Comment:

There are a lot of little subtle touches I put into Forward that I'm never sure get noticed or not. It may ruin the magic a little bit, but I'm going to go ahead and give y'all a peek behind the conscious curtain, here.

First and foremost, there's the change in colouring/lighting as our heroes move from area to area. In Lee's apartment and the hallway immediately outside it, I use softlining (changing the outlines to darker colours, rather than leaving them black), but outdoor and neutral locations (like the inside of the elevator) have black outlines, duller hues, and darker shadows. My colouring technique changes to denote different environments, and things being "softer" in Lee's apartment is quite intentional.

Then there's the way Lee dresses (or doesn't, as the case may be). Perhaps you've noticed that Lee changes their clothes quite often, and, when they change, they subtly mirror the person or AI that they intend to interact with - when they initially came back from class, they took a bath, and then changed into a skirt (like Zoa was wearing), then, when Caleb showed up, they changed to a sweater with horizontal stripes (like Caleb was wearing), and now they've put on clothing that mimics these robots (bracelets and shorts like Liz, green and yellow like a combination of the other two's colour schemes). We already know Lee obsessively changes their physical body in an attempt to communicate what they believe their inner traits to be, this is simply a quicker form of that - and mirroring someone else's steez is, we can assume, intended as a form of ingratiation (at the expense of Lee's actual identity).

And then, of course, you have the symbolism of names. "Lee" is, of course, literally a synonym for "shelter". Elizabeth Stride (aka "Long Liz") was one of Jack the Ripper's victims. D254 is a reference to Deuteronomy 25:4. I'm not going to explain Travis or the robot they're piloting yet. Gotta keep some secrets.

Transcript:

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0225 - 2167/07/06/17:14 - hallway
LC (now dressed): Okay, elevator, lets start there.
robot 2: Zoa typically uses a joint lubricant called Yunkatsine-two-eight-three and a fragrance called Magdalene, I am detecting trace amounts of both.
LC: Dang, good nose. What's your name?
robot 2: My human-readable serial number is D-two-five-four, but my "name" is whatever you want it to be.
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[entering elevator]
LC: Dee works. What about the rest of you?
robot 1: ...I typically use "Stride", or "Liz", but my name is also whatever you want it to be, Mezzer Caldavera.
LC: Liz, cool. And you can call me Lee, it's fine.
robot 1: Noted.
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[all in elevator]
robot 3: This unit must inform you that it is being controlled remotely by a human operator.
robot 3 (human voice): Heyyy there, babe! I'm Travis!
LC: Oh. Oh, Travis. Oh. Hi.
robot 3 (human voice): Yeah, I was kinda hoping to watch some sexy action and get paid, but this is cool too. We doing some sort of detective work or something?
LC: Oh. Um... no, no, it's just... um...
LC: Travis, did you... uh... see me? Just now?
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robot 3: This unit is anonymizing all personally identifiable information, and was censoring your erogenous zones until the job was confirmed.
robot 3 (human voice): Yeah, I didn't get to see anything, and neither did anyone else here.
robot 3 (human voice): Booo! Show us your diiiick!
LC: Ah. Fantastic.
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