Delta Base:Characters:Doctor Konrad Abendroth

An Excessively Lengthy and Terribly Tedious Background for Konrad Abendroth, M.D.

Doctor Konrad Abendroth is a recent recruit of Infinite Solutions that hails from Reich-5, a truly nasty world in which the Axis powers definitively defeated the Allies.

He was an only child born into a well respected American family with impeccable Nordic breeding. His father, a well to do businessman named Wilhelm, was a stern and exacting man with strong party connections that understood well how to curry favor where it mattered most. He cared greatly for his small family and would rarely deny them anything but for reasons Konrad never understood, could become abusive toward his wife and child at times. His mother, Eva, was a much more kind hearted and gentle person who enjoyed a life of leisure that her husband was able to provide. She loved horses, skiing, literature and taking care of stray animals, many of whom would become members of the family. In the primary family residence she had a small library that even included a few banned books by Kerouac, Bonhoeffer, Rousseau and Kant. Konrad's reading of these works coupled with the doting encouragement of his mother played a strong hand in his future unrealistic hopes and expectations for freedom. It would not be far off the mark to say that Eva was a truly free spirit that could not help but instill this love of freedom in her son. All of these circumstances allowed him to live a much easier life than the American masses. His father's connections and ability to open doors combined with his mother's maternal succor facilitated his future in medicine and bioengineering.

As a young medical student it quickly became apparent that Konrad was brighter than most of his peers. Many things seemed to come to him far too easily. It was also at this time that he realized that higher learning's promise of intellectual freedom was a hollow one. Whatever euphemism one preferred to use for it, America had inherited a truly Fascist government with all the usual trappings. Certain teachings were never to be questioned. In spite of all contrary verbal posturing used to persuade the less discerning his first seeds of doubt were planted which would later flower. As a means of escape from his doubts and also as a means to relieve his boredom with some of his less challenging classes, he began designing new tools for what he was sure would be his future trade in bioengineering. It was the innovation and sometimes even the elegance of these early designs that first caught the eye of Charles Davenport III, the director of a very important research lab and a grandson of its founder, the late Charles Davenport I.

He was eventually recruited to study at Cold Spring Harbor laboratory, a now venerable institute founded by the elder Davenport which had long been at the vanguard of the US eugenics movement. Here Dr. Davenport the Third hoped to convince Konrad to take up the study of genetic engineering but the race science touted at the lab and subsequent dishonesty used to conceal it's serious flaws simply left a bad taste in the mouth of the young Abendroth. In the view of Konrad this was not real science. More times than he could remember he had observed the embarrassment of a lab assistant as experiments alleged to prove the racist scientific theories of Davenport seemed to fail right before the eyes of all involved. Results would often be massaged to fit the hoped for outcome and thereby preserve the faith of all who were still true believers. He possessed enough wisdom to know there would be hell to pay if he ever publicly questioned what he now believed to be only the myth of the superiority of the Aryan race. This was very serious business indeed as history could attest. The Dakota camps in the 80's and how the US truly came to be judenrein, while sanitized in the history taught to the unwashed, were well known by the vetted employees of Cold Spring and were considered something in which any loyal Aryan citizen should take great pride. Konrad always felt shame rather than the patriotic pride of his fellows. Reflecting about the camps soon turned him into a connoisseur of peppermint schnapps. Thus began his love affair with booze.

It eventually became apparent to Davenport that Konrad's interests were leading him elsewhere. Dr. Abendroth would spend most of his energy studying the tissue engineering and cloning work of Japanese scholars when it was available and tinkering with more medical gadgets with the aid of the amazing technology that Cold Spring had amassed thanks to so many generous albeit misguided benefactors.After some time Abendroth decided to leave the stifling atmosphere at Cold Spring so he began to cast about for a place where he might find greater freedom. He could still vaguely recall his great-grandfather's stories about the sheer beauty of the Rhine valley and began to dream about visiting the family's former homeland. In the States it was rumored that citizens of the Reich proper enjoyed a lush life and academics were given the greatest of freedoms, the likes of which were only dreamed about by the wealthiest of Americans. Having been a child of privilege he felt he might be able to fit right in.

Soon Konrad had signed on with a German cartel doing research in advanced cloning technologies which required him to be vetted by the SS, an unpleasant reality he had hoped he could avoid. The sheer beauty of the Rhine valley was breathtaking and the stories of a greater level of wealth enjoyed by even the most modest German family also turned out to be true but all claims of a higher level of intellectual freedom were outright fabrications. If anything the home of his great-grandfather held an even greater stranglehold over the academic world's affairs. He could almost feel his handlers from the SS breathing down his neck. The research firm that he worked for performed the most macabre of experiments such that Konrad now began to have a few issues with insomnia. Something deeply disturbed and angered him about treating unwanted human clones as only so much medical waste. Many experiments, the details of which the good Doctor now refuses to illuminate further, both excited and repulsed him at the same time. Konrad began to fear that his own sanity might be shattered if he could not figure out a graceful exit from his employ. This would become fuel for the future fire of his disloyalty and rage which came fully into it's own much later. As soon as he could swing it without arousing suspicions he returned home a thoroughly disillusioned and disappointed man.

After his return he began work for a small biotech corporation that specialized in developing techniques to reverse the effects of aging. There he soon met a lady who was not his intellectual equal but in every sense his better. Her name was Doctor Anna Katz. They became acquaintances and might have become even better friends but Anna always seemed a bit guarded around him. Konrad never understood just why. Nevertheless, he worked in great contentment there for a fewyears until Anna moved on to another company then served out his remaining year before beginning an exclusive practice on the east coast. His work could only be had by the wealthiest of the American elites. In time even Charles Davenport III, who had decided that the world would be unable to cope with his death, became a client of his, having two clones prepared just in case the grim reaper came knocking. Abendroth enjoyed being a physician but had to admit the cloning side of his practice was becoming quite lucrative. Remembering lessons learned in Germany he struggled to be ethical in his treatment of human clones rather than treat them as only so much trash. After a few years business was really booming and he began to miss Dr. Katz. He thought that perhaps she might be interested in joining him in his current venture.

He attempted to look up Anna but his initial efforts were met with only frustration so he hired a detective to help track her down. The next year his parents died in an automobile accident leaving him a substantial fortune but Konrad could not enjoy it. He felt utterly alone and at his worse moments rather than mourning he began to feel an unquenchable rage building within. He drank so much that he finally had to use the new liver he'd grown for himself. It was not only the death of his parents that was gnawing at him. Something else was hidden under the surface that he could not identify. After many false starts he was contacted by his PI with a lead that would only bring more devastating news. The lead would take him back to Cold Spring where he finally came to discover to his utter horror what had happened to Anna. After a number of very discreet meetings with former colleagues there, he discovered that she had recently been executed at the behest of the party. None other than Charles Davenport had issued the final order. Her crime was that she was a Jew and nothing more. A test had come back from a recent medical exam that showed the Tay-Sachs gene, which when detected in a fetus would result in it's immediate abortion. This was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back finally provoking his attempt at sabotage.

Davenport was required to return to the clinic once every three years for a procedure called braintaping. In the event that a person with a clone dies, his memories and skills are simply "played back" into his mind-blank clone. Since German and American "race science" have left many advanced medical techniques in a retrograde state, a very skilled surgeon is required for this invasive process as is a week under a physician's care. The Japanese, being unburdened with racial pseudoscience, have a much more efficient non-invasive procedure rumored to take perhaps an hour. When Doctor Abendroth realized the irony of how the racist views of Cold Spring would actually be the final undoing of Davenport he found himself laughing uncontrollably.

Thus at the appointed hour the Doctor became a murderer and had his revenge on Charles, nearly loosing his nerve at the last moment. He saw to it that all of Davenport's clones, tissue samples and MMSD archives were utterly destroyed. Then he got drunk and shot up a memorial to former President Pelley while waiting to be arrested. He was subjected to brutal torture and thought he had died only to awaken to the promise of a hopeful future. No doubt the official record will read that he was a traitor that was executed for his many crimes against the Fatherland.

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