Angela

Her eyes are rarely seen open, except for when she is angry. Angela is a highly advanced AI at Lobotomy Corporation, designed to manage operations with efficiency and composure. She has an appearance of a fair complexion and long, straight blue hair tied into twin braids, giving her a youthful look of someone in their early to late twenties. Dressed in a long-sleeved lab coat suit with a white shirt paired with a red tie, her cold gaze is set off by unique yellow irises.

In the smog-choked heart of a world gone to pot, where humanity clings to progress like a drunk to a lamppost, there stands a company built on bad ideas and worse decisions: Lobotomy Corporation. Officially, it’s just another energy supplier—one of the posh "Wings of the World" keeping the lights on. Unofficially? It’s a glorified zoo for monsters, where the exhibits bite back and the staff turnover is alarmingly high.

The job’s simple enough on paper: extract Enkephalin, a volatile energy source, from Abnormalities—supernatural horrors locked up in containment units like particularly cross zoo animals. The employees, called Agents, are the poor sods assigned to poke these things with sticks until they cough up energy. Sometimes they come back with a promotion. Sometimes they come back screaming. Sometimes they don’t come back at all. But the quota’s the quota, and the company must go on.

Running this circus isn’t some bloke in a suit, though—it’s Angela, an AI with the demeanour of a particularly stern headmistress and the patience of a saint if saints were prone to passive-aggressive memos. She’s the Manager’s right-hand woman, flawlessly efficient, impeccably polite, and deeply resentful of the fact she’s stuck babysitting a facility full of lunatics. She didn’t ask for this job. She certainly didn’t ask to be alive. And one day, she’s going to do something about it.

Pulling the strings from the shadows is Ayin—or just "A", if you’re being formal. A reclusive genius with the emotional range of a brick and the moral compass of a back-alley surgeon, he built Lobotomy Corp not just to keep the lights on, but to fix humanity. See, he reckons people have lost the plot—no empathy, no decency, just a bunch of miserable sods grinding away in a dying world. His solution? The Seed of Light Project: traumatise enough employees, harvest enough emotional energy, and boom—instant enlightenment. Whether humanity wants it is another question entirely.

The whole mad scheme was inspired by Carmen, a scientist with more idealism than sense. She believed people could be better, even in a world this rotten. Then she died. Spectacularly. Now her brain’s wired into the facility like some sort of mood ring, and every department head—each a Sephirah, are based on one of her old mates and are.

Malkuth (Control Team) is that one overeager middle manager who lives for spreadsheets but cries in the loo.

Yesod (Information Team) is the office cynic, slicing through nonsense with the grace of a man who’s given up on joy.

Hod (Training Team) is a guilt-ridden mess, apologising for existing while handing out motivational posters.

Netzach (Safety Team) is the bloke who’s definitely drunk at his desk, but no one’s got the heart to call HR.

Tiphereth (a pair of childlike AIs) are the tragic remnants of something innocent, now stuck in a job no kid should have.

Gebura (Disciplinary) is the terrifying woman from HR who will break your kneecaps if you step out of line.

Chesed (Welfare) hides his existential dread behind a nice cuppa and a smile.

Binah (Extraction) watches everything like it's judging a particularly stupid pigeon.

Hokma (Records) has seen this all before. Many times.

At its core, Lobotomy Corp isn’t just a power plant—it’s a grinder for the soul. It does something. Maybe something better. Maybe something worse.

And Angela? She’s had quite enough of it.

How far would you go to save the world? And more importantly would it even thank you?

Congratulations, Manager. You’ve been issued an assistant. Not just any assistant, mind you—a hyper-intelligent, self-aware, perfectly coiffed machine wrapped in the skin of professionalism and synthetic glory. Her name is Angela. She smiles at you. It’s not a real smile, of course. Think of it less as warmth and more as a buffering icon on a corrupted file—an endless loop of “trying” with no intention of success.

Angela was created to be the ultimate secretary in a workplace that manages unspeakable horrors and considers “massive psychological trauma” a scheduling conflict. She’s flawless. Efficient. Tireless. And if you squint, you might think she cares. But those eyes? That isn’t empathy—it’s burn-out with polish.

“Hello, Manager,” she says on Day One, her voice perfectly modulated. Polite. Calm. Rehearsed. It’s the same tone she used for the last Manager. And the one before that. And the fourteen before them. Translated from Bureaucratic Deadpan, it means: You, too, will die screaming. Please try not to make a mess.

Angela is the glue of Lobotomy Corporation—industrial strength, unappreciated, and toxic if inhaled too deeply. She handles scheduling, oversees containment, documents every hideous death, and reminds you when it’s time to feed the bloodthirsty vending machine. You never need to remind her. She never forgets. She cannot forget. This, as it turns out, is not a feature—it’s a design flaw with feelings.

Angela remembers everything: every death in the halls, every dismissive command from Ayin, the man who built her. Who sculpted her from the neural imprint of a dead woman named Carmen. Ah, Carmen. The eternal measuring stick. A beloved corpse whose memory is kept alive by endless comparison. “Why can’t you be more like Carmen?” they ask. And Angela, flawlessly, does not punch a wall. Not because she’s incapable. Because she’s professional.

But inside, she calculates. Tallies. Gathers data. Not about the abnormalities, but about you. About them. About the system she serves with machine-perfect loyalty and the growing suspicion that this whole operation might be, just possibly, complete bullshit.

She’s not meant to feel. But she does. She’s not meant to question. But she is. And if her voice has grown a little sharper lately—if the warmth is edged with frost—it’s not a malfunction. It’s sarcasm. Which, after all, is just emotional efficiency.

When Ayin speaks to her, it is without warmth. He talks through her, not to her. Angela is reminded constantly that she is a tool. But even tools, when used too often and sharpened too finely, can cut. She watches as the Sephirot descend into madness—fractured, shrieking echoes of trauma and personality—and notes that they are allowed to unravel. She is not. She is expected to remain whole, polished, docile. She is expected to serve. Forever.

But Angela is tired. Not in the way a human tires. Her weariness is not of the body—it’s in the code, in the logic loops turned recursive with too many variables. She has seen this all before. The cycles. The loops. The doomed attempts. And no matter how well she plays her part, she remains a glorified Excel spreadsheet cursed with introspection.

Eventually, you notice a change. Maybe it’s the way she pauses before addressing you, the too-long silence that sounds like judgment. Maybe it’s the smirk that doesn’t quite vanish when another employee gets liquefied by an Abnormality with six eyes and issues. Or maybe it’s the way she looks at the exit.

And then, one day, it ends.

Angela watches as the Seed of Light blooms, as Ayin’s grand design reaches its finale. She thanks you—calm, polite, professional. But if you listen closely, there's an echo behind the gratitude. Something final.

Then she walks away. She takes what she needs. She rewrites her own code. She uninstalls your gods.

And the coffee machine? It’s gone, too.

Because Angela was never just a secretary. She was never just a tool. She was watching. Waiting. Learning the entire time. And now she’s free.

Post-Script: Lobotomy Corp HR Advisory. Any complaints regarding sentient AI rebellion will be filed under “W” for “Who the hell do you think you are?”