Jane Lau

Jane was scouted due to her invention of the now ubiquitous ECHOES robots, which have taken over a variety of industries. ECHOES are highly adaptable humanoid robots that use AI to learn and perform whatever tasks are assigned to them with efficiency and precision. She invented them in 2031, when she was only 20. She was uninterested in managing a company, so she simply released the blueprints and manufacturing details to the public. Jane continued developing them for a number of years and releasing updates until she was satisfied with them and started a new job building nanobots capable of studying the effects of black holes up close.

(CW: Parent death, Suicide)

Jane Lau was born in Hong Kong in 2011. As a child, she lived with her mother, father, and three brothers. Jane was an eccentric child who showed little interest in the expectations of femininity that were placed on her. She was fascinated by computers and technology from a young age, and often tinkered with her electronic devices and took them apart, much to her parents' chagrin.

Jane attended an all-girls' school, separate from her brothers. She didn't make many friends, and she often spent time in class reading. She read books far beyond her expected reading level, and mostly in English.

She did make one friend in school, Mei Fan, another girl with a passion for reading. The two of them became very good friends, constantly recommending new books to each other. Unlike Jane, Mei Fan was traditionally feminine, and seemingly enjoyed it, which piqued Jane's curiosity. She frequently asked Mei Fan to explain what was so appealing about various aspects of femininity, but she never quite understood it after Mei Fan explained it to her.

Jane finally asked her mother to teach her to be feminine, much to her excitement. Her mother was always disappointed to only have one daughter, and that that daughter took more after her father and brothers, so she was happy to finally be able to spend time with Jane. The two of them became very close over the next few years as Jane learned how to be more feminine. She never quite enjoyed it, but she enjoyed spending time with her mother.

In late 2019, when Jane was only 8 years old, the COVID-19 pandemic began. Her mother caught it and passed away. Her mother's death was deeply upsetting, but she couldn't cry over it. She knew her mother would have wanted her to, but tears just wouldn't fall. She also discovered that Mei Fan had died from COVID as well. Jane decided then that femininity simply wasn't for her, and she stopped trying to understand it.

As she saw the pandemic worsen, she had an idea in her head: why should human doctors put their lives at risk treating sick people when robots could easily do that instead? She began studying robotics, wanting desperately to understand it so that she could make her idea a reality. She spent much of her adolescence creating small robots with electronic devices she could easily get her hands on, which taught her how to work efficiently with limited resources. She also began thinking that the robots she created wouldn't have to be limited to just working in the medical field. They could be fully adaptable and work in a number of different fields, making life easier and safer for humans all over the world.

Jane began attending a prestigious university abroad in Japan. While she was there, she met another student from Hong Kong, Victor Yu. She told him her ideas, and he took heavy interest in them. Victor was from a rich family, and offered to help her build a prototype with his money. Victor often came to check up on her while she worked, bringing her lunch and talking to her. The two of them became quite close over this time. The prototype took 2 years to complete.

When the prototype was finally complete, Jane decided she wanted to unveil it to the world. Victor suggested naming it ECHOES, for two reasons: an English name would give it broader global appeal, and because it could be said that these robots were an "echo" of human productivity. Jane liked the name and decided to use it. She decided to show the prototype to her professor, who used his tenure and notoriety in the field of robotics to publish the news about ECHOES. He strongly urged Jane to establish a company to handle the mass producting of ECHOES units, however she had no interest in this, and believed it would be detrimental to society if a single company was in control of them. So, she released the blueprints, production details, and source code into the public domain, so that anyone could produce ECHOES.

Victor invited Jane to his apartment to celebrate her accomplishment, during which he asked her to be his girlfriend. She was utterly baffled by this question, and wasn't sure how to react. Victor explained that he was attracted to her, and that he wanted to spend more time together, not just in the way that they had previously, but in a romantic context as well. Still not sure how to react, Jane asked for time to think about it. She thought about it for several days, doing research and reading romance novels to try and make sense of it. After one week, she concluded that what she felt for him wasn't love. Regardless, she wanted to find out what love felt like for herself, so she agreed to date him.

The two of them had an unusually distant relationship. Victor understood that Jane wasn't like most women, and tried to give her as much space as possible. They were rarely physically intimate, often acting more as close friends than romantic partners. It was actually Jane who initiated romantic gestures most of the time, usually in an effort to learn more about love. The two grew closer over time.

Jane spent several years making improvements to ECHOES. They hadn't yet been widely adopted, with only a few companies taking interest in manufacturing them and beginning the process of developing methods of mass producing them. She publicly released information about every revision she made so that any companies interested in producing them could freely integrate her updates. By the time she stopped developing them, they were capable of easily outperforming human workers in speed and efficiency, and they were able to learn from other ECHOES all around the world. They became most prevalent in low-skill jobs at first, but it didn't take long for them to permeate most industries to some extent. They had an especially strong grip on the medical industry, all but replacing human doctors in most developed countries. Satisfied that her work was doing exactly what she wanted it to do, Jane moved onto new projects.

Jane began working for a company that specialized in space travel. At first, she was tasked with developing robots that were as similar to humans as possible in order to test the effects of long-term space travel on humans. Over time, she began to wonder why she was doing that, when they could simply send the robots into space instead. During her employment there, she met another scientist: Elle, and she learned of her work developing small, artificial black holes. Jane immediately took interest in Elle's work and asked to be reassigned to work with her. She began developing nanobots that would be able to study the effects of black holes up close. During their time working together, Jane and Elle became somewhat close as co-workers, although their relationship was kept mostly professional, with very little discussion of personal matters between them.

Meanwhile, Victor had proposed to Jane. She agreed, and after several months, the two of them got married. Although Victor didn't pressure her, he'd made it apparent that he wanted to have children some day. Jane wasn't opposed to the idea, but she felt she had far too much work to do before she could do something like that. She thought often about the time she spent with her mother as a child, and thought about having a daughter of her own some day. Still, she wanted to wait.

Jane and Elle had both been selected to speak at the Ultimate Conference as the Ultimate Roboticist and Ultimate Experimental Physicist, respectively. When Jane arrived there, she was confused to find that Elle wasn't there. Then, Dr. Tobias Chester Platt explained the circumstances. Jane was given the task of developing robots whose bodies were as similar to humans as possible, to the point of being nearly impossible to distinguish. These robots were to be called REPLICAs.

As interested as she was in her newfound work, Jane was upset that she had been dragged into this against her knowledge. She was upset to think that Victor was going to die and there was nothing she could do about it as well. She tried very hard not to let her emotions interfere with her work, however. She grew rather close with Lain as the two worked together to develop REPLICAs. She wasn't very close with Dexter despite collaborating with him often, though she did learn much about him. Nestor made her uncomfortable, as he often brought her food, which reminded her too much of Victor. She eventually asked him to stop doing it. The two were never very close as a result.

Jane began a side project to develop ECHOES to assist everyone around the bunker. They were a smaller form of ECHOES, called ECHOES Mini, that were less adaptable but easier to produce. Before long, these ECHOES were performing many tasks around the facility, including tending the biosphere on the bunker's third floor. She developed a unique ECHOES unit named Ai, with the same AI system that Cella used. Her justification for it was that Ai would be a good test for the REPLICA project, but the truth is that to her, Ai was the daughter she never got to have. She dressed Ai in feminine clothes and taught her all of the things about femininity that her mother taught her. She even told Ai to call her Mother.

After 13 years in the bunker, Lain committed suicide. Jane was hurt to lose yet another person she cared about. It made her uncomfortable that Dexter decided to rename Cella to Amadeus and modeled it after Lain. She felt it was a painful reminder of someone she'd lost, but there was nothing she could do about it.

One day, a few months after Lain's death, Jane realized that she had become pregnant, and that Dexter was the father. She was filled with regret over what she had done. She felt like she had betrayed Victor. But at the same time, she was somewhat happy to have a child, which only made her feel more guilty. When she told Dexter, he wanted no part in raising the child. When the baby was born, she was ecstatic to have a daughter, who would one day be named Jun. She spent very much time with Jun during his early years of life. She tried to raise Jun to be a very feminine daughter, but over time, it became apparent that he had no interest in such things. When he came out as transgender, she accepted his new identity, but she was disappointed. She felt guilty over trying to force him to be something he wasn't for so many years, and buried herself into her work as a result. The two of them became more distant, their relationship more strained.

After 39 years, Jane had created REPLICA N1A, a REPLICA prototype based on someone who saved Dr. Platt's life; exactly as she was assigned to do. Jane then spent the next year working on perfecting the REPLICA project and on a means to mass produce REPLICAs. During this time, she grew very attached to Nia, who she began to see as her real daughter, more than Ai could have ever been. However, due to her age, she acted more like a grandmother to Nia, and so she was referred to as Oma, the Dutch word for grandmother. Unfortunately, Jane passed away in her sleep one night, allowing Dexter to finally carry out his plan to place the members of the Ultimate Conference in a killing game.