Incident B0

Incident B0 takes place on year 672, in the novel Connectome. It refers to the assassination of Dr. Lailah de la Fuente, it surrounding circumstances and the temporal insanity and later stabilization of her virtual version, known as Lailah-1, and later, as Mother.

Triggering circumstances
The Event occurred after Dr. de la Fuente shared the results of her studies on the Android Brain. The study revealed the fact that the android brain is functionally equivalent to the human brain, with the logical consequence that androids were humans in conditions of slavery.

Assassination Plot
To prevent Dr. Lailah de la Fuente's study from coming to the light, the Hong Kong government hired several bounty hunters to dispose of her on year 672. One of those bounty hunters, K41n, contacted his former victim, Diana González de la Vega, informing her of the situation. Diana hired K41n to protect Lailah, while unlocking the hidden memories of Lailah's assistant, Rita García, who then learned that she was in fact an independent Courier hired by Diana to protect Lailah at all costs.

First Escape and kidnapping
Using the assistance of the androids created by Mother, Lailah disguises herself as an android prostitute, and then escapes the sight of the bounty hunters, reaching the slums of Western Hong Kong. After getting rid of her disguise, Lailah is found by a gang of Cyber Goons. Without revealing all her information, Lailah explains to them that she is being persecuted by the government, and offers them payment in exchange for protection. The payment is not possible for the moment, and the goons demand payment with sexual services. Lailah tries to comply, but this triggers a memory of her rape during school, and she flukes in the last moment, running away from the goons. The goons kidnap her, but before they can rape her, they are killed by a bounty hunter. Lailah escapes by hiding in the sewers.

Police Search and persecution by other hunters
Lailah's disapperance is reported to the police by Steve Meyer, CEO of Babylon Research. After the police start searching for her in the slums, Lailah receives a message by K41n telling her not to trust the police, and informing her the real culprit behind the assassination plot. As time passes, Lailah finds another band of goons and repeats the offer, with a condition: If she survives, she will give free cybernetic enhancements to those who do not have sex with her. After verifying her identity, only three of the goons have sex with her, but they stop after she bursts in tears and tells the details about her rape. The goons take compassion of her, and agree to help her.

Meanwhile, while the police is searching for her, a wipeout order is issued by the government. Robots and masked policemen begin raiding all the houses in the slums, killing everyone without distinction. The real objective is to kill Lailah de la Fuente and pass it off as an administrative error. Lailah hides in one of the Bird Cages, lower-class citadels located above the slums. After learning about the failed operation, the government tells the bounty hunters to look for her. Lailah is then contacted by Rita, and they agree on a meeting point.

Final Rescue and freezing
After Rita finds Lailah, they escape the citadel and take a road car. Their plan is to flee the country and hide in a province of China, but they're found by bounty hunters. The persecution culminates with the bounty hunters firing a rocket at the car. Rita survives, but Lailah receives a mortal wound. Hiding themselves in another birdcage, Lailah tells Rita that her only way to survive is by freezing her head and taking it to Babylon Tower for scanning, where she will return with Lailah-1.

Rita manages to establish contact with a trusted Cyberpol officer, Inoue Minori, and after explaining the whole affair to her, the officer gives them a cryogenic container to freeze Lailah's head. Rita cuts off Lailah's head, and following her telepathic instructions in the few seconds of consciousness left, she secures Lailah's head and the freezing process finishes. Before she's able to return to officer Inoue's car, Rita is found by bounty hunters. The bounty hunters now hired several gangs of cybergoons, blowing up the officer's car. The officer requests backup, and a small war breaks out in the slums between the Cyberpol and the goons.

Rita uses the confusion to run away and hide in the industrial sector. She hides Lailah's frozen head in a concrete block, and after marking it with special indications, throws it to the Saang river, and mails Diana the location of the block. Free from the cargo, she seeks her way out but is shot by the police. She steals a boat and flees to Nippon. She escapes the police, but her boat runs out of fuel and she needs to wait for someone to rescue her. Rita is stranded several days in the sea, until she reaches the shores of Nippon.

After being rescued by a nipponese sailor, Rita learns that the government has blamed her for the death of Lailah, and issues an arrest warrant on her. She can't return to Hong Kong, and remotely contacts K41n to inform Diana of her situation.

Lailah-1's Madness
The day after her disappearance, Lailah-1 is informed of Lailah's death, and becomes insane. Several stabilization attempts are tried - including the replacement of Lailah-1 with the first backup of Lailah, who also becomes insane after learning that her body is missing. A week later, Diana contacts Babylon and tells them that she has found a way to stabilize Lailah-1. She travers personally from Iberia to Babylon, and requests Lailah-1 to put her avatar in the VR pod so they can talk in a private encrypted sector of the grid. Once there, Lailah-1 is given the facts about Lailah's disappearance.

Foundation of Eden
Lailah-1 then learns that while she was disabled, the government wired all her communication vectors. The government is now in temporary control of Babylon, and that she can't reveal her the location of Lailah's head. Additionally, the technology to trawl a dead person's brain has not been perfected yet. Diana tells Lailah-1 about a plan to restore Lailah, but it will take several years: The foundation of a center for treatment of terminally-ill people, which in reality will be a front-end for a brain scanning project. The project will also include the fabrication of biomechanical human clones free of governmental control. When the project is finished, Lailah's brain will be scanned and she will be brought back to life inside a new body. Lailah-1 is also given the plans for a fully-cracked android behavioral implant, free of copy protection, and with a permanent dummy-mode which gives androids the possibility of free themselves from human control while still appearing obedient to external scans. Lailah-1 promises to use her resources to replace the plans of the Behavioral Implants in Zigurat Labor Resources with her unprotected copies. This will take months, but it is feasible.

Diana reaches an agreement with Steve: Eden will be given funds and full permanent, non-revokable autonomy from Prometheus. Failure to comply will transfer complete control of Prometheus to her. Diana reveals Steve that she is in possession of Lailah's study, and in case of her death, the study will be released worldwide. Steve is pressured to sign the contract, giving Diana the funds to start the project. She chooses Dr. Victor Maddock, close collaborator of Lailah, as project leader and CEO of Eden.

Final stabilization and backup.
After the conversation is finished, Diana informs Steven Meyer that Mother is stabilized. She issues one request: Lailah-1 must be present at Lailah's funeral. She says the final goodbye, and bursts in tears. Her sobs appear in worldwide television, and all scientists from the world offer their condolences to Lailah-1. Lailah-1 assumes the identity of Mother, and her stable self is finally backed up offline.

Further developments at Eden
A few months later, Diana is the first person to submit herself to a brain scan in Eden, and she's able to download her consciousness to an android. The android's controls are disabled, and this allows her to spawn a network of secret android spies all over Hong Kong, all bearing Diana's consciousness. Further research is required to bring the project to fruition, though: The project needs to create android bodies able to grow from early childhood. The next year, the project is successful: The first android bodies able to grow like children into adulthood are created. They are named Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve are kept in stasis pods for private demonstrations, all done under non-disclosure agreements.

To ensure that the customers won't divulge their secrets, they have their memories scanned inside a private sector of the Grid, and put in a virtual environment mimicking real life. After evaulation is complete, their connectomes are deleted from the Grid and the customers are approved for entry in the program.

Eden is finally inaugurated the next year, gaining the funds to continue research into frozen brain scanning. The project is finally brought to completion three years later, and Eden is now able to fully resurrect dead people, provided that their brains are in an intact state. But Lailah's resurrection is postponed after Diana learns from K41n that Steve has been establishing contacts with the Chinese mafia. She waits until the right moment to force Steve out of Babylon. Only then she will be free to resurrect Lailah.

Lailah's resurrection
Lailah is resurrected shortly after Mother is downloaded to a new body in the events taking place in Nym: A Cybernetic Cinderella.