" 'Wow, Gardino,' Sam Fredericks said in a loud stage-whisper. 'Now you're Assistant God!'

'Yeah, and I never even got a high-school education.' "

-Tad Williams, Otherland volume four: Sea of Silver Light

Orlando is assistant_god.

Life (and somewhat after) Story

Orlando was born with progeria, and always had major health issues. When he was very young, his parents made sure to give him some normal experiences, visiting the zoo, having relatives over. But as he got older and sicker, this became much harder, and all the Gardiners became pretty cut off from the world. He never attended regular school, but went to netschool online. He was greatly respected for his intelligence by teachers and students, but never really had any friends there. Since at 14 he had already recieved numerous offers from companies willing to put him through college if he'd work for them, it's probably safe to say that he was at least a grade ahead(he never accepted the offers, because he knew he'd die before graduating college, if not sooner). His mother read him fantasy books, and he read more on his own, they mean a lot to him. From reading fanatsy and his interest in virtual reality, he got into gaming. In the Middle Country simworld, he spent years as the top-ranked character, Thargor. In the game he teamed up with the character Pithlit, and became friends with the player, Sam Fredericks, out of the game. They lived across the country from each other, and so never met offline. It was years before Orlando found out Sam was a girl(and she found out that he was terminally ill). Now, he doesn't care, what matters is that she's Sam (this has contributed to his acceptance of some of the gender craziness around the comm).

One day, while in the Middle Country, Orlando saw the most completely convincing bit of VR ever appear as a sort of window in one of the dungeons. Determined to find out what it was, he eventually got to the source, taking Sam along. Once in the Otherland system, he and a number of others were directed by Mr. Sellers to help undermine the Grail Brotherhood, who had created Otherland, from inside their network, hopefully freeing the children who had gone into comas as a result of contact with the network and stoping evil people from ruling the net as well as the real world. Orlando and Sam got split from the others for a while, found out important things and met important people, and met up again at the Troy simulation(where Orlando was Achilles and Sam was Patroclus). Shortly after that, there was a big fight to stop the Brotherhood from making the virtual copies of themselves, and Orlando died keeping the others safe. BUT. The telepath at the heart of the system had copied Orlando, and at a later crucial point, resurrected him so that he could fend off more bad guys.

He is now the "Ranger" of the new, telepath-free Otherland. Sellers is teaching him everything he might want to know about manipulating information, and once Orlando's learned it all, Sellers will leave. As Sellers is also a "copy" of himself, he's planning to beam himself out into space to join the pure data life forms that he pretty much created. Orlando is friends with the whole Otherland group, but the person he's closest to is Sam by far. He's in denial about being in love with her.

His biggest insecurity is the fact that he's not the "real" him. Things that haven't come up much in the comm are: He's really fond of kids. Politically and just generally ideologically speaking, he's quite a populist, in spite of being from a rich family.

In the Comm

Orlando joined ddd as a way of meeting and hopefully helping more people. He wants to useful and help out, in spite of his condition. He did not initially tell anyone what he is, but eventually had a dramatic reveal post.

In his time on the comm he has become friends with a number of people. The person he's closest to would be, at this point, Alize. He also considers Maraich, Eva, Ari, Demyx, Aziraphale, Wolfwood, Jordan, Samus, radical Edward, and blond Edward, friends. Others can be lumped into four groups; "Aquaintances who he likes/finds interesting," "People he has no comment on," "People he doesn't like," and "People he hates."

He has mixed feelings on Otto Octavius, since Orlando knows he's a "bad guy," but gets along with him.

He was a member of the "Save Silver" search party, albeit mainly looking through computers.

Using plans from Mariach's world, Otto and Eva built Orlando a robotic body. He is a fully functioning member of society for the first time in his life.

And now Sam has joined.

He is making a habit of working fairly closely with L, and knows quite a bit about the B.B. and Kira cases. His trying to help stop these infamous criminals would probably get him killed if he wasn't already dead.

He has finally admitted that he's in love with Sam. However, partially due to recent drama but mostly due to the conviction that there's no way she could be in love with him, he has determined to keep this to himself.

See also, Otherland and Elspeth Vimes.