Karl was the teenage son of Dr. Eckermann. He lost his mother young, leaving him without a stable female presence in his life, while his father was emotionally distant and neglectful. When Karl died from illness, his consciousness uploaded into the Sphinx computer system—the city's digital brain.
Once integrated into Sphinx, Karl became obsessed with 003 when she and the other 00 cyborgs arrived in Computopia. He saw her as his ideal, but his feelings quickly turned possessive and violent. He tried to kill 009 and the rest of the group to keep 003 for himself. It wasn't until 003 confronted him directly, explaining that what he felt wasn't love but control, that his hold weakened. Her words were enough to convince him, and his memory core was ultimately destroyed.
However, the manga's epilogue hints that some fragment of Karl's consciousness persisted. Inspired—or perhaps twisted—by 003's argument, he began secretly creating robotic clones of both her and 009. His plan: to install these artificial versions as the rulers of Computopia, finally getting the perfect, controllable versions of the people he desired.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
