by the code name "Blue Dog Anchorite", Singh is an elderly man who was an acquaintance of Susan van Bleeck and a worker on some programming for the Otherland project. He helps Renie, !Xabbu, and Martine hack into the system, but is killed by a malevolent aspect of the Otherland security system when he tries to enter with them. Martine Desroubins: An acquaintance of Susan van Bleeck who lives in France, and who assists Renie and !Xabbu and enters Otherland with them. She is revealed to be blind, and interprets virtual reality through different mechanisms than the others, so the large amount of information in the Otherland system starts to drive her insane, and she is seemingly ill because of this at the end of the book. Orlando Gardiner: A terminally ill teenager who plays the VR MMORPG Middle Country with his best (and only) friend Fredericks. After he discovers an image of a golden city, a location in the Otherland network, he becomes obsessed with finding it. Both he and Fredericks enter Otherland, despite the fact that he is very sick with pneumonia. At the end of the book, he is unconscious and at risk of dying from his disease, cared for by members of the other eight people who also succeeded in entering Otherland. Salome Fredericks: Simply called Fredericks, she is a friend of Orlando's who wears the sim of a man, but is actually a teenage girl (Orlando, her best friend, is unaware of her true gender until late into the plot). She does not approve of Orlando's attempts to learn about Otherland, believing that they are likely to get harshly punished for their actions, but accompanies him on all of his exploits. Mr. Sellars: An elderly man imprisoned on an army base in North Carolina, who 'recruits' Orlando and the others by leaving clues about the Otherland scattered across the net. Eventually, he meets them in Otherland, and tries to explain the situation and what they must do. Christabel Sorensen: A young girl living on the army base, who secretly becomes friends with Mr. Sellars and helps him escape from the army base. Felix Jongleur: The oldest person on earth, born before the outbreak of World War I, he is also one of the wealthiest and most powerful, and certainly one of the most ruthless. He is the leader of the Grail Brotherhood, and masterminded the