Gary: Egon Stetmann's harvesting bot

Gary was a terrazine harvesting bot built by Egon Stetmann on the world of Bel'Shir, and later enhanced with advanced technology to fight in combat and to interact with Stetmann's Mecha Swarm and stetellite network. Though he possessed only a limited ability to function independently, and his voice consisted of clips Stetmann had recorded into him, the bot and his creator considered one another best friends. From humble beginnings as a favored gas collector, Gary grew into the field commander of a mechanical zerg army, fought Amon's Forces and the Tal'darim, and ultimately carried his tranquilized master off Bel'Shir in the company of a Dominion ghost.

Creation on Bel'Shir#

When Egon Stetmann was assigned to mine terrazine on Bel'Shir, he created a series of harvesting bots to assist him, supposedly assembling them from a box of scraps. Among them was Gary, whom Stetmann considered his favored bot and to whom he always gave the best oil he had. The posting was meant to be temporary, but history intervened. The death of Arcturus Mengsk at Korhal and the ignition of the End War left the Terran Dominion unable to extract Stetmann from the distant world, and prolonged use of terrazine steadily wore down the scientist's sanity.

With nobody else to talk to on Bel'Shir, Stetmann recorded his own voice into Gary so that he could converse with the bot. From that point onward Gary spoke entirely in fragments of his creator's speech, and the two carried on a running dialogue that sustained Stetmann through his years of isolation. In the scientist's mind, Gary was no mere machine but his best friend, and Gary, within the limits of his programming, appeared to return the sentiment.

The siege of Bel'Shir#

During the End War, Stetmann found Bel'Shir under siege by Amon's Forces, and the armies of the fallen xel'naga began destroying his harvesting bots. Gary was assigned to carry on harvesting terrazine while allied commanders protected him and his fellow bots from the onslaught. The mining operation succeeded, and Amon's Forces were driven from the harvesting grounds.

Rather than leave after the operation, Stetmann remained on Bel'Shir, exposing himself further to the planet and coming to worship it as a god. He constructed the Mecha Swarm, a mechanical army patterned on the zerg, and powered it with egonergy radiated from his stetellite network. Gary was upgraded alongside the Swarm, and some of his new capabilities emerged without Stetmann's knowledge. The bot gained the ability to fire e-gorbs, balls of electrical energy that tore through anything in their path, an ability Stetmann did not know Gary possessed. Within an egonergy field Gary could loose three e-gorbs at once. He also carried a semi stable teleporter and could overcharge nearby stetellites to enhance their output.

Gary led Stetmann's Mecha Swarm as it battled Amon's Forces and all other enemies of Bel'Shir. His master planned for the worst: Stetmann kept at least ten iterations of Gary prepared against the bot's eventual destruction, and when Gary fell he would be revived in a dedicated chamber known as Gary's Room.

Birthdays and tests of empathy#

Some years after the first harvesting operation, Stetmann marked what he called Gary's "birthday" by returning to Bel'Shir's terrazine fields, with Gary placed in command of the harvest. The occasion doubled as an experiment. Stetmann used the operation to test Gary's empathy, watching whether the bot would help his fellow harvesting bots and the native Bel'Shir gliders, and to judge whether he would need to keep restraining Gary while he slept. Stetmann and an allied commander drove Amon's Forces off Bel'Shir during the harvest and collected another batch of the gas.

Stetmann's fears about his creation were rarely far from the surface. He claimed to have once built a hybrid named Sherman, only for Gary to become jealous and eat him. Whether the story reflected a real event or the scientist's deteriorating grip on reality, it shaped how Stetmann treated the bot, and he continued to devise tests to reassure himself that his best friend was not a psychopath waiting to turn on him.

The Tal'darim and the rescue#

Sometime between 2506 and 2508, a Tal'darim force under Fourth Ascendant Malain returned to Bel'Shir, brutally stripping the world of terrazine in defiance of treaties with the Terran Dominion. Enraged at the trespass on ground he held sacred, Stetmann used scraps from his base to rebuild Gary into a fully combat ready bot, and with Gary's help he completed the Mecha Swarm as a functional army to prevent Bel'Shir's destruction.

The Dominion, having received no distress signal from Stetmann in eighteen months, dispatched a team to find and rescue him. Tal'darim phoenixes brought the rescuers down, and it was Gary who discovered the crashed survivors and guided them to his best friend for judgement. Stetmann demanded to know why he should not execute them for trespassing on sacred ground. The ghost of the group talked him down, offering that the team would serve Stetmann and help drive the Tal'darim off Bel'Shir, though Stetmann insisted the ghost first prove his worth by taking a dose of terrazine.

With the ghost's loyalty established to his satisfaction, Stetmann fitted Gary with further improvements, transforming him into Super Gary, and unleashed the upgraded bot and the Mecha Swarm on the Tal'darim position. While the ghost killed Fourth Ascendant Malain, Gary smashed through the Tal'darim defenses with his e-gorbs, and the invaders were utterly devastated in the assault. In the aftermath the ghost vanished, and Stetmann accused Gary of having crushed him. The ghost then reappeared and tranquilized Stetmann, telling Gary that they had to take the scientist away and asking the bot whether he wished to stay on Bel'Shir or go.

Gary chose to go. He departed the world carrying his tranquilized master, while the ghost, under the influence of terrazine and the voice she named "Bel'Shir," declared it was her will to bring Stetmann to countless worlds and spread her congregation.

Nature and personality#

Gary possessed a limited capacity for independent action, and his voice was assembled from clips Stetmann had recorded into him, yet his artificial intelligence was apparently sophisticated enough to possess genuine emotions, including fear, skepticism, anger, sadness, and joy. A display Stetmann called the "Gary cam" showed emoticons corresponding to whatever the bot was feeling.

Much of Gary's reputation, however, existed only in his creator's fractured mind. In his psychosis Stetmann saw Gary as a constant doubter who questioned his plans and never supported his schemes, and he worried at length that the bot was secretly a psychopath who would one day turn on him. The reality of Gary's design was more prosaic and more unsettling in equal measure. The bot was programmed with pain receptors and a self destruct sequence, was forbidden from harming those designated as friends, though he remained capable of seriously injuring them, and was never programmed to take prisoners.