(B. 1930)
Frank Grimm was born in the industrial Cestlep Outskirts, at the capital of Oceanyka, where wheat fields met sprawling factories. His father, a German tradesman, passed down a stoic work ethic, while his mother, a waitress of mixed Aboriginal, Ferozen, and British heritage, taught him resilience in the face of hardship. The family struggled but prioritized Frank’s education, enrolling him at the modestly prestigious St. John College. There, he learned to temper his rebellious streak with discipline, though his wandering spirit often led him to the slums and rail yards, where the realities of Oceanyka were made apparent.
By 1945, Frank’s boyhood was cut short as the Oceanykan Civil War neared its climax. At just 15, he enlisted in the Federal Army, joining the 3rd Light Horse Regiment. The war’s violence burned into his memory. Rising to the rank of Corporal on merit alone, he earned the respect of his peers but carried the scars of a soldier fighting for a country tearing itself apart. A year after the war ended in 1947, Frank was discharged at age 17, stepping back into civilian life with little more than a handful of medals.
Returning to Cestlep, Frank found work as a wharfie, hauling crates under the weight of a struggling economy. In this bleak time, he met Clair Kelly, a bank teller who saw the bittered knight for what he was underneath. Her warmth rekindled something in him. They married in 1949, and their son, Thomas, was born the following year. Determined to provide a better life, Frank took up an apprenticeship under Pavlos Ykarran, a renowned engineer, who recognized Frank’s knack for problem-solving and grit. By 1953, Frank had risen to a full-time machinist and assistant engineer. He possessed a steady job, a growing family, and a fragile peace in his heart.
But the scars of war do not fade easily, and Oceanyka remained restless. By 1952, Frank was drawn into the trade union movement, fighting for fair wages and safer working conditions. His military discipline and leadership made him a natural organizer, but his growing influence marked him as a threat to President Thomas Badfellow’s regime. Harassment turned into violence; Clair miscarried their second child in 1954, and Frank’s resolve hardened. By 1957, he was a known figure in Cestlep’s underground resistance, working alongside Alan Redfort, a rising revolutionary leader.
In 1959, Clair gave Frank an ultimatum: abandon the unions or abandon his family. Knowing the dangers his activism brought to those he loved, Frank vowed to leave. But before he could, Federal Police raided the union headquarters. Marked as an "Enemy of the State," he escaped with his life but at the cost of everything else. Leaving all his savings for Clair and Thomas, Frank disappeared, taking on assumed names and odd jobs to survive.
For two years, he lived as a ghost, hunted and haunted. In May 1961, a workplace accident left him grievously injured. When he awoke in an Oceanykan Red Cross hospital, weeks later, everything had changed. Alan Redfort was now President of the Oceanykan Federation, the unions were no longer persecuted, and Frank’s name had been cleared.
But something else had changed, too. In his coma, Frank had dreamed of a world unlike any other, a realm of currents and impossible shapes, where a colossal being etched something into his soul.
Frank returned to Clair and Thomas, rekindling the life he had left behind. For a brief time, it seemed he had found peace. But in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated into a global war. Hydrogen bombs rained upon Oceanyka, and Cestlep was reduced to ashes. Frank and his family survived the initial destruction, scavenging through irradiated ruins, but starvation and sickness claimed them one by one. Frank was the last to die, holding Clair’s hand as the light faded.
Then he awoke in the same hospital bed, in June of 1961.
Frank’s life has become an endless cycle of tragedy and repetition. Each “loop” brings him back to that hospital bed, with his memories intact and the foreknowledge of catastrophe to come. He has tried everything: saving his family, stopping the war, destroying himself, even aligning with those he once opposed. But time refuses to yield. The world bends but never breaks.
Over countless lifetimes, much of Frank Grimm has faded away, eroded by despair and failure. Yet some things endure: his undying love for Clair and Thomas, his keen mind sharpened by experience, and an unyielding determination to escape this nightmare. With each loop, Frank moves closer to unravelling the mystery of the being that marked him, the Playwright.
Frank Grimm is a man out of time, caught in eternal paradox. A soldier, a husband, a father, and a ghost: he stands at the edge of infinity, fighting not just to save the world, but to reclaim the humanity he refuses to lose.