GHOST RIDER 2099

 

GHOST RIDER 2099

Real Name: Kenshiro "Zero" Cochrane

First Appearance: Ghost Rider 2099 (Vol. 1) #1, May 1994

Powers: A native of the year 2099 in the divergent reality of Earth-928, Kenshiro "Zero" Cochrane was a data pirate whose consciousness was saved at the moment of his physical death by a group of artificial intelligentsia known as the GhostWorks. As his body perished, the GhostWorks preserved his consciousness as digital code. They chose him for his rude attitude, arrogant behavior, and lack of respect for authority, which would make him their ideal agent in the physical world. Saving and encrypting his source material, they generated a copy, which they then activated within the GhostWorks, reprogramming it to make it a better agent. Zero 2.0 agreed to become their "anti-viral" agent against dysfunctional social and economic agencies. They then uploaded Zero into a robot form, becoming the Ghost Rider of 2099.

This wardroid body is a Cybertek 101 chassis composed of silicon and carbon steel, fiber optics, and super-dense meta-tasking nanoprocessors with sufficient integrated hard ordinance to give him superhuman strength, endurance, computer-enhanced reflexes, and reinforced armor for considerable resistance to injury. For offensive purposes, his left hand is made of a polymimetic nanomer alloy that can reshape as desired, generally extending his fingers into foot-long metal spears tapering to sub-molecular thickness allowing them to slice through most materials, and his right hand can transform into an electrosaw, an energized chainsaw with composite ceramic/graphite blades.
 

His Central Processing Units (CPUs) house a meta-tasking neuro-mimetic network, with a variety of user help files installed in memory. His user-programmable hard light camouflage system allows him to appear as Zero, to scan other beings and replicate their appearance, to generate cosmic flames about his head, and to modify his costume. He can also generate a stealth field that renders him undetectable by both living beings and most computer systems, though this consumes much energy. He initially required daily battery recharges to maintain full capacity and had to resupply the sarrium krellide storage cells regularly or risk crashing the whole system, but he eliminated these limits after connecting to a "Mr. Fusion" heavy duty battery. Besides his existing resilience, Ghost Rider's body contains vast amounts of molecular nanotech, enabling him to rebuild himself automatically even after going offline and being reduced to so much scrap metal, by incorporating nearby chunks of mass.

He can project high-intensity laser beams from his optic sensors, and has a number of visual enhancements, such as telephoto or infrared lenses. He could also scan opponents for weak spots to target, and has advanced aiming software letting him slice through Spider-Man's webbing from 100 feet away. Zero had other ranged sensors, letting him detect electromagnetic transmission and reception in his immediate area, and his fingers could extend cyberjack filaments to link with computer systems, letting him peruse cyberspace and probe computer databanks mentally (since Ghost Rider 2099 and both Zeros could exist as a human personality analog in cyberspace). His motorcycle was a Ford Velociraptor 900XL, customized for wheeled or anti-gravity propulsion, pseudo-leathery upholstery, and street thrusters that pushed him to subsonic speeds. It could also be incorporated into his stealth field and solidified holographic projections.

In his final incarnation, Zero 2.0 encompassed the internet (or its counterpart in the year 3099 A.D.) from Earth to the farthest reaches of the frontier.