John Percival Hackworth

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

Stephensonia

Description

Hackworth is a nanotech hacker, an artifex, which is to say a high level nanoengineer capable of managing significant projects involving massive rod logic matrices, AI, ractive interface, long term power supplies, and mediatronics.

As the father of Fiona Hackworth, he feels a father's obligation to ensure the future of his daughter, and seeks to acquire a counterfeit copy of the Ladies Illustrated Primer for her through use of the services of Dr. X and his off-grid personal matter compiler. He thus becomes embroiled in a web of inter-phyle intrigue that takes him away from his family and puts him on a quest to find The Alchemist which involves much work on an illicit nanotechnology called The Seed, which promises to free the people of The Celestial Kingdom, aka Middle Earth, aka Neo-Confucian China, from the corrupting influence of western ki. This work includes ten years imprisoned among the Drummers, a hive-mind FOQNE.

He is also King Coyote to Princess Nell in her adventures in the Land Beyond, and engineers the Confucian Primer for the quarter million orphaned chinese girls that Dr. X and Judge Fang wish to save. His control over the design allows him to engineer the girls' evolution into the Mouse Army which is on a quest to find Princess Nell, and who will one day pledge fealty to her when they find her and she disenchants them.