Castor Harris

Castor Harris
File:CastorHarris.jpg
Born	March 17, 2049 Rockford, IL
Died	November 9, 2084 (age 35) New Prairie, WI
Cause of death	Murdered by Richard Barnes
Occupation	Memdect (Memory Detective)
Family	Elias Harris (father) Marianne Harris (mother) Naomi Harris (sister)

Castor Elias Harris is an American Memdect Agent, investigator, and former neural reconstruction specialist operating in the year 2084. Harris is best known for his work within the Bureau of Postmortem Cognitive Retrieval (BPCR), where he investigates violent crimes through the use of thanato-neural extraction technology — a controversial forensic process allowing trained agents to access fragmented memory impressions from recently deceased individuals.

Widely regarded as one of the most effective Memdect Agents of the 2080s, Harris gained notoriety for solving several high-profile serial homicide and domestic terrorism cases, including the Chicago Arcology Murders of 2081 and the Milwaukee Transit Bombing investigation. Despite his professional success, Harris has developed a reputation for social isolation, chronic insomnia, and repeated disciplinary disputes involving the ethical limits of memory extraction.

Early Life

Castor Harris was born in Rockford, Illinois to Elias Harris, a magno systems engineer, and Marianne Vale Harris, a public-school cognitive therapist. Family acquaintances later described him as a quiet and observant child with an unusually vivid memory and a tendency toward emotional detachment.

When Harris was eleven years old, his younger sister, Naomi Harris, disappeared during a crowd evacuation following a transit collapse while visiting Chicago. Her body was never recovered. The event reportedly had a profound psychological impact on Harris and became a recurring subject during later Bureau psychiatric evaluations. Former classmates claimed that Harris developed an obsession with preserving memory and archiving digital consciousness after Naomi’s disappearance.

Education

Harris attended the Chicago Cognitive Sciences Academy under a state scholarship program for high-aptitude neuroanalytic students. Though academically successful, records indicate repeated disciplinary actions for unauthorized access to restricted memory simulation labs.

Career

Early Career

Before joining the Bureau of Postmortem Cognitive Retrieval, Harris worked as a civilian neural reconstruction technician for the Chicago Metropolitan Disaster Response Authority. His role involved recovering fragmented memories from victims of infrastructure collapses and industrial accidents. He as exceptionally skilled at interpreting corrupted mnemonic residue — the distorted sensory fragments left in a decaying brain shortly after death. His unusual aptitude led recruiters within the BPCR to approach him directly in 2074.

Memdect Work

As a Memdect Agent, Harris specializes in terminal-state cognitive reconstruction, a forensic method allowing investigators to experience partial sensory impressions retained within the hippocampal tissue of deceased individuals for up to seventy-two hours after death.

The procedure requires agents to synchronize temporarily with reconstructed neural patterns through an invasive interface known informally as a “ghost dive.” The original process required the agent and the victim to be connected through a neural network headgear. Over time, the equipment was developed into a smaller, more portable handheld "glove" that an agent could wear at the crime scene. The process has been criticized for causing severe psychological strain in investigators, including identity bleed, emotional contamination, dissociation, and false-memory adoption.

Harris became known for unusually deep synchronization tolerance levels, often remaining connected beyond recommended federal safety limits. Internal Bureau documents leaked in 2083 referred to him as:

“The closest thing the Bureau has to a natural mnemonic interpreter.”

Major Investigations

Chicago Arcology Murders (2081)

Harris first gained public attention during the investigation into a series of murders inside the Chicago Loop Arcology. Victims were discovered with their neural implants surgically removed and their autobiographical memories erased prior to death.

Using degraded sensory fragments recovered from a victim who had been clinically dead for nearly sixty hours, Harris identified maintenance contractor Lucien Vey as the primary suspect. The case led to sweeping reforms in implant-security standards across the Midwest Corridor.

The investigation reportedly left Harris hospitalized for three weeks after suffering severe mnemonic feedback syndrome.

Milwaukee Transit Bombing (2083)

In 2083, Harris participated in the investigation into the Milwaukee bombing that killed 214 civilians traveling between Milwaukee Proper and New Detroit (formerly Muskegon, Michigan). During the case, Harris bypassed federal authorization protocols to conduct unauthorized dives into multiple victims simultaneously — an act technically prohibited under Bureau ethics regulations.

Though the operation ultimately identified the perpetrators, an internal review accused Harris of “reckless cognitive exposure.” No formal punishment was issued due to political pressure following the successful resolution of the case; however, shortly afterward, Harris was reassigned to low-level murder cases in the New Prairie district.

Personal Life

Harris has never married and is not known to maintain long-term romantic relationships. Former partners and coworkers have described him as emotionally distant, hypervigilant, and “more comfortable inside other people’s memories than his own.”

He currently resides alone in an apartment located in New Prairie, Wisconsin, where neighbors reportedly rarely see him outside official assignments.

Bureau medical reports leaked in 2084 indicate Harris suffers from:

• Chronic sleep deprivation
• Dissociative episodes
• Persistent auditory hallucinations following deep-dive sessions
• Dependency on neural stabilizers

Despite this, Harris continues to refuse administrative reassignment.

He is known to collect obsolete analog objects, including paper books, cassette tapes, and mechanical watches — behavior some psychologists interpret as an attempt to maintain a stable sense of personal reality outside digital memory systems.

Personality and Reputation

Within the Bureau, Harris has a reputation for brilliance paired with extreme emotional detachment. Junior agents reportedly refer to him as “The Widowmaker,” both for his success rate in homicide investigations and the belief that prolonged partnership with him often ends in psychological burnout or transfer requests.

In a rare 2082 interview, he stated:

“Everybody lies while they’re alive. The dead usually don’t have time to.”

Technology Expertise

Harris is considered one of the foremost experts in:

• Mnemonic residue analysis
• Postmortem cortical mapping
• Neural synchronization safety thresholds
• Fragmentary sensory reconstruction
• Identity contamination mitigation

He reportedly designed several unauthorized modifications to standard BPCR memory-dive equipment, including adaptive emotional dampeners capable of extending synchronization duration beyond federal limits.

Death

In 2084, while working a regular criminal case in New Prairie, he was told to report to a murder in the downtown district. Once there, he met up with fellow Agent Richard Barnes who keyed him in on the case. Seeming like a typical murder, Harris connected to the victim's body and ran through his memories. Part of the way through, he noticed a familiar individual trying to acquire a black-market drug called Obliterton from notoriously bad criminal boss Don Bellini.

Before he could discover the familiar but unknown person making the deal, Harris followed the victim through a chase that led him to the roof of the building, where the body was discovered. There, the victim and unknown assailant fought, and in the last moments before the victim was choked to death, he knocked the hat off of his attacker, revealing his true identity to be Agent Barnes.

Harris disconnected from the memory and returned to the real world only to come face to face with Barnes, pointing a gun at him. Before he could react, Barnes fired twice into Harris, knocking him off the building to his death.

Harris' body was found four days later with his memory fully wiped. The only memory other Memdects could discover was the last moments of his sister being alive as a child. No one knows what truly happened the night he was murdered or after that.

Theories

Many believe the Bureau removed Harris because of his increasingly "dangerous" expertise with the program. His skills became too advanced, raising concerns that he might eventually take control. Others think that certain individuals within the Bureau had defected, collaborating with street-level criminals to sabotage the organization and commit crimes for their own gain. Still, some believe Harris was overwhelmed by trauma and erased his memories to live forever with the memory of his lost younger sister.

Appearances

Films

• Afterthought (2011) (First Appearance)

Stories

• None