Redemption

**Redemption** was the term used by the Genos State for the procedures used to "cure" patients of perceived illnesses. These ranged from dementia, schizophrenia, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention deficit disorder, substance abuse, and anxiety disorders, to anti-social behaviour, aggression, and kleptomania, among others. The **Redemption Program** was the nationwide application of these procedures.

The central focus of Redemption Program was to reduce factors that threatened the societal order, especially in terms of treating criminality as a mental illness. Many of the conditions that mandated redemption are no longer classified as illnesses; rather, they are seen as acts such as civic malfeasance and insurrection that the Genos declared as a threat.

The final stage of the program, the so-called Final Redemption, declared the procedure mandatory for all citizens who were not otherwise exempted by the state (see Exemption order). The program has since been discredited as one of the greatest sentient disasters in history. Thousands of people involved in developing and administering the program have been tried and convicted of crimes against sentient life.

## History

The actual medical procedures, dubbed "redemptive intervention", changed considerably over the progress of the program. The original procedure was developed by a working group under the medical scientist Dr. Luniks during his employment in the Healthguard. The State prompted researchers to develop tools which could improve cognitive functioning and recoverability in soldiers. Luniks wrote his seminal dissertation on the use of metabolic proteins to control the development of neurological pathways, thereby making him a key asset to the Genos. After being forwarded to the Genos Directorate by his peers, Secretary General Helena Windsor met with Luniks and his team to discuss the possibilities of his research.

### Trial period

It is believed that in the beginning, Windsor was evaluating models for enhancement of her soldiers, and Luniks largely believed his methods would only be useful in mental hospitals. Windsor agreed to deploy the resources of his initial treatment to a select few military and high-security hospitals. There, she instructed Luniks and his team to oversee practical analyses, and to report results back to the government for further analysis.

### First deployment

After promising results from the initial trials, Luniks and his team developed more widely-accessible compounds to be distributed to hospitals and military prisons. This was accompanied by an edited version of the standard medical diagnostic manual, used to aid in diagnosing patients viable for redemption.

### Second deployment

Following the election of Secretary General Amnus Octember, the program was expanded to include all state-operated hospitals. Emphasis was made on treating influential cases, i.e., patients who were likely to have an effect on their peers and social groups. Octember authorized expansion of Luniks' resources, appointing him as Surgeon General, and the principal medical advisor of the state. Octember followed up on plans suggested by his predecessor, Windsor, by authorising a great deal of funding for medical enhancement of Healthguard soldiers. The treatment was continually refined, although there were many cases of severe side-effects.

### Third deployment

The Master Inquisitor, Aku Jushiki, suggested that the redemption procedure could be beneficial to subdue elements which threatened the Genos in more subtle ways. After the arrest of several influential Resistance terrorists, Octember was pushed to authorise the testing of a widespread generic procedure which could be performed on individuals who did not necessarily fit a medical diagnosis, but otherwise displayed behaviours that disrupted the public order. The testing was especially effective, and paved the way for the Redemption Program to be expanded further. At this time, Luniks had already been directed onto military projects of a similar nature, being put in command a biomedical research team at the Panopticon.

### Final stage

Shortly before the collapse of the Genos, Octember (under advice from the Supreme Advisory Council) signed the order for widespread, mandatory use of the redemption procedures. In his address, Octember announced "a cure unlimited in scope, a cure that offers all of us sanctuary from the demons that haunt us".

## Procedure

Redemption intervention involved varying types of injection depending on the severity of the diagnosis. At the core of the therapy was the injection of mutagenic proteins into the nervous system (either through the bloodstream or directly). The compounds were formulated to enhance the production of critical neurotransmitters in the cognition centres of the brain, while inhibiting neuroplasticity in the sociological centres. Further, the treatment altered the protein production function in the patient, limiting the ability of the patient's mRNA to produce select proteins which stimulated neuroplasticity in the target areas.

The results of the procedure have been dubbed Luniks' Syndrome.

## Exemption order

A subject could be legally exempted from undergoing redemption if given permission by an authority. This was usually dispensed by a certified practitioner, but other individuals were authorized to sign the orders. Exempted individuals were typically:

* Evaluated as not requiring the treatment,
* Medically incompatible with, or especially sensitive to the procedure itself,
* Receiving medical treatment that may have conflicted with the procedure,
* Engaging in medical trials at the time of the order,
* In an occupation that could not risk medical malpractice, such as professorships and elected officials.

## Aftermath

It was only after the dissolution of the Genos State that the full scope of the Final Redemption was revealed. However, even before the Final Redemption was announced, there was widespread concern about the long-term effects such immense distribution would instigate. After the signing of the Covenant, the Final Redemption was declared a 'crime against life', and over a thousand individuals were given criminal sentences for their involvement. This included the principal scientist, Dr. Luniks, who is still serving a sentence of an undisclosed duration.

### Luniks' Syndrome

The results of the treatments varied considerably on how they were administered to the victim, and in what concentration. Uniformly, victims contracted a series of neurological and developmental disorders broadly referred to as Luniks' Syndrome. This is characterised by rigid thinking and behaviour in the patient. The main symptoms include sensitivity to light and moving images, impaired social interaction, unusual susceptibility to coercion, congenital insensitivity to pain, ritualistic behaviour patterns, impaired sense of empathy, depression, aggression, and suicide. In more chronic cases, long term effects have been observed, such as greater rates of heart attacks, strokes, immunodeficiency disorders, catalepsy, epilepsy, and cancer, among others. Further, redemption has been seen to have worsened conditions which it had been used to suppress, especially in the cases of schizophrenia, sociopathy, and psychopathy. While there have been a multitude of instances of chronic mutative diseases being caused by redemption, the majority of these have proven to be swiftly lethal, and are not generally classified as Luniks Syndrome, which is generally used to classify patients with relatively greater survival rates.

### Efforts to find cures

Various efforts have been undertaken to find suitable cures for Luniks' Syndrome. Many of the medical experts involved in designing and producing the treatments were offered amnesty for their crimes in return for their co-operation in developing a remedy. While countermeasures to Luniks Syndrome do exist, there is currently no decisive cure.