specially designed carbon fiber fabric which is both lightweight and resistant to small arms fire. Inside, he wears a nanotechnology-based exoskeleton which gives him the abiliity to lift (press) 15 tons and can be used to network with and control machines with a touch. His googles are based on the design for Google Glass, but have been heavily enhanced with a specialized version of LiveOS that allows him to use them like a fully powered desktop computer, and offers him a host of extrasensory abilities (night vision, x-ray vision, the ability to track and identify signals, range finding) as well. The Statesman wields a multi-purpose pistol which can fire disorienting and blinding flashes of illumination, concussive rays of force, a distruptor ray which can initiate immediate and painless unconsciousness in mammals and sonic waves designed to soothe the amygdyla. He carries several sets of passive, non-chafing restraints under his jetpack. He has an IQ of 193.

Best known for: Being rich, creating Chipware and the attendant technologies, his wife's tragic death

Known affiliations: The Line, Chipware

Marital status: Widower

Brief personal history: When a nine-year-old Bryce Bartley used scrap and antique cars to create a twenty foot tall robot mecha suit, destroying his parents' garage and ending up in their pool, his parents knew he was not an average scion of wealth. The banker and socialite encouraged his desires to achieve by sending him away to study in the world's most sophisticated educational arenas. Whenever there was an industry that interested young Bryce, his father would invest heavily to get access for his only son, and this led to an education that seemed slow by traditional means but ended up giving the young Bartley a wealth of practical knowledge in a wide variety of technical fields.

At MIT, Bartley met his biggest corporate rival Melissa Mathis and his future business partner Chuck Graves. Graves and Mathis were dating at the time, and she came to view Graves' close friendship with Bartley as a threat. Trying to make Bartley look bad, Mathis sabotaged a presentation that Bartley and Graves were to present for a student organization fundraising effort. Graves discovered her handiwork, recognizing a coding pattern she favored, and saved the presentation but broke up with her immediately afterwards.

Graves began to talk to Bartley about starting their own company and going off on their own. Bartley talked to his father about it, and his father immediately wrote a check for fifty million dollars. Chipware opened its doors that week, launched the word proccessing software Chipware Chatter six months later (after Graves ran a "hostile acquisition" of a software shop called Nixin), initiating the software revolution.

Around this time, Bartley met social activist Julie Taylor at a tech conference, where she was picketing for more women to get into technology. Bartley -- not yet a household name -- asked her why she was outside and she began her speech about the failures of STEM education to serve female students. He interrupted and said, "I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. Would you like to come inside and do a keynote speech on this? I have ninety minutes, but I'd be happy to split some of it with you, because what you're saying makes sense."

He ushered her inside, presented alongside her and announced a national scholarship initiative for women and underrepresented groups to get into technological fields. Taylor worked closely with Bartley to found this program and over time, romance bloomed between them. They married in a private ceremony in Bali two years later.

During this period, Bartley's father began to become ill, sick with colon cancer. He asked the younger Bartley to take his part at a trade summit with a reclusive nation called Kunganchi. Bartley didn't understand what was at stake until he met the nation's leader, Dr. Hifikepunye Okonkwo (often known by his translated ceremonial title, Pride). When Bartley introduced himself, Dr. Okonkwo cited three flaws in the kernel code of Chipware's new mobile operating system from memory and offered to come fix them. Bartley was blown away by the genius world leader, both the same age but with drastically different circumstances, and started getting more ideas on how he could better serve mankind.

Graves handled the business while Bartley stayed in the code, perfectly splitting the enormous profits between them. They sold their enormously successful social network YourSpot for $17 billion before predicted server failures -- which the new owners neglected to fix because they wanted to make their sale money back first -- caused the site to become abandoned by the masses. Graves grew concerned because Bartley was spending more and more time in philanthropy, taking the focus away from new, profitable products. This led to big arguments between the old friends, and they grew apart, leading Graves to rekindle his friendship with Mathis, CEO of a huge search engine company.

While touring Detroit as part of a plan to revitalize the city's economy, Bartley and his wife were badly injured by a delapidated building collapsing into a structure they were visiting. Bartley was saved, but his wife's injuries were too severe and she passed away. Bartley's injuries drove him to focus on developing new technology to help the injured, first responders and emergency personnel better protect themselves and have mobility. Once the initial prototypes of Chipware Exosuits were approved by regulators, Bartley held a press conference to note that the newly minted Julie Bartley Foundation would oversee the free distribution of this technology wherever it was needed.

Graves was concerned about spending billions of dollars and getting no return on investment and confronted Bartley. Bartley told him that his life had changed and if Graves wasn't on board, perhaps Chipware needed to end. Graves balked at losing the genius behind the brand and relented, determined to make profits somehow, and then got engineers to weaponize the exoskeleton technology, selling it at enormous profits to G8 nations with the help of Mathis' connections. This infuriated Bartley, who realized he couldn't leave the company but couldn't let this stand. Enacting a poison pill clause in their partnership agreement, one demanded by Bartley's father before he died of colon cancer, Bartley made it so all future initiatives of that level would require sign off by both parties or be scrapped, mostly keeping Graves in line. Around this time Divinity made her public debut, reminding Bartley of his childhood with mecha and ideas of heroism. He repurposed some prototype designs that never got sold to the government and launched into action as Seattle's guardian, stopping crime not just with a stun ray and punching, but follow ups from his deceased wife's foundation to insure rehabilitation and job placement.

When Divinity brokered her deal with the United Nations, many countries called upon Bartley to engage the process. He became fast friends with the goddess, and with his longstanding relationship with Pride, they both helped implement her technological gift safely and establish her island headquarters before accepting her offer to stand in a new pantheon.

Written by Hannibal Tabu, character design by Quinn McGowan.

The Line is superhero fiction created by Hannibal Tabu.
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