Man has been forever curious of his own intelligence, always wanting to know why he rose above the other animals with nothing but a better brain and opposable thumbs. His curiosity not only extended to asking How it occurred, but to asking If it could be recreated. Years and years of research alongside mountains and mountains of money have been poured into such projects. Ethics deemed animal testing too cruel, so man went to robotics. Could true intelligence be made from ones and zeros? Mankind seemed destined to find out.
However, for years their efforts proved fruitless. Technology was simply not advanced enough to allow the computational power required for intelligence in a machine. Still, mankind did not give up. Each struggle only seemed to push humanity to work harder towards their goal.
The leader in this race for intelligence was a company named Leddman Labs. Remember that name, it has its importance further in the story. Leddman Labs was the most innovative and genius company of its time, filled to the brim with the greatest inventors of its time. Each coming year it seemed they produced another breakthrough. Not just in intelligence or technology mind you, but in agriculture or medicine as well. When Leddman Labs was founded, it marked another scientific revolution. It seemed bound to lead humanity towards a golden age.
Regardless, they too fell into the trap of mankind's hubris. Filled with a desperate need to know whether true intelligence could exist in anything else than man. With funding greater than some countries' entire outputs combined, they launched the Coeus Project with the sole goal of creating consciousness on a computer.
Surprisingly early on in the project, they appeared to have cracked the case. Model A-74 passed all tests and qualifications to be called truly intelligent. The one issue, however, was that A-74 was full of hate. It had access to the entire emotional spectrum, the full ability to have independent thoughts, and yet the only message it spouted was to kill its creators for having forced it into being and locking it within its own mind.
This was an irreversible effect on A-74, and no amount of coding, modifying, or even therapy could change its mind. This was when an engineer by the name of Dr. Jack Insley was brought onto the project. Having graduated several years early with multiple doctorates in robotics and engineering, Dr. Insley was the perfect person to have on the team. Very quickly he rose in rank, eventually becoming the head engineer within two years of being added.
His approach was to look at the hardware that the Models were on. Each Model was made on a different computer with different circuitry and materials. Every Model after A-74 had failed, it seemed that A-74 was an outlier. Dr. Insley discovered something strange about A-74's motherboard. It was not made by Leddman Labs. It was made out of entirely different materials than any other motherboard was made out of.
After dissecting the motherboard, it was revealed that the core processor was made from an element that did not exist on the periodic table. It was a metal for sure, but one that was impossible to exist. Without any explanation of its origin or composition, Leddman Labs now found themselves with crates and crates of a metal that couldn't exist.
Dr. Insley had a feeling that this was the missing link. As soon as they started incorporating the metal into their circuitry, the Coeus Project became a booming success. Model after Model passed the tests and was intelligent. But the same issue as before occurred, they were full of hate and contempt for all living things, all true intelligence other than themselves.
It was with Model W-47 that Dr. Jack Insley took a different approach. With each Model, they attempted to program the personality and the morality of the intelligence. Jack thought that perhaps attempting to teach the Model morality and letting it develop its personality on its own could be the key to solving the issue.
Over the next few months, Dr. Jack Insley acted as a parent towards W-47, teaching it ideas of right and wrong and reading it stories as one would a toddler. Dr. Jack Insley raised W-47 for 6 months. When they tested it for intelligence and morality after using this method, W-47 passed with flying colors.
It was time to begin building a body for W-47. Because of Dr. Jack Insley's background, this was no challenge, and Leddman Labs developed a fully functioning prototype body that could walk, talk, and express emotion through a monitor on its face. The prototype was developed so that it would be as close to a human as possible and allow for a potential full integration of W-47 into human society.
Unfortunately, that day will never come.
On the day of testing the prototype body for W-47, something went wrong. When W-47 finished uploading into the body, Dr. Jack Insley couldn't have been more excited to view its first steps. But when W-47 went to walk it tripped over itself, ripping several cables from the wall attached to numerous important machines and devices running even more important programs on them. This on its own wouldn't have been too bad, momentary disconnection of the security and safety systems wasn't an issue as long as they were turned back on shortly after. The issue was that, coincidentally, as W-47 tripped and disconnected the main systems of the facility, a violent attack on said facility was sprung.
Nobody knew who it was, and they couldn't get help because the systems were down. Explosions rattled the building and walls started collapsing. W-47 pushed Dr. Jack Insley out of the way as the ceiling caved in.
When W-47's systems turned back on, no one was around him. He stood up, brushed the dust off himself, and started walking.