Unit K-000, "Buddy", rolls off the assembly line. This marks the first Valet to be assembled fully automatically, by the machines that would go on to create several clutches of 100 Valets.

This ends up becoming standard practice. Each generation has one unit (000, 111, 222, etc.) pulled aside to become a Valet Tester.

Buddy (K-000) is immediately pulled aside and placed back into PARDNER as a quality assurance and development unit.

Life² spins up the PARDNER program, intended to foster bold innovations with zero external oversight.

Ex TransLife employees band together and form Life² with funding from HEDRON. Dr. Cavern Dickson appoints himself CEO while nobody was looking, although nobody else really wanted that position anyway.

This is the first and last time something like that happens to a Valet while under the supervision of Life².

Turns out, making those little guys as cute and personable as possible also works on the people who made them, and seeing one injured feels surprisingly close to seeing your pet get mauled.

Personal Assistant Research Division – Neurology, Engineering, Recycling

In the words of Dr. Dickson, their goal is to create "the iPhone of consumer robots".

The 000 series was never intended to be sold to consumers, it was a private beta test with units mostly remaining in possession of Life² employees.

That did not stop some of them from ending up on the gray market, or in the hands of friends and family of Life² employees.

There was an informal agreement between conglomerates to make testing on synths somewhat more ethical, but it was still nowhere near close to the restrictions and precautions necessary for dealing with biological beings.

A production line incident occurs, Unit K-001 is critically injured in the process.

Life² releases the first clutch of 100 Valet units.

Due to their high price point and limited functionality, the 100 series is largely considered an open beta for rich nerds.

Despite this, they are considered a huge success for the PARDNER program.

During the hackathon, a meeting takes place behind closed doors. The outcome of which shapes the direction of all further development and prompts Life² to shift away from trying to make assistants and towards trying to make companions.

Life² releases the third clutch of 100 Valet units.

With sales on the rise, Life² leadership realizes they have a smash hit on their hands. In a first for the company, they sell out within weeks, prompting three more 3XX-series production runs (3XX-A, 3XX-B, and 3XX-C.)

Life² releases the fourth clutch of 100 Valet units.

Lack of success drives leadership to take a step back and recalibrate their goals to get back to previous levels of success.

With the K-3XX series, Valets finally manage to garner mass appeal.

Thanks to another price drop pushing them within reach of upper-middle class households, and improvements in functionality making them more appealing to have around, they quickly become a must-have for anyone looking for an unconventional pet or for some help around the house.

Their newly added adult-oriented features also make them very popular as party favors in penthouse suites worldwide.

In an attempt to keep momentum rolling, the K-4XX series is a very quick follow-up to the universally beloved K-3XX series kobolds, with the main changes being in their behaviors and a few new color ways.

Unfortunately, their new personalities skew a bit too eccentric for most people's tastes. They are also reported to be a little too personable.

Although failing to recapture the magic of K-3XX, the K-5XX series is still somewhat of a return to form for Life², with initial response from the general public being tentatively positive.

Several new concepts are picked up by PARDNER to be developed further, most are discarded quickly after being deemed infeasible or even impossible.

The majority of the new and redesigned frame is made up of soft rubber materials and is able to move by utilizing hydraulic compression, thus eliminating any hard pinch points and vastly improving reliability and resilience.

This redesign has the added benefit of making them softer and more comfortable to hold.

Life² releases the fifth clutch of 100 Valet units.

As a result, the 10th annual Life² hackathon is focused on developing new technologies to replace the Valets' metal frames and motors with something softer and less dangerous.

After a huge breakthrough in biohydraulics, Life² finally releases the sixth clutch of 100 Valet units.

Unit Valet K-666 is pulled aside and placed back into PARDNER for further iteration and testing.

Life² releases the seventh clutch of 100 Valet units.

Unit Valet K-777 is pulled aside and placed back into PARDNER for further iteration and testing.

The K-2XX units were an improvement over their predecessors, but still just out of reach for consumers.

While they came down in price and improved on functionality, they still weren't smart enough to be much more than expensive toys for neglected kids of CEOs and bankers.

The hackathon, now a beloved Life² tradition, was a week-long bender fueled by desperation, pizza, illicit substances, and a palpable "no ideas refused" energy unmatched by any other workplace event. Driving your researchers to the brink of exhaustion is a great way to breed innovation, it turns out!

DICKSON: Fuck I don't know if we're going to land the medical contract OR
that milsim thing who is going to buy these little fuckers

DICKSON: (long pause) fuckers, huh? GET ME THE HEAD OF PARDNER IN HERE, STAT!

DICKSON: DONT KNOW, IS TRANSLIFE MAKING AN ASSISTANT YOU CAN FUCK? CAN YOU FUCK OUR COMPETITORS' ROBOTS? MAKE IT HAPPEN OR WE'RE GOING UNDER NEXT QUARTER

Life² releases the second clutch of 100 Valet units.

To combat rapidly declining morale among staff, Life² hosts its first annual all-staff hackathon.

TransLife halts all synthetics research and shifts into bioengineering. Anticipating human trials and increased scrutiny, they establish an ethics board.

A few more "free spirited" employees really dislike this.

One of the perks of working with synths was the lack of oversight. The law never really caught up to the concept of "artificial" beings. Synths had been a part of society at large for a while at this point, and people would be as protective of a synth as they would be of a bio person, but technically and legally speaking, they were often still considered "property".

Some Valet owners start reporting injuries sustained from pinch points on their kobolds, especially ones trying to engage in close physical contact.

Life² claims that these injuries happened entirely through user error and that neither them nor the individual Valet units are responsible for any damages caused by interacting with them. Regardless, customer confidence and sales take a huge hit.