Helvetius

Professor Helvetius, later known as Godfather Avenir, was an English scientist from the 1900s.

The French scientist who would go on to become Godfather Cococyte was familiar with Helvetius prior to their both joining the Faction. According to him, Helvetius was "known for having many theories about the universe and no friends at all to tell them to". He had contact with the early Bolsheviks. However, at some point, Faction Paradox contacted him and let him know about the imminent World War I that would tear apart his world, as well as telling him of the War. Helvetius agreed to join them, adopting the name of Godfather Avenir.

He was sent to Mars to confront the French doctor, whose out-of-control Observer Effect was systematically collapsing all unlikely possible Marses into the same red dust desert. Adopting as his Faction Paradox mask the skull of a giant Martian serpent that had already been condemned to nonexistence by the French doctor, Avenir told him some of what he'd learned and convinced him to join the Faction, who thought that his Observer Effect could be useful. The French scientist then adopted the name of Cococyte.

Untethered in time, Cococyte ended up in a new life in the 1970s, again theorising a possible Martian civilisation based on observations from telescopes, only to head to Mars and observe it into nonexistence. Avenir visited the Martian city around the Great Face, speaking with native Zayn, shortly before Cococyte arrived and unwittingly erased Zayn's entire civilisation.

However, Cococyte's powers began to get out of hand as he began to threaten the very existence of organic life in general and humanity in particular, by reasoning from first principles that its existence was highly unlikely. Adopting a human skull for a mask to express the gravity of the situation to him, Helvetius met with Cococyte one last time and got him to realise what a danger he posed to the rest of creation, and to condemn himself to the Boulevard of Alternate Brutalities. (PROSE: Marticide)

Behind the scenes
Professor Helvetius originated in the 1906 science fiction novel Doctor Omega by as a colleague and acquaintance of Doctor Omega (Cococyte in Marticide is all but stated to be Doctor Omega). In Galopin's novel, Helvetius was an English scientist who received Omega's SOS after Omega became stranded on Mars, and built his own Cosmos spacecraft to come rescue Omega and his companions Fred and Denis. In contrast to his solitary characterisation in Marticide, Galopin's Helvetius has two companions of his own, named Blacwell and Somerson.

With the novel having long since fallen into the public domain, Professor Helvetius was subsequently been used in numerous other works of fiction, including Callum Phillpott's Jenny Over-There: The Nine-Two-Five Universe series, coincidentally published around the same time as The Boulevard: Volume One, where the character (reimagined as genderfluid) was presented as something of a mild Doctor Who pastiche, with their craft shown to be bigger on the inside.

In the 2003 English localisation of Doctor Omega by Jean-Marc Lofficier, which rewrote the text to imply that Doctor Omega was an alias the First Doctor, Helvetius's description was altered to imply that he was Professor Chronotis, a notion which is not supported by the character's treatment in Marticide.