NICHOLAS “NICK” HAZARD — Character Profile
Full Name: Dr. Nicholas Henry Hazard
Known As: Nick Hazard
Era: 1940s
Age: About 48–52 during the origin story
Occupation: Private Investigator / Scientist / Inventor
Office: Hazard Investigations
Specialties: Criminal investigation, forensic science, electronics, experimental neurology and mechanical engineering.
Appearance
Nick is a rugged, intelligent-looking man in his early 50s. Dark hair beginning to gray at the temples, weathered face, perhaps a little stubble when he's been working a case too long.
He wears the classic 1940s detective look: dark suit, white shirt, loosened tie, long trench coat and fedora. He's not glamorous—he looks like a man who has spent too many nights following suspects through rain-soaked streets.
That appearance eventually becomes the model for Cyber Nick's identity.
Two Lives
To most people, Nicholas Hazard is simply a very good private detective.
His office is cluttered with case files, photographs, newspapers and a telephone that seems to ring whenever he's trying to sleep.
But underneath that office—or perhaps beneath his home—is another world.
Nick's laboratory.
Vacuum tubes glow along the walls. Oscilloscopes flicker. Strange mechanical devices sit beside microscopes and chemistry equipment. Drawings of artificial limbs share tables with diagrams of the human brain.
Nick has spent years studying one question:
What makes a person who they are?
Memory?
Experience?
Personality?
Or something else?
Personality
Nick is intelligent but never acts like the smartest person in the room. He's sarcastic, stubborn and extremely observant.
He doesn't particularly trust authority, but he has a powerful sense of right and wrong.
His basic philosophy is simple:
Find the truth. Protect the innocent. Catch the bad guy. Survive if possible.
Those eventually become Cyber Nick's core directives—not because someone programmed them into him, but because they were already part of Nicholas Hazard.
Nick also has a habit of rolling an old silver coin across his fingers while thinking.
That coin eventually survives more than two centuries.
The Scientist
Nick was fascinated by the emerging sciences of electronics and neurology.
While other scientists studied machines and physicians studied brains, Nick became convinced the two subjects would eventually meet.
He began constructing a device capable of recording patterns of electrical activity from the human brain.
His colleagues considered the idea ridiculous.
Nick continued anyway.
His experiments eventually convinced him that memories weren't simply stored like photographs. They were interconnected patterns involving emotion, sensory experience and learned behavior.
That discovery becomes the foundation of Project Hazard.
The Case That Changes Everything
Nick accepts what appears to be another missing-person investigation.
The trail eventually leads to a laboratory and an experimental biological agent.
Nick solves the case.
But during the investigation, he is exposed.
At first he dismisses the symptoms.
Fatigue.
Cough.
Occasional shaking in his hands.
Eventually he visits a doctor.
The diagnosis is devastating.
There is no treatment.
Nicholas Hazard has months to live.
And that's when detective Nick Hazard turns his scientific experiments toward himself.
He isn't trying to become immortal.
At least that's what he tells himself.
He simply believes his work isn't finished.
His Greatest Experiment
Nick begins Project Hazard.
His objective:
Preserve the complete neural identity of a human being until technology exists capable of giving that identity another body.
He knows 1940s technology cannot build that body.
So he doesn't try.
Instead, he concentrates on preserving the one component nobody in the future could recreate:
Nicholas Hazard himself.
His memories.
His personality.
His investigative experience.
His humor.
His fears.
His instincts.
His moral judgment.
And perhaps something Nick himself doesn't completely understand...
his consciousness.
His Fatal Flaw
Nick believes almost every problem can be solved if you think long enough.
His illness teaches him otherwise.
That makes Project Hazard partly scientific ambition and partly one man's refusal to accept an unsolved problem.
Death becomes the final case of Nicholas Hazard.
And Nick Hazard doesn't like leaving cases open.
One detail I'd establish now
I'd make Dr. Nicholas Henry Hazard the only Nicholas Hazard.
The robot isn't officially "Nick Hazard II."
When Cyber Nick wakes up, Evan may initially refer to the original man as his ancestor.
Nick corrects him:
"He's not my ancestor."
Evan looks puzzled.
"Nick, he died two hundred years before you were built."
Nick answers:
"I know. I remember dying."
That establishes the central mystery of the entire Nick Hazard universe:
Is Cyber Nick a copy of Nicholas Hazard—or did Nicholas Hazard actually survive?
I wouldn't answer that question for a very long time.