Ayin

Ayin in Project Moon's Day 50 video

* Profile
* Biography
* Technical

**Ayin** (아인, *Ain*), occasionally referred to as **A**, was a researcher and subsequent leader of the Seed of Light project after Carmen's death, later one of the masterminds behind the Smoke War, the founder of *Lobotomy Corporation*, and Angela's creator along with Benjamin.

After creating a script to be followed in order to finish the Seed of Light within L Corp's facilities, he wiped his memories and took the role of **The Manager** (관리자, *Gwanlija*), sometimes named as **X** and the protagonist of *Lobotomy Corporation*.

## Appearance

Ayin is a man with short black hair in a ruffled cut. He wears an almost completely black attire with a shirt, belt, pants, and shoes, with a white lab coat over the top. His eyes are yellow and his skin is pale.

## Personality

Ayin is described as somebody focused more on results rather than the process itself, willing to sacrifice everything so long as it reached a desired end. He is quite stubborn due to this nature, making him take the situation into the extremes. That goal of the Seed of Light was given by Carmen as a legacy to fulfill rather than an objective created by himself, just because he felt the need to complete her will and what have they worked on for so long. He feels he's unfit for being a leader, with his behavior contrasting with Carmen's compassionate and altruistic personality.

Nonetheless, Ayin is also said to be strong willed and with the ability to endure the sacrifices and hardships, not distracted by what's immediately before him. Binah notes his extraordinary will to keep his focus on the true root of suffering in the City, rather than looking away at what caused his own problems.

## Story

### The Seed of Light Project

Ayin, along with Benjamin was one of the first employees who worked under Carmen's lead on The Seed of Light project, a visionary project bent on finding and creating a cure that can heal the City's inhabitants "Sickness of the mind" and return the Light to the souls of people, undoing the City's current state as a corporate dystopia, and saving humanity. Ayin was capable and determined enough to get into any Wing he wanted from the start, but he chose to follow Carmen instead to fulfill this goal of hers.

Carmen began to tell Ayin her plans to restore humanity's lost light. She theorized about a medicine that can literally draw out from the human subconscious, a formless concept that took shape and can become a kind of seed to cure this disease. This seed would be planted on people's mind and these seeds will bloom by themselves, different on each person. It was a concept that they needed to research to make it possible. They trusted each other, with Carmen admitting that she had a weak heart that could make her fall if someone suffers because of her actions. She herself became something like a mentor to Ayin and with him becoming an assistant who was ready to support Carmen in her endeavors. With the work in the project and a laboratory settled in the Outskirts in order to not attract attention from The Head, soon people from all classes started to join them, including Daniel, an elite member of society and Kali, a legendary Color Fixer, dreaming of a bright future for their labors, all guided by Carmen's speeches. They also saved a pair of children from the Backstreets, Enoch and Lisa.

The project of "The Seed of Light" started with an experimentation supported by a group of researchers, including Elijah, Gabriel, Giovanni, and Michelle. The personnel put their efforts into work to achieve Carmen's goal, but there were flaws in the employees from Ayin's point of view; a lack of competence, excessive rationality, uncontrollable fear, recklessness in their ideas. But Carmen believed more in such positive efforts and Ayin began to lean by her side.

Time passed and still no result were obtained to make a major step. They had the research of Cogito, which required a human subject to test it on. Carmen was found to be the most optimal candidate, but something unexpected happened; Enoch showed interest in the project and wished to find a meaning of life with the Light. Despite Carmen's numerous discouragements, he still wanted to participate, putting the harsh decision of Carmen accepting the use of Enoch as a subject. Unfortunately, Enoch dies, and Lisa falls in grief, muttering hateful things against Carmen, wishing she was the one to die in his stead, and she lost faith in herself. Carmen fell into a deep depression, losing her naturally charismatic and bright stance completely. Ayin was concerned for her but couldn't keep an eye on her all the time, culminating in Carmen attempting suicide in a bathtub by slitting her wrists.

Ayin found her unconscious in the bathtub, bleeding from her wounds in her unsuccessful suicide. Ayin managed to salvage her body and preserve her in a cryogenic chamber. And although there was no way to bring her back, this allowed the decision of using Carmen as a key part of the project that failed before. Ayin removed Carmen's nervous system from her body and placed it in a reservoir, where she began to produce Cogito for continuous experimentation and becoming the The Well, from where where the substance is drawn out from. Even with her nervous system as the only remaining part of her body, Carmen still lives on in the chamber, though she cannot see, hear, talk, or otherwise communicate with those that remain.

Carmen's death heavily shook the already unstable team, but the experiments continued because they still believed in the vision that Carmen had brought them together with. However, more issues began to appear again related to the Cogito research. Elijah, in an attempt to prove herself as competent, took an unauthorized injection to help in the research on humans, but died in the process. Gabriel wanted to moderate this by hiding his own emotions behind a facade of rationality, but eventually fell to insanity and died as well. In a method to control the doses of Cogito, he required volunteers, which Giovanni accepted to be part of the experiment, but with the fake hope of saving Carmen with it and succumbing to death like the ones before.

After witnessing so much death, Michelle finally broke down, and confessed the workings and dealings of the Seed of Light project to the Head. Garion, and Arbiter of the Head soon after followed up on Michelle's information, killing employees and coercing Daniel to open the Abnormality containers, wreaking havoc alongside the Abnormalities, massacring everyone on her path within the facility. Kali eventually fought her way through Abnormailites to the Arbiter, and managed to bring Garion to her knees and impaled her against a wall, mortally wounded, at the cost of her own life. In the end only Ayin, Benjamin and Michelle remained after the massacre, with the latter unable to cope with the guilt of indirectly perpetrating the massacre, committing suicide.

Ayin eventually found a dying Garion in the aftermath. He proceeded to torture her for the slaughter of his coworkers, and afterwards began to probe her brain, discovering the inner workings of the Head and how to work under its gaze in the future. With this information, Ayin finally prepares to for the conflict that would grant them access to become a Wing and no longer be in the Head's sights.

### The Rise of L Corp

With the information obtained from Garion, Ayin and Benjamin determined that to become a Wing, they'd need to take another one down and take its stead. Looking into each one's current state and weaknesses, they decided to target a former L Corp, a Wing that specialized in producing energy, but with the byproduct of filling its surroundings with black smoke, much to the disgust of its districts inhabitants.

Now with a clear target, Ayin, Benjamin and Dias helped in sparking the Smoke War, a large scale Wing War to take down the current L Corp. They obtained the help of several Wings, Associations and Fixer Offices, such as R Corp, the entire Southern branch of the Zwei Association, and Charles' Office, with the promise of contracts with the new L Corp and Nest migration passes. With this opening, it allowed them to become the new L Corp, which provided energy like the one before. With the knowledge obtained in the research, they quickly make preparations for a new facility in their Nest.

Now victorious and officially a Wing under the name of Lobotomy Corporation, Ayin wished to finally finish the Seed of Light project. After setting up other facilities to provide energy to the city along with contracts with R Corp and T Corp to help their management, Ayin created a secret facility, buried it deep within the center of L Corp's Nest. All the energy produced in this facility was instead used for the creation of the Seed of Light, but to complete this routine properly, he would need someone who would not fail him as his human coworkers had, someone who had the endurance and longevity to do a series of tasks for millennia, but still had the capability to make slight changes in case things went wrong.

And so, Ayin and Benjamin set about to create an AI far more advanced than anything yet created, even if it were to break the AI Ethics Amendment. Scanning Carmen's brain and memories and transferring them to an android body, they hoped to create a perfect copy of her, but her new body perceiving time 100 times slower put her consciousness in distress, ever so slightly different from Carmen. Ayin was disgusted as her for being something akin to a mockery of her, unable to even face her, let alone talk to her, which caused Carmen's consciousness even more grief. Convinced by Benjamin, Ayin decided to name his new creation after "Angelos", a holy being that would drag them out of hell, and gave the android the name Angela.

Angela was then handed the "Script" by Benjamin: a series of steps to fulfill the Seed of Light project and help in correcting it when needed. This included the Sephirot: Ayin's old friends (and Garion) brought back to life by encasing their remains in mechanical tombs, giving them new names and suppressed memories. Angela has to oversee all the loops made and every fragment is recorded in her mind, gaining only the sympathy of Benjamin who was giving her support. He felt that Ayin was soon coming to a point of no return and tried to warn him by first preparing a recorded message to him during the loops with a cover up so even in the future, he could stop. However, Angela interferes and took out the last part of the message about the third truth. She seemingly kills Benjamin to fulfill the last actor of the script, giving him the mechanical body to become a Sephirah, and now named Hokma.

In the end, Ayin is left alone. All those colleagues who supported him were gone and he was beginning losing his mind after several loops. Carmen's expectations, unfinished research, and the death of colleagues ruined him. He attempts to commit suicide, but he is stopped. However, Ayin decided to give up in his own way: his personality disassociated from himself and transferred his memories to a data system, so they could be implanted in a new manager. Ayin meets his own end in that form, but he is still somewhat alive while within the last department of the facility as reflections of his heart and memories.

After thousands of loops, he finally reaches the end the Script, dissolving into the Seed of Light as it blooms, having accomplished what Carmen set up for him after a decade in the real world, finally curing the City's disease of the mind. However, Angela interferes in vengeance and retribution, bringing forth the White Nights and Dark Days.

## Trivia

* Ayin (meaning "Nothing"), is the concept of nothingness in Kabbalah, from where the Sephirot came out of being.