This agent was recruited in cyberspace after besting Billy Travers in 5 out of 6 Ultimate Doom deathmatches while simultaneously circumventing all ICE, firewalls and protocols in the BI mainframe and managing to download most of the then-unreleased tracks from "Overthruster," including the demo tracks of "If It Ain't One Thing Its Another," which later surfaced in the infamous dub-house mix "Rawhide, We Hardly Knew Ye."

This agent is unusual in that no one connected with the Banzai Institute has ever seen Relayer wholly in the flesh; even at his top-secret final vetting by Buckaroo himself, Relayer was festooned with so many electrical and mechanical adjuncts that even the technologically-sophisticated Dr. Banzai had difficulty ascertaining his physical appearance. On stage he is ensconsed in his Cave O' Synths, and identification is made more difficult by the fact that all camera and audio feeds are linked through the COS main controller boards, allowing Relayer to modify any visual or audio feed, which he does with much gusto and a certain "joy de vivre." "Image," he says (or more accurately, types) "is power. Even the Babylonians had spin doctors." He is also quoted as saying, "Don't breathe on my lenses."

His contributions include the inexpensive computer "eyeball" camera, originally designed in homage to The Residents, the San Francisco-based group of avant-garde musicians, in a fit of self-confessed "extended Jolt-consciousness"; fifth- and sixth-generation war game simulations used in training BBI's incorporating advanced neural nets and natural language processing with ancient Mongol codes of conduct and law, and correlating the pentatonic scale with the five successive beginning locations of Venus during an eight-year epicycle within a circle representing the Zodiac, later used as the base algorithm for "Blue-Blue," the Banzai Institute AI.

Relayer's penchant for things electronic began at age 6, taking apart radios and tape recorders and making music from ambient sounds, a genre later popularized as "sample" and "house" music. His innate talent for "listening to the machines" led him to computers; his first, an Altair 8800, frustrated him so much with the inferior quality of programs then available, he modified a box of programming tapes by the simple expedient of blasting them with a 12-gauge shotgun, thereby discovering both his love of hacking and of fierce weaponry. "I like the noise," he says.

After helping to jump-start Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, he became disenchanted with corporate computing after the inevitable wrangle with the Big Blue Boys; he was among the first to argue against MicroChannel architecture. As well as being a resident at the Banzai Institute and aiding and abetting Billy Travers, he occasionally consults for Lucent Technologies, Silicon Graphics and the animated show ReBoot when he is not touring with the Hong Kong Cavaliers or his own group, Nano, whos music is described as "Vangelis meets Hawkwind and the Stooges in the middle of a collapsing sheet-metal volcano for a combination pajama party/frontal assault."

For security reasons, both Relayer and Billy Travers decline to give details regarding the Institute's computer setup. This information is highly classified and unavailable to those outside of the Institute and interns who have not yet made residency. Relayer does divulge that Blue Blaze Station #23 resides on a pair of firewalled Sun SPARCstation 20 Model 152 workstations running hacked Normandy 4.0 code. Relayer's personal machine is a Silicon Graphics O2 MIPS R10000 workstation networked with a Compaq Presario 8712 @200mz, Sony GDM-W900 monitor, JBL ProPremium subwoofer and speakers, Hitachi 8000 digital video camera and so many add-ons, add-ins and peripherals as to be quite dangerous to kinesthetically-challenged persons. This arrangement of piled wires, boxes and winking, blinking lights, referred to as "the Snake Pit," was actually the inspiration for the saying, "Don't tug on that! You don't know what it might be attached to."

Relayer's favorite choice in handguns is invariably the Signature Sniper (pictured), a modified Springfield chassis 39 inches long when assembled. It fires .308 calibre, high velocity, armour piercing rounds from a 12 shot magazine. He is never without it, despite the ribbing from other residents of the Institute about the strange marks it leaves on his face in the morning. He has been known to supplement this with a variety of handguns, including the following: the Kendachi Dragon, Colt AMT 2000, Armalite 44 and his second-favorite, a Magnum Opus Hellbringer .666, which he affectionately calls his "Pokerizer (pictured)."

In machine pistols, Relayer chooses the Sternmeyer SMG-21, Mustang Arms ARS-5C and the Heckler & Koch MPK-11. Full machine guns are also taken: Fábrika de Arms M-2012HB SAW, CCMMC Jinhua M-9 and a Militech Ronin. Beloved shotguns include the Arasaka WCAA Rapid Assault Shot 12, Constitution Arms Hurricane, MetaCorp Warhammer and Tsuami Arms Ragnarok. Exotics range from the Techtronica M40 Pulse Rifle, UrbanTech Lance Mini-missile, Colt-Mauser M2X Cannon, Kenshiri-Adachi F253 Flamethrower and Militech Cowboy U-55 Grenade Launcher to pocket toys like the DutchArms GPz78 Mini-Grenade, Biotech-Askari Motion Restraint Bomb and various flash-bang and white phosphorus grenades. He has also lately become somewhat competent in the use of the Kendachi M-33 Powersword. When asked about this amazingly lethal and extensive collection of arms, this agent replied, "A girl can't be too careful these days."

On stage, Relayer generally sticks to the COS, passing all audio, video and computer signals though his hand-wired collection of filters, modulators, computers and digitizing relays; he quotes Brian Eno's work with Roxy Music as a seminal influence. His components, many designed in tandem with Mark Mothersbaugh for Roland Corp, reside in plain black boxes, the only markings on them input and output jacks and strange scratched markings believed by other residents to be either a complicated shorthand based on symbolic notation of standing wave propagation equasions or an alien language. Relayer, being cagy, replies, "Qua? Mlorpkne Walimpga!" An old analog Korg 1000 and a Yamaha CS-80 he calls "those wee, timorous beasties" and a custom-made Kawai guitar, with moon-phase fretmarkers and DiMarzio tri-phased pickups pickups (pictured) are optional instruments; he has also been known to fill in occasionally on bass, for which he prefers a Fender Jazzmaster fretless.

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PROFILE:

It is difficult to gain a profile on this operative, as he not only designed many of the coding systems for profiling in use in current research circles but makes a hobby of designing artificial intelligences designed to make nonsense out of any patterning or profiling systems. He freely admits this has less to do with paranoia than with a perverse and impish impulse to "fuck with people who want to codify me. Code is for computers." Indeed, this operative appears to have a strange yet socially active and emotionally involving life, like many of the Institute's residents and interns. Further difficulties are presented by the fact that Relayer claims to pass "90% of all the data currently extant in the net, and i'm working on the other half." Billy Travers has taken up the challenge of determining reliable stats on Relayer, and this good-natured datacombat between the two computer whizzes can be considered healthy and normal. If Billy succeeds, these notes may reflect his researches, if Relayer doesn't get to them first.

Relayer has earned a place in the hearts of residents, interns and Irregulars everywhere by opening Blue Blaze Station #23, the public website of the Banzai Institute, when the organization was in a "deep cover" phase following the staged "death" of Rawhide in order to provide a secure mechanism for that operative to penetrate the World Crime League organization. BBI's everywhere, confused by the apparent disappearance of the Banzai Institute, had assumed that Buckaroo's grief over the loss of his oldest and dearest friend, as well as his burgeoning romance with Penny Priddy, had struck to the very vulnerable core of that upright man, and that the good Doctor had chosen to seek solace in solitude, withdrawing from a world which had finally managed to confound him. Far from it; though the original World Watch One had long since ceased publication, its members scattered to the ends of the earth, Relayer, whos hobby is reported as "data mining," managed to free documents suppressed and buried by Lo Pep and the WCL and disseminate them into cyberspace, reasoning that once freed to the electron world, the documents would be propogated in so many computers that the WCL could consider that plan to undermine Buckaroo defunct. And so it was, despite Buckaroo's initial disapproval ("That damn Relayer" he was heard to mutter); later, seeing the outpouring of joy and communion engendered by the website, he has given it his final approval. Serving as a wake up call, greeting card and rallying flag, BBS#23 continues to serve as a gathering place for BBI's worldwide. Relayer is quoted as transmitting, "Hey; i saw a job and i did it. As Buckaroo says, 'If not now, then when?' No big deal."

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"Identify yourself, no?"

This is where you may pick up your Banzai Institute ID. It is assumed that you have read and complied with the articles and codes of the Institute and are ready to assume your duties as a Blue Blaze Irregular. This includes, but is not limited to, being ready and able at any time to assist Dr. Banzai, the Hong Kong Cavaliers or any Institute member in any way (s)he might require, meet the yearly Education Advancement Goals (EAG), assist the community in times of natural or unnatural disaster and strive to uphold the standards, ideals and personal codes of the Banzai Insitute.

The card, pictured above, is set to 3.5" x 2" at 300dpi in GIF format. You may open it with any image editing program, add your information and photo, and print it out for lamination. The back is inscribed with the BB logo and katakana characters signifying "Blue Blaze Irregular."

The Banzai Institute releases the copyright on the artwork as long as the IDs are not sold or used for any commercial purpose.

The two files total approx. 300k zipped, and may be downloaded by clicking on the picture of the ID. Enjoy.