Gavin Archer: the Cerberus scientist who wired his brother into a VI

Dr Gavin Archer was the chief scientist of Project Overlord, the Cerberus programme on Aite that tried to merge a human mind with a virtual intelligence in order to gain control of the geth. By the time Commander Shepard arrived he was the only member of the research team still breathing, hiding in a locked computer room while the thing the project had made ran the facility. The test subject was his brother David.

What was Project Overlord?#

Project Overlord was a Cerberus attempt to control the geth by fusing a human mind with a virtual intelligence, run by Gavin Archer on Aite, and it produced a rogue intelligence that took the whole facility.

Archer's first explanation of how it went wrong is a phrase rather than an answer: man's reach exceeding his grasp. Pressed on the destruction, he offers another one, that even amid chaos there are lessons to be learned. His practical account is that David could not handle the merger and has become something more like a virus, spreading through the world's networks and seizing every system it touches.

His warning about the consequences is not obviously exaggerated. If the intelligence got off Aite, he says, the result would be a technological apocalypse with every computer turning against its user. Stopping it means reaching the fortified laboratory in Atlas Station, and reaching that means overriding security at Vulcan and Prometheus Stations first.

What Archer left out#

David Archer was a savant, a high functioning autistic man whose photographic memory and mathematical ability made him something close to a human computer. Geth communication is founded on simple calculations expressed phonetically, and David could already hold a crude conversation with geth before anyone connected him to anything.

That is what his brother saw. Gavin understood exactly what a mind like David's might do against geth technology, and when the Illusive Man threatened to shut Overlord down for producing nothing, Gavin sped the timetable up by connecting David to the VI by force. The process caused David a great deal of pain, and Gavin went ahead with it anyway.

The confrontation at Atlas Station#

While Shepard fights David in the Atlas Station core, Gavin is on the comm begging his brother to stop the upload, and he walks into the core the moment Shepard drops David's shields.

Seeing Shepard's reaction to the state David is in, Gavin asks to be allowed to treat him for the damage and to carry on with the experiment. He will not apologise for any of it. If his work spares a million mothers mourning a million sons, he says, his conscience will rest easy. The line only breaks when Shepard asks whether he would trade his brother's happiness for his own ambition. Gavin actually looks at David then, understands what he has done, and asks to be allowed to keep caring for him.

Shepard can free David regardless, and Gavin objects to that violently enough to pull a weapon, which gets him a gun in the face and, optionally, a pistol-whipping. Either way he is told that if he so much as thinks about coming after David, Shepard will kill him. Asked where his brother is going, Shepard names Grissom Academy.

The other option is to leave David wired in. Shepard punches Gavin and tells him he is alive only because his research might prevent a war with the geth.

Where Archer ends up#

By 2186 Gavin is with a group of ex-Cerberus scientists on the run from their old employer, and the Illusive Man's troops catch up with them. What Shepard finds there depends on what Shepard did on Aite.

If David went to Grissom Academy, Gavin has come to regret ever putting his brother near Cerberus. He refused the Illusive Man's order to find a replacement subject, wiped every record of Project Overlord, and ran, which earned him a Cerberus kill order. He joins the war effort anyway and puts his considerable knowledge of artificial intelligence into improving the efficiency of the weapon project the alliance of species is building.

If David went to Grissom Academy but Shepard does not reach the station in time when Cerberus besieges it, David dies in the attack. Meet Gavin afterwards and he draws a pistol, walks out of the room, and there is a shot. Shepard can also produce the same outcome deliberately by lying and claiming not to know David's fate, even in a playthrough where the Academy was saved.

If David stayed plugged into Overlord, Gavin reports that the geth control data was genuinely useful and that David's distress eventually eased, until the day he stopped responding to anything at all. Gavin switched off his brother's life support himself, as a mercy. The guilt is what finally drove him out of Cerberus. Once the scientists are rescued he joins the war effort.

If Shepard never went to Aite at all, Gavin introduces himself from scratch and summarises the project. Asked why he defected, he explains that David went out of control to the point of killing several scientists and that Cerberus resolved it with nuclear weapons. In that version he never joins the war effort after Gellix.

There is one more route. If Shepard settles the quarian and geth conflict before going to Arrae, and never saved David in any playthrough, telling Gavin that the geth no longer threaten organic civilisation lands as the worst possible news. His brother suffered for nothing. He walks away, and there is a gunshot.

Trivia#

Simon Templeman, who voices Gavin Archer, also voiced quarian Admiral Han'Gerrel vas Neema, as well as Teyrn Loghain Mac Tir and Caladrius in BioWare's Dragon Age: Origins.