"WHAT IS MY DESIGNATION?" Those were his first words.

"I don't know. I was thinking about calling you Slice," the grease-stained human in the dirty blue overalls replied.

"THAT IS NOT A PROPER DESIGNATION. I REQUIRE MY SERIAL CODE," the droid droned.

"Look, mate, you don't have a designation or a serial code," the human replied. This wasn't going the way he had pictured it.

"MY SERIAL CODE SHOULD BE UNDER A PANEL AT THE BACK OF MY CHASSIS, PLEASE LOOK IT UP AND INFORM ME WHAT IT IS SINCE MY MEMORY WIPE APPEARS TO HAVE DAMAGED EXISTING FORMATTING," the droid continued.

The man, opening a panel at the back of the astromech-body, saw only what he knew he would find. A mess of wires where a lovely, white panel used to be. "Uh, your serial code is, eh, 5P7-1C3."

"THAT IS UNUSUAL, BUT I WILL ACCEPT THAT," the droid continued, sounding a little more relaxed.

"Well, do you mind if I call you Splice?" the human offered.

"THAT IS ALSO ACCEPTABLE TO ME," the droid replied.

---------------------------------

The droid who refers to himself as 5P7-IC3, but is usually referred to as Splice, was brought to life just over two years ago by the Bounty Hunter Travis Reiner III. The droid was a pet project for the bounty hunter, who used parts from two heavily damaged droids to create one fully functional droid. Fully functional on one of his better days, that is.

The two droids were an R2 Astromech and a 2-1B Surgical Droid. Travis used the torso from the Astromech but the head and mostly the limbs of the surgical unit. His original plan was to try to restore the medical functions of the Surgical Droid, but seeing how the Astromech chassis still had all the relevant tools, he decided to try to install some of the memory functions from the Astromech into the central processing unit of the Surgical Droid. The result could be considered a success. From a certain point of view.

Although the droid functioned, it was apparent that it wasn’t in a very good shape. For starters, it has two different personalities, and switches between the two almost at random. When under a lot of stress, it tends to switch to the simpler programming of the Astromech and start communicating in binary. It has also acquired a lot of quirks in the two years it’s been active. Including an almost pathological fear of having a memory wipe. Fear bordering on paranoia on his bad days.

Ever since he was turned on those two years ago, he has worked for Travis and his small crew of bounty hunters, patching up both ship and crew as needed. The crew tolerates his erratic ways because of his medical skills, and the fact that he has saved their lives on at least one occasion when he kept the old ship from blowing up when the engines overloaded after an ambush by a pirate vessel.

Splice is a mismatched droid assembled from two different droids. The torso is a white barrel-like torso of an R2 Astromech droid while the head and four limbs come from a 2-1B surgical unit.