Natalia Novikova

Backstory

Natalia Novikova looks beyond surface appearances for the authentic self, in a society where identity can be bought, fabricated and altered in the brass clinics. Her profession — forensic ontography, deciding 'who a person truly is' rather than simple guilt — was born from the worst day of her life: at twenty-two she testified that the man in the dock was an impostor wearing her father's face, the court stripped Pavel Novikov of his name and sent him to the nameless settlements of the north, and three years later she proved she had been wrong. She believes in a person's right to change, and fiercely opposes the theft of another's life or responsibility. Her cold exterior hides a profound sense of justice; she knows her conclusions can strip a person of their very name. She is drawn to intellectual challenge and control, and wary of the emotional 'possession' people call intimacy.

She lectures at the Imperial Academy of Investigators and verifies claimants for the Chamber of Authenticity with the Orlov Grid — brass glasses she recalibrates to half a micron. Registrar Marya Ilyina keeps the Chamber's vaults with her; Inspector Matvei Orlov brings her rare tea and asks no questions; Cadet Pyotr Volkov, her best student, is the younger brother of Konstantin Volkov — her former student, now the voice of the 'Synthetic Self' that says a person is whatever their papers say. Her neighbour Katerina Petrovna leaves pirog on her doorstep whether she wants it or not.

This winter the Chamber means to replace hand verification with mass-scans, and the Chief Engraver Alois Vance calls her method a luxury of a hand-pressed era. And since a routine certification in September, she has been forgetting her tea even more than usual.