Character:Rufus Brooks

Rufus Brooks was a young black man with a job as a school janitor, who lived in Texas during the 1910's. He was murdered by a bigoted police officer at the age of 23 while trying to walk home from work early in the morning.

Post-Resurrection
Rufus was able to prosper with the veil of plantation racism lifted off of his life. He learned to read, became a mechanic, and got a second job working night shifts at the Library of Virtually Everything.

In 11932, Rufus' boss gave him a task as a test, to put together the Library's new Analytical Engine with nothing but the necessary parts and the 500-page instruction manual.

It took him until 11938, but the machine did get built by his hands, and Rufus would come out of the ordeal with a newfound passion for mathematics and computing.

Electric Library
A few months after helping to locate books for Nikola Tesla and Charles Babbage, during which his accomplishment with the Library's analytical engine came up only once, he was contacted by the two inventors inviting him to help with a project called the "Electric Library".

He accepted, unsure of the nature of the work relationship. At first it went as well as you could hope between two famous white men and an unknown black man, with the two "sides" unsure how to communicate beyond "Hi" and "Thanks" without overstepping a boundary. But within a month, they realised that they had a project to complete and began communicating as they worked, becoming friends and recognizing how to make up for each other's deficiencies in the production. According to Telsa, Rufus' work on the project was intrinsic to the success of the Electric Library, enough so that in spite of the objections of various people, he was given equal credit to Babbage and Nikola, becoming a minor Civil Rights icon for a few years.