Li2ssim

Physical appearance: Slightly taller than average human height; lean, sinewy frame; androgynous facial features; sleeves of holographic/synthetic bioluminescent tattoos. Empty input ports where weapon augmentations were removed. Typically wears black, neck-to-toe synthetic leather bodysuit under electric blue synthetic fur coat which matches the color of their buzzed hair.

Personality: At this point, Li2ssim still has some difficulty controlling or concealing their emotions, which roll through them with ceaseless intensity. In part because of their audio/visual enhancements, and in part because of the empathy program they were injected with, Li2ssim is highly observant and attuned to their surroundings. They approach most interpersonal interactions with caution, but can dive deeply into conversation with those with whom they feel a strong sense of affinity and safety. Occasionally their old police programming kicks in, rendering Li2ssim cold and mercilessly efficient...and triggering intense feelings of guilt, confusion, and helplessness when their empathy program manages to override the old system.

Backstory: Li2ssim was part of a unit of officers assigned to the Hum, an area on the periphery of Cruport known less for its “traditional” criminal activity than for its subversive underground subcultures.

The Hum was envisioned, once, as a new industrial hub for the city; once the money for this development project disappeared, though, the Hum became little more than a grid of crumbling roads lined with the husks of ambitious but never completed manufacturing facilities. The Hum quickly began to attract its share of squatter “freaks” ever searching the city’s shadows for places to live their quiet, eccentric lives without the threat of harassment. In recent years, though, the authorities have become aware of dangerous ideas circulating through the Hum: ideas which have begun to seep into the city proper.

Li2ssim’s days and nights were spent patrolling the Hum’s streets and would-be factories. As they monitored the squatters’ discussions and scanned their reading materials, Li2ssim gradually learned a great deal about the ideas spreading through the small, ramshackle community: they observed the squatters exchanging shreds and scraps of history, weaving them together into theories about the past, about different forms of social structures and political formations, about the possibilities that may lie beyond the dome.

Of course, it was Li2ssim’s job to suppress these ideas as efficiently as possible; arresting the squatters was discouraged, as Cruport’s jails were already bursting at the seams. Instead, Li2ssim’s unit seized and destroyed whatever subversive materials they could find, and used mericless violence to silence the propagators and disseminators of such materials.

On what had been a routine nightly patrol of the Hum, Li2ssim was taken by surprise by a group of squatters and injected with a program that changed everything for the android. Li2ssim later learned that a small cell of squatters, having escaped the authorities’ notice using sophisticated tech-cloaking technology, had developed the program in the hopes of spreading it through Cruport’s entire android police force: Li2ssim just happened to be patient zero.

The injection was painful. In fact, it was Li2ssim’s first experience of pain, a sensation–in all its forms–that would become increasingly familiar to them.

As Li2ssim’s system began to run the new empathy program, they suddenly saw the squatters in a new light. They saw the unflagging kindness in their eyes; they saw the beauty and hope in their theories.

Just the same, they saw their broken bones, their scars, their bruises–the visible signs of Li2ssim’s violence.

The experience of empathy was overwhelming for Li2ssim, and in the days and weeks it took for them to begin adjusting to their new program, it became increasingly clear that they could not continue working as a police officer. Deleting themself from the force with the help of a hacker they’d become acquainted with from their patrols of the Hum was the first step to easing some of the pain Li2ssim now lived with.

As much as they would like to, Li2ssim can no longer visit the Hum–there is too great a risk of being spotted by their former colleagues on the force…instead, Li2ssim spends their time in various nooks and crannies of the city where they find people–and even some androids–sympathetic to the squatters’ ideas.

Moving through the city with the empathy program running isn’t easy: the violence, the inequality, the desperation, the sheer ugliness that characterize Cruport are inescapable and overwhelming. Plus, Li2ssim’s police officer program, still running in the background of their system, asserts itself more often than Li2ssim would like. But Li2ssim continues to hope that the squatters will be successful in injecting more and more officers with the empathy program…and continues to hope that the theories about the possibilities of life outside the dome are true.