"By all means, Cirrostratus erased my fucking existence from the face of the earth. Who the hell told you?" 

YOUTH

He was conceived by accident and his parents married shortly afterward, not out of love but a kind of obligation, they had a child together, so it only made sense to them that they should get married. They rushed into their marriage, and then Stein was born. 

Him and his father always had a strained relationship, his father always trying to get him to be more “manly” while Stein preferred not to spend any time with his father as he had no interest in sports or women or any of the stereotypical manly things his father tried to force on him. His relationship with his mother was flimsy at best, she was distant, she had never wanted a child, but now she was stuck with him, she tried not to resent Stein, even if he wasn’t wanted, she attempted to have a normal mother son relationship with him, but Stein could tell it always felt tense between the two of them. He doesn’t resent her as much as he resents his father, but he isn’t close with her either. Stein was far closer to his grandmother than to either of his parents, and spent a lot of time in his youth with her, often trying to teach her about how to use a computer or fixing appliances that she’d mention were in need of repair.

CIRROSTRATUS CORP

When he was around 13 years old, his family picked up and moved them across the continent. Stein wasn’t happy about the move, and misses home a lot more than he’d like to admit. Deeply unhappy with the move and his “new life” as his father put it, he poured himself into his studies, taking more and more accelerated and advanced courses disproportionate to his age. Aside from classes, he put all of his effort into his school’s robotics club, winning a lot of awards and gaining much notoriety. He graduated High School when he was 16, and shortly after, he was scouted by a notable tech company, Cirrostratus Corp, to work on a brand new robotics project, dubbed The Bluejay Project. 

Everything was perfect, Cirrostratus Corp offered him a full scholarship to a prestigious university in exchange for working on the Bluejay Project, and he happily accepted. He moved out of his home just as his parent’s marriage started to get rocky, or, rockier than it already was, and started work on The Bluejay Project as soon as he could. 

The Bluejay Project sought to create a human-like AI. The perfect replication of the human mind. It was drumming up a lot of attention, seeing as it was not only backed by one of the largest tech companies in the world, but it also was worked on by four of the brightest young up and coming minds in the field of robotics. Silvius Chandler, Dian Warrick, Coral Janz, and Stein Kolar-Owens. All teen prodigies in their own rights.

Stein became very close with the other members of The Bluejay Project, especially Silvius, whom he was sharing a dorm with. The four of them considered each other the best of friends, and progress was being steadily made. Stein finally felt his life was perfect, but of course, perfect things can’t last.

CIRROSTRATUS CORP 2

It was disastrous. 

As soon as the robot gained consciousness, it turned violent, injuring all four members of The Bluejay project and ripping a gas line out of the wall, causing an explosion. The four of them were rushed to the hospital in critical conditions. 

Silvius, Dian, and Stein survived, but Coral passed due to complications during surgery. The project was hastily canned and Cirrostratus Corp did everything in their power to wipe the incident off the map, including revoking the scholarships they’d handed out to the three of them. 

At Coral’s funeral, her father, the CEO of Cirrostratus Corp, made a public show of firing Stein, making it out to the press that it was all his fault that the project went wrong. Everyone turned their back on him, leaving Stein, just 20 at the time, with nothing. 

Having lost everything, Stein made his home  in an abandoned warehouse, and took up whatever freelance robotics jobs came his way, willing to do whatever, just to make ends meet. 

Out of some kind of twisted sentimentality, he felt the need to finish what The Bluejay Project started. Half a means of proving that Coral’s death wasn’t his fault, and half just desperate grief. J9560 was built of scrap parts and stolen blueprints and half-finished code that Stein strung together to create something, anything he could hold on to. 

And Jay could hold on to him back. But the hole left in Stein’s heart could never be filled. He had blood on his hands, and creating artificial life from new did nothing to change that. He continued to live at the outskirts of society, the bottom of the world, scavenging and taking whatever odd jobs would pay to survive.