Kamal Zaman

Summary

Kamal Zaman is a character in I Love Bees. Originally from Coral, he immigrated to Earth for medical school. In 2537, his younger sister, Yasmine was inducted into the SPARTAN-II program and replaced with a flash clone. After watching his sister's degradation, he decided to become a doctor and left for Earth.

At some point, Kamal suspected his girlfriend was cheating on him, and hacked into her chatter to find out for sure. It is unclear what happend, but their relationship ended.

In the year 2552, his mother set him up with the daughter of one of her friends, named Sophia Bossedon. However, Sophia was already dating a local gangster, Aiden Maki, but she knew her mother would disapprove of her dating someone from Earth so she didn't tell her. After talking to her about Aiden for a bit, Kamal began to suspect that Aiden was cheating on her, and offered to find out for sure. After confirming the affair, Sophia convinced Kamal to publicly humiliate the gangster. A week later, Sophia and Aiden had made up, and Kamal was terrified that Aiden would want revenge. Instead, he was offered a job as a freelancer. Kamal agreed to work for Aiden in exchange for visas to bring his parents to Earth.

The next week, Kamal invited Sophia over for dinner, claiming that they were only friends. However, he would never try to cook a whole chicken for just a friend. While Kamal may be a genious hacker, he is a terrible cook. After he ruined the chicken, they went out for pizza. He became aware of his growing feelings for Sophia, but decided it wouldn't be right to act on them.

For his first job, Kamal was to help catch a group of graduate students who were cheating at a casino. Once he figured out how they were doing it, casino security threw out the card-counter without letting the others know. Then Kamal hacked into their line and, disguising his voice as the card-counter, made the cheaters lose all their winnings. The casino owner, Mr. F, convinced him to string them along, saying that he was in for 30% of the take. He was paid in poker chips because the value was high, and they didn't want to leave a trail. When he attempted to play blackjack on his way out, he was informed that the table had a $10,000 limit.

Later, while with Sophia, his chatter received a letter from his mother. Sophia insited he play it, and after a moment he agreed. In the message, Kamal's mother tells him to be a good friend to Sophia because her father ran off to Earth with a female lawyer. Sophia then left with Aiden.

Next week, Aiden came to Kamal to discuss his latest plan. His idea was to make a business that would flash clone pop-stars to give them a new way to make public appearances. Kamal refused to be involved, claiming that it was "child-porn illegal" and they could get sentenced to memory modification. Aiden insisted it wasn't that bad, and just asked Kamal for a feasibility study. While Kamal was researching flash cloning, he realized that his sister had been replaced with a flash clone.

Kamal became paranoid, believing that ONI was spying on him. In fact, it was Melissa, the smart AI created from his sister's brain after her death. While trying to track her down, Sophia came to tell him that she was being deported. Aiden had been arrested, and several of the visas he'd arranged were canceled, including her's. After reports came in of Coral's glassing, they decided to make a run for it. Sophia made a detour to bail out Aiden and was arrested. Kamal figured Sophia had abandoned him, and left town to track down the one spying on him.

Kamal found Jersey Morelli's apartment, with Melissa living in his computer. Melissa explained how Yasmine was taken and trained to be a Spartan but ultimately died from the augmentations. Melissa claimed that she was a mere copy of her personality, but Kamal insisted that he could still hear Yasmine in her. Melissa offered him a job, saying that it was another chance to save her, and he accepted.

Melissa's team of Kamal, Jersey, Janissary James and Rani Sobeck, broke into Chawla Base to deactivate the Deep-Space Artifact. When Kamal was just about ready to give up, Melissa told him the Sophia didn't run off with Aiden as he had thought, but that she was arrested. Kamal asked why she didn't tell him sooner and Melissa responds that before, she wanted him willing to die, but now she wanted motivated to live. Kamal was then certain that she was Yasmine because only she could be such a brat. Jersey was soon able to disable the artifact, but it first sent out a massive slipspace wave that scrambled Melissa and awakened Yasmine's mind. They were able to escape the base and get back to Jersey's apartment.

After treating Jan's injuries, Kamal headed back home. When he got there, he found that his parents were there; Aiden had brought them to Earth before Coral was destroyed. Melissa had posed as a lawyer and got Sophia and Aiden out of jail. Sophia had broken up with Aiden, and Kamal proposed to her. Kamal was getting ready to introduce Melissa to his family, when the Covenant invasion of Earth began.

Trivia

Yuri Lowenthal, voice of Kamal Zaman, is also the voice of the Prince in the Prince of Persia series. A piece of Kamal's dialog, "People think time is a river that flows in one direction, but time is an ocean." is very much like the Prince's "Some say time is like a river that flows swift and sure in one direction, but I have seen the face of time and I can tell you they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm."