Carlos



Carlos the Scientist is a District 10 Tribute who also happens to be a scientist!

Before The Games
Fascinated by the supernatural from a young age, Carlos has always wanted to study the things on the very edge of human comprehension. This led him to explore haunted houses as an adolescent, build ghost-detecting machines in his garage, and publish well-researched, thoughtful papers to paranormal journals under a pseudonym. These published studies caught the attention of a vague yet menacing government agency, who contacted Carlos at his completely ordinary job at a completely ordinary research lab, and encouraged him to apply to something called the Night Vale project.

The Night Vale project, Carlos learned, was an initiative by the American shadow government to investigate a town whose existence had long been kept secret from the public. And for good reason: Night Vale was a dangerous place, full of inexplicable and terrible paranormal phenomena. Carlos, selected for the project along with a team of other scientists, came to Night Vale determined to make sense of the bizarre and deadly occurrences that the town's populace took in stride. He got his paperwork sorted out (with the help of the vague yet menacing government agency), rented a lab, and got to work, sure that he could, with enough time, make sense of it all.

A year later, Carlos had collected file upon file of data but was still no closer to understanding the why of it all. He had learned to live in Night Vale's terrifying conditions, to operate under the scrutiny of the Sheriff's Secret Police (who constantly monitored the entire town), to follow the harhsly-punished and often nonsensical laws of the despotic and inhuman City Council, and to put up with the advances of one Cecil Palmer, community radio host and local celebrity, who had "fallen in love instantly" with Carlos during their first in-person meeting at the Night Vale town hall. It wasn't that Carlos did not feel attraction in return; it was that Carlos had grown suspicious of everything in Night Vale. Nothing could be what it seemed, everything was malevolent, and he was quite sure that as soon as he returned Cecil's romantic overtures, something terrible would happen. It was at this point where, frustrated and enraged by the behavior of Night Vale's natural phenomena and its citizens as well, Carlos was brought to the Capitol.

In the Games (under construction)
Upon arriving in the Capitol, Carlos was whisked into the stylists' rooms and into interviews: they only had a few hours, after all, before Arena 9 was to begin. Carlos, confused and alarmed, stumbled through his interviews and his demonstration to the Gamemakers, and before he knew it, found himself in the dark concrete underbelly of a museum rigged to kill him. He avoided the cornucopia, made for the planetarium on the fifth floor, and immediately set about fortifying it. He attracted several like-minded sciencey types to himself, such as Mouse, Dr. Julian Bashir, Dr. John A. Zoidberg, Punchy, Lyle Norg, Brainiac 5, and Hawkeye, and the group of them became known as the Science Alliance in the Capitol.

During the course of the Arena, Carlos encountered the Initiate, who psychically implanted knowledge of the rebellion and District 13 onto Carlos's brain. In addition, Carlos received a sponsor gift from none other than Cecil Palmer -- an alternate-universe version of the Night Vale radio host, one born and raised in the Capitol. The most notable event was an electrical storm that occurred mid-Arena, killing several of them and driving most of the others to leave. Carlos and Zoidberg stayed, albeit close to the door, preferring to remain and risk the danger there than risk danger outside.

However, danger came for them in the form of Kevin, a man from Carlos's own universe who bore a remarkable resemblance to Cecil Palmer. Carlos, seeing Kevin's feet were torn up by embedded glass shards, let Kevin in and administered first aid. Once Carlos was through, Kevin killed him, cooking and eating Carlos's body and taking some of Carlos's hair as a trophy.

After reviving in the Capitol, Carlos decided to find the Cecil Palmer who had sent the sponsor gift and determine once and for all whether or not this Cecil was the same man Carlos had known in Night Vale. The two met for coffee, much to Cecil's delight (for he shared his Night Vale counterpart's instant infatuation) and Carlos determined that no, they were not the same entity, but rather duplicates. He had no more plans to pursue a relationship with this Cecil than he did with the one in Night Vale, but he did agree to meet again for coffee next week, as he recognized that Cecil Palmer was always a valuable contact.

This beginning to an amiable relationship took a turn for the worse when Carlos found out about the bidding system. Seeing it as an affront to his personal autonomy and nothing short of assault, Carlos took steps to make himself less phsyically attractive by having his beautiful, perfect hair cut very, very short. Cecil, enraged, discovered that it had been the District 10 stylist, Telemachus, who had done the deed, and Telemachus the stylist was never heard from again. It was unclear whether Telemachus had been fired, exiled, tortured, or executed for treason, but word spread fast through the Capitol that one did not touch Carlos the scientist if one wanted to keep one's job, one's liberty, or one's life. Carlos continued to see Cecil for coffee weekly, to discuss the Games, Panem history, and Capitol politics, but he kept himself at a wary distance, wondering when he would be notified that he had been bid upon.

Aside from coffee non-dates with Cecil Palmer, between his death in Arena 09 and the Crowning Carlos mostly did science. His largest project was a device meant to test for irregularities in the fabric of reality. He intended to use it to find out where the device that had brought the Tributes to Panem was, in the hopes of using it to find a way back for all of them. That was almost all he did, actually, aside from a memorable evening drinking with the rest of the Science Alliance, cooking lessons for Eponine, and winning a cross-country motorcycle race. Carlos credited the win to his well-rounded education, claiming that offroad motorcycle racing and maintenance were prerequisites for theoretical physics courses, and that he would be surprised if anyone could get a B.S. these days without taking a motorcycle lab or two.

Abilities

 * Science
 * Science
 * B-movie science
 * Bullshit science
 * Spouting technobabble
 * Replacement of his own vocal cords and other minor, routine medical procedures
 * Cross-country motorcycle racing and maintenance
 * Telling the difference between a business-casual lab coat and a black tie lab coat
 * Staring at bubbling Erlenmeyer flasks thoughtfully while stroking his chin
 * Building machines whose mechanisms and purpose he cannot adequately explain but which have lots of flashing lights and dials
 * Putting up with incredible amounts of municipal tyranny
 * Being absolutely gorgeous and in perfect shape despite never using a gym in his life
 * his perfect, perfect, perfect hair

Miscellaneous

 * Carlos originated as a joke character: he was intended to be a parody of B-movie scientists who are played by gorgeous actors in clunky glasses and who can never really explain how their machines work.
 * It is unclear whether Carlos is near- or far-sighted; he takes his glasses off not to get a better look at things, but for dramatic effect.  He can usually see well enough to function without them, but if they are lost, he becomes nearly blind until he finds them again.
 * Carlos dresses, when he can get away with it, like he's from Jurassic Park: jeans, flannel shirts, hiking boots, and a lab coat over it all.
 * Carlos is never seen, again if he can help it, without a lab coat on.  The lab coat will always be appropriately casual or formal relative to the event.  Only Carlos can tell the difference between these lab coats: functionally, they're identical.
 * Carlos is the most normal man in Night Vale, but that's not saying much, considering the impossibility of some of his devices.  He may or may not be completely sane at this canon point.
 * Carlos has been taken pre-vocal-cord replacement, so he sounds like he does in The Phone Call, rather than in Condos.
 * Enjolras might be the only one in the Capitol whose perfect hair, face and form match Carlos's.  They are shipped by Capitol citizens for the eye candy alone.
 * The other popular Carlos ships are Carlos/Kevin (by those not put off by Kevin's horrifying appearance), Carlos/Cecil (by those not put off by Cecil's pushy advances and the fact that Cecil is not a tribute and therefore harder to ship), and any combination of Carlos and someone else in the Science Alliance.  Except Zoidberg.  Never Zoidberg.