Editing BtVS Sounds Like Hell: Chris (section)

==Background==

When The Initiative, the U.S. Government Taskforce for dealing with the supernatural, decided they needed to develop enhanced assets capable of physically matching "hostile subterrestrials" there were several projects competing to meet that need. Eventually, after much bureaucratic in-fighting, the ADAM Project to pharmacologically augment soldiers and create bio-mechanical demonoids was victorious and the rest was history. But that's a different story. This tale is about one of the projects that lost.

CHRIS (Covert Humanoid Robotic Initiative Soldier) was a project to reverse-engineer technology salvaged from remains of the robots Ted and April (the latter obtained after the project had been passed along to the private sector) and improve on it in order to create robots capable of covertly protecting the public from hostile subterrestrials. When the ADAM Project prevailed funding for C.H.R.I.S. was cut and the project's head was suddenly out of a job. Fortunately for him, he happened to be a college gaming acquaintance of software mogul David Nabbit and used that connection to try to get a cushy job in the private sector.

Now it turns out that Nabbit happened to have experience with the supernatural, such as being a client and financial adviser to the legendary souled vampire Angel. During the routine background check for potential employees he happened to notice a detail that caught his attention due to his experience with the strange. Thanks to his knowledge and connections he was able to follow that lead and successfully learn what his old college friend had been doing for his previous employers. Delighted with what he discovered, he immediately offered to hire his friend on the condition he help him obtain all the research and technology from CHRIS. His friend readily agreed.

Through the years he used his skills and resources to tinker with CHRIS technology as a hobby and eventually managed to create a working prototype that satisfied his technical standards. Being a nerd who had read a lot of science fiction, he was genre savvy enough about potential robot rebellions to hardwire a variation of Issac Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics into it. He changed things a little to suit the nature of the missions it was designed for. For example, while it was forbidden to inflict permanent harm on a human, due to the possibility of dealing with cultists or victims of possession it was permitted to use violence to temporarily subdue humans if necessary. And to keep it from being misused it only had to obey his orders or the orders of people he designated as its superiors.

Giving his creation the alias of Chris Winters, as sideways reference to Angel's former paramour Buffy Summers, he started field testing him by having him patrol the streets of L.A. solo. His ostensible goal was to prove that CHRIS was a viable concept and potentially get a government contract from the agencies which replaced the Initiative to make more. But the truth deep down that Nabbit doesn't acknowledge was that doing heroics by proxy and experiencing adventures vicariously* through CHRIS was his real motivation. It occurred to him that CHRIS might see more action and accomplish more good if he was part of a team. As luck would have it, one of his sources on the supernatural scene informed him of a band forming that already had several potential members who were known to at least occasionally tangle with monsters. Seizing the opportunity, he decided to have CHRIS try to join the nascent group. Not only would his creation likely have opportunities to battle alongside veteran monster fighters but he'd get to be part of a band, which to Nabbit was the next best thing to being in one himself.

*Thanks to CHRIS' Bluetooth interface he's capable of streaming his video and audio sensor data through a phone, enabling real time monitoring of his circumstances by authorized indviduals.