Lucky McDaniels's Questionnaire

Lucky doesn't live in any one city, at least not for long. Instead, he travels in an electric camper van and finds safe places to park when he needs to rest. Given his line of work, his desire to stay separated from the organized financial systems of the world, and a general dislike of mundane living, Lucky travels from place to place on a weekly basis. His trips can be as short as a few miles but typically involve hours long drives meandering down roads seemingly at random until there's an electric charging port. All the better to keep his digital crimes covered and to stay out of the spotlight as much as possible. 

Lucky gets his money from two primary sources: work and crime. He accepts work where he can in his travels, often acting as a body guard, a parking lot attendant, a doorman, a valet driver. It's not much in the way of a livable income, but it looks good on paper and keeps the IRS off of his back. That makes his crimes a little easier to get away with. Operating out of his mobile home, Lucky logs on to the world wide web, finds CEOs of mid-level businesses operating in finance, consulting, loans and bail bonding, and goes on spearphishing campaigns. Once he's managed to siphon a chunk of their money, he uses it to buy favors online. Access. Entry points. Information. He's managed to disrupt a few banks now with his efforts, holding data on debts and debtors hostage and deleting the lists even after landing the ransom. It's expensive work, though, as he's just one man and needs the help of many other hackers and specialists online to pull off these grand schemes. His recreation budget is very limited and he finds excess spending on unnecessary things to be a waste and weakness. He also will vehemently defend his expensive collection of technogadgets and tools as a long-term investment and not an addiction. 

The permanent and complete removal of debt and debt generating systems. Especially in regards to interest. 

Lucky sees the ongoing institution of financial ebs and flows to be a manipulation of shadow brokers and sadistic elites to destabilize and disrupt the happiness and freedom of all others. He believes that interest, as a financial concept and a reality, is a sin. An objective evil. A demand to create something from nothing - no extra money can be created by the borrower so interest inevitably harms the borrower and established a power dynamic wherein the financial institution owns and controls the borrowers life and decisions. Student loans, payday loans, small business loans, all put an expectation to return more than was given. Investments and stock purchases lead to men demanding infinitely more money than they put in from a system of finite growth. And when they don't get what they want, they leave behind craters. Ghettos and landfills, abandoned towns and trailer parks, complexes where renters can't afford to live. And the children forced to live in those conditions, limited by what they are born into, doomed to stagnate and fester.

Lucky was one such kid and hates the world for.it. Not the people, not individuals, but the ones that he believes are holding the reins. Lucky would and may have already killed to accomplish his goals. He doesn't know if he's been safe and thorough enough to avoid being on a government's watch- or wanted-list. He knows his life would be better, more comfortable if he just settled down and used his skills for something beneficial to the capital world around him but he prefers to fight and thrash. 

Lucky McDaniels was born Gage Ermine Lukken and had a social security number that was taken advantage of when he was just seven months old. His parents, destitute and desperate, utilized their newborn's fresh credit and ran it into the ground in an attempt to provide for their child, to fend off repomen, and to try to make ends meet. It didn't last long and they were homeless before he was in school.

Lucky didn't know about this until he was attempting to have medical coverage for his prosthetic arm through government provided insurance. He wasn't approved and his information was suddenly available to debt collectors who saw dollar signs. His mailbox was filled. His phone had to be shut off. Strangers in costumes knocked on his door while holding thick envelopes containing summons, or holding something lethal just out of view of the peephole. His birth defect, his disability, was what he saw to be the source of so many problems. But finding his life has been guided into this hell simply because his family needed to eat, to have a place to live, and they just didn't generate enough wealth for some suits in a steel tower was when it all changed. Bank statements, credit reports, denials, refusals, countless calls and texts and emails. Every time he tried to set up a new line or move somewhere else and registered his location or even made a rent payment, they just started over.

He abandoned civilization for a few years, living in the woods and connecting to the Internet through public access points and libraries. He learned all that he could and even put together his own prosthesis that has the strength to crush a coconut and the dexterity to solder microscopic electronic components at high speeds. He learned to program and create worms and viruses to funnel money and guide it into even better crafts and creations, the customization of a van, the means to an end. 

Nora Claire Lukken is Lucky's older sister. While born and raised in the same environment, her experience of it was quite different. Her physiology is typical and her intellect is average, according to Lucky, and this average existence contributed to her success in life. She manages the office of a small road paving company and is Lucky's first point of contact when he needs something from the civilized world. She views him as an eccentric, possibly insane genius and an annoying brat. They have daily phonecalls in the evening, usually lasting a half an hour but sometimes extending through the night after something big happens. Or when they get to drinking and reminiscing. When he is in Flagstaff, Arizona Lucky visits Nora and the two benefit from exposure to extremes. Lucky gets a view at normalcy and what comforts it brings, how life isn't entirely garbage and can even be enjoyable. Nora is more exposed to and aware of the failings of the world, especially the lack mental health support from the communities that Lucky passes through and prepares her family as best as she can for emergency and tragedy. Both could swap places but both choose not to, driven by different ambitions. 

Derrick Stevens is one of Lucky's victims and has been trying to learn what he can about the men who ruined his life. His small bank, little more than a loansharking operation with a vault, had its futures decimated when Lucky held their systems for ransom. Derrick didn't go to the cops, thinking they might look into the operation of his business and find something they didn't like, so he settled for paying the digital pirates and hoping for the best. His computers were unlocked and almost everything was just as it had been. But their data on debts, their primary source of income, had been wiped. They had some paper files, enough to cover a few months, but they relied on digital ledgers to work collections. A ledger that Lucky had encrypted, corrupted, deleted, saved over, and deindexed. He left neither hair nor fingerprint of his tampering, making it all the harder for Derrick to find a clue. But his ties to larger, shadier organizations has allowed him privileges and extra sets of eyes attached to men who very much want their money. He has a drive for revenge and wants Lucky alive - to work for him - or dead. 

Tanya Cruthers, known as GreenOctobit online, is one of Lucky's digital assistants. She has an expertise in social engineering and often acts as the human element of Lucky's operations. Living in New York City, she has physical access to a large number of world banking and trading headquarters as well as Wall Street proper. She's not a fan of Lucky, not as a person at least, but enjoys aiding him in his oddly wholesome villain antics. And she also enjoys the money he gives her for her work. Tanya is quick witted, charming, and somehow capable of making bad jokes sound good. Lucky is both impressed by and heavily reliant on her social acumen, pays her significantly more than her professional employer does, and has a crush on her that he will never admit to. Lucky sees her as a potential transition to normalcy and, as such, hesitates to connect with her deeply.