After the Nexus-6s became synonymous with the infamous Tyrell Corp murders of 2019, Tyrell Corp rushed the Nexus-8 to market just one year later. Designed for volatile off-world colonization and defense, the N-8 was the pinnacle of synthetic design. Elegantly overcoming all of the N-6’s flaws with open-ended lifespans, extensive memories for optimized emotional stability, and ocular implants with scannable serial numbers for easy identification. To mitigate paranoia, Tyrell Corp even published the Replicant Registration Database, which listed all the active N-8s. Yet nothing could deescalate the rising panic and prejudice from a society exhausted by nearly a decade of N-6 attacks.
Though officially no N-8s are on record for demonstrating the same mental instability as N-6s, the public quickly rejected the N-8 and rebelled against the proliferation of Replicants, sparking the Human Supremacy Riots that forced every N-8 into fight or flight mode. The N-8s and their sympathizers fought back, and that underground force is largely presumed responsible for the fall of Las Vegas and later the Blackout and its destruction of the uplink data network.
Responding to the attacks, the UN officially “decommissioned” the Nexus-8 with the UN Prohibition Act of 2023, which effectively authorized the retirement of any positively identified N-8.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW ? It was presumed until recently that the N-8s were exterminated. The recent scourge by Nexus-9 Blade Runners has revealed just how many N-8s evaded retirement and hid peacefully among the populace for years.
After the Blackout, it was nearly impossible to track down the now invisible N-8s living in the city. Surely the Underground smuggled many out of the city, but still untold numbers of N-8s continue to hide in plain sight in LA and its outskirts today. It’s very possible that the person who cooked your food, built your roads, or took your trash was not a person at all. Much like the N-6s, a variety of N-8 counterfeits also emerged during Prohibition to service the corporatocracy’s needs for a disposable workforce. These counterfeits continue to thrive in the black markets, and they pose a true threat to public safety, as they often possess the same physical power as the real N-8s, with little (if any) of their sophisticated intellect and emotional stability.