>>>>>( Here’s a little prize from Talks-With-Cats, the fellow who normally has the thankless job of moderating our “Behind the Scenes” forum for conspiracy theorists. From what I hear, he and a street doc pal have patched up a fifth of the runners in Seattle at one time or another, so he should be able to speak with some authority. The document he’s annotated is a really horrifying marketing brochure for people who don’t know how to be themselves. The possibilities for elf posers alone are frightening. )<<<<<
— Captain Chaos (20:18:11/02-02-55)
>>>>>( Or, more properly:
This kind of stuff can also happen at very good shadow clinics, where you pay somewhat extra for them to conveniently misplace your “before” and “after” records, and a lot extra for them to create you a new ID to go with your new look. )<<<<<
— Talks-With-Cats (02:56:12/02-02-55)
>>>>>( The really interesting thing about this kind of work is that it’s a direct consequence of study into the human genome, reshuffling genes we’ve been able to study for ages, rather than trying to whip up something completely new. )<<<<<
— KAM (19:32:59/02-03-55)
Brought to you by Galatea Genetics
>>>>>( Unbelievable. Someone placed highly enough to name a corp actually has a classical education. )<<<<<
— Barry (14:36:15/02-03-55)
>>>>>( What? )<<<<<
— Feral (18:54:08/02-03-55)
>>>>>( Don’t mind Barry. He’s the only Troll I’ve ever met with a degree in English Lit, and he likes to confuse people with it. Sometime when you’re recuperating from cybersurgery, try slotting a performance of Pygmalion and Galatea, and you’ll see what he means. )<<<<<
— Hatchetman (08:31:16/02-04-55)
Everyone, at some time or another, has wondered what life would be like if they were different: if only you had those baby blue eyes to attract that special someone, or had that perfect auburn hair. But colored contact lenses come off eventually, your hair will turn brittle and split if you dye it often enough that the roots don’t show. What to do?
Galatea Genetics has the answer for you. You no longer need be limited by plastic surgery, dyes, and prosthetics. With the latest advances in the field of bioware, you can become a whole new you in just a matter of weeks!
If your skin carries unpleasant reminders of hard times, you might wish to leave them behind after a complete skin replacement. Say goodbye to unsightly scars, crow’s feet, varicose veins and weathering when you trade in for fresh, smooth skin. If you’d rather have an improvement on the original, you can choose your new skin color and body hair with a race-characteristic change (and say goodbye to that embarrassing acne that’s been pursuing you since high school).
>>>>>( One of the interesting things about human biology is that identical twins don’t have identical fingerprints. This means that you and your clone don’t have identical fingerprints, since a clone is just a force-grown identical twin. If you need to change your fingerprints, just have the skin of your hands replaced with clonal tissue, and you won’t even be risking your magical abilities (if you’ve got any).
If you go for the actual bioware options in here, you can even change yourself with respect to most cellular scans— the 99% that use a flake of skin. Someone ultra-paranoid might try a blood sample, though, and those are harder to beat... )<<<<<
— Talks-With-Cats (02:58:31/02-02-55)
>>>>>( What’s a shaman doing talking tech? )<<<<<
— Ferret (12:34:56/02-03-55)
>>>>>( New here, eh? Cats isn’t even a pinkskin; he’s a hermetic mage, MIT&T trained. (He says he got the name from a dorm roommate.) And don’t talk like that around shamans like Beowulf or the Mighty Quinn, or you might find out just how comfortable they are with a smartgun link. )<<<<<
— Rapid Fire (12:41:39/02-03-55)
>>>>>( If you’re getting your whole hide replaced, pay for the cultured bioware. You really don’t want to find your skin sloughing off in big patches when you’re trying to avoid dying of exposure in the desert. )<<<<<
— Hatchetman (08:52:27/02-04-55)
Recent developments in genetic technology will add the benefits of that clear, satiny skin of an Elf or the tough hide of an Ork with a metatype characteristic change!
| Complete skin replacement | 0BI | 15,000¥ |
| Race characteristic change | 0.15BI | 20,000¥ |
| Metatype characteristic change | 0.20BI | 25,000¥ |
>>>>>( A good shadow clinic that handles bioware can do any of these. They can also add some extra meddling with your junk DNA so you’re further from your original genotype as far as cell scanners see you for a modest extra fee, usually 3,000¥–5,000¥. Doing it to your original hide does increases the Body Index by a very small amount (about 0.05)— enough that magicians will be bothered, but that’s about it. )<<<<<
— Talks-With-Cats (03:01:54/02-02-55)
Have you always wanted that wavy auburn hair that no amount of dyes and perms can give you? Have you been longing to grow it down to your waist? Tired of hiding those grey roots? Are you tired of spending hours trying to get that limp, straight hair to develop real body, or straighten out that overly-kinky thatch? Or just say goodbye to that bald spot once and for all? With an easy scalp replacement, you can say goodbye to bad hair days and luxuriate as your lover can’t stop running their hands through your new, perfect hair.
With a scalp replacement, you can choose your hair’s color and texture within the complete range of human and metahuman variation, including the exotic elven tones of green, blue, silver, gold, and violet; built-in highlights, banding, and other markings can be arranged for a mild surcharge.
| Scalp Replacement | 0.05BI | 10,000¥+ |
>>>>>( What they’re not telling you is that this kind of tweaking only adds about five thousand nuyen to the cost of a race characteristic change, and doesn’t add any Body Index whatsoever. Your scalp is, after all, part of your skin... )<<<<<
— Talks-With-Cats (03:05:16/02-02-55)
In a world of cold, dispassionate cyberoptics, show some independent style with living eyes! Why settle for ordinary brown eyes when you could have a subtle hazel tint or exotic violet irises? It’s well known that the eyes are a powerful lure, and you can have a pair that’s sure to catch that stranger’s attention from across the crowded room. With recent breakthroughs in metahuman genetics, we can even give you the advantages of night vision that will let you see by moonlight as if it were day and catch your lover’s blushes in the darkness.
All our eyes are guaranteed to give you 20/20 vision, astigmatism-free, for thirty years, or we provide replacements, free of charge.
| Eye color change | 0.05BI | 18,000¥ |
| Low-light eyes | 0.20BI | 25,000¥ |
| Thermographic eyes | 0.50BI | 35,000¥ |
| Low-light thermographic eyes | 0.60BI | 50,000¥ |
>>>>>( What I said about fingerprints also goes for retinal patterns. Swap in a new pair of eyes, and you’re a different person as far as the eyeball scanners are concerned. Of course, swapping in wetware eyes is a serious magic loss risk, if you’re the type that worries about it— those big bundles of nerves make for very invasive surgery. )<<<<<
— Talks-With-Cats (03:09:11/02-02-55)
>>>>>( Geez! Look at those prices! Cybereyes are way cheaper— and why is thermographic vision so much more expensive than low-light? )<<<<<
— Digger (23:47:01/02-02-55)
>>>>>( Well, eyes are neural bioware. That means they have to be cultured. And thermographic vision requires that they replace part of your visual cortex with some undifferentiated tissue. You literally have to learn to see again when you get thermographic eyes put in, because you didn’t grow up able to see colors like infrapink and infrahot which are just part of the rainbow to Trolls and Dwarfs. Of course, you do have to throw away most of your makeup, because it stands out like finger paint to people who can see into the infrared. )<<<<<
— KAM (19:16:38/02-03-55)
>>>>>( Do I detect a note of personal experience here, Doc? )<<<<<
— The Smiling Bandit (Strikes Again!/Ha-Ha-Ha)
>>>>>( Organic thermographic vision makes cooking with an electric stove a lot easier. )<<<<<
— KAM (19:23:14/02-03-55)
Are you unhappy with the frame you were born with? Would you rather be built like a football star or a long-distance runner? Or are you just wishing you could eat like a horse and never gain a pound? Galatea Genetics has been studying the genomes of the world’s top athletes... and now you can have the same advantages they were born with! Expert geneticists adjust a copy of your genome and grow a new, trim, powerful body to your specifications— and then we simply move your central nervous system over to a new and better body!
If you’re not interested in such a radical move, a musculoskeletal rebuild may be more your style. Our world-class surgeons rebuild your skeleton and muscles using tissues cloned from your very own body, making you into a more robust specimen of humanity.
| Cerebrospinal Transfer | Body, Strength, Quickness to racial maxima | 0.5BI | 1,750,000¥ |
| Musculoskeletal reconstruction | +2 Body, +2 Strength, +2 Quickness (up to racial maximum) | 0.2BI | 800,000¥ |
>>>>>( Cerebrospinal transplants are amazing in their possibilities for identity changes. Once you’ve changed your bone marrow’s DNA by swapping out most or all of your skeleton, you’re probably never going to be spotted on a cellular scan— even a blood sample will have your new DNA. By the way, I’ve never heard of a mage making it through one of those without complete magic loss from the surgery, though this is off a sample size of three cases.
Of course, the musculoskeletal rebuild applies only to folks who have unaugmented muscles. If you have muscle replacement or augmentation, they’d need to take it out first before doing the rebuild; once you’ve recovered from the rebuild (which is about as severe as surgery gets) and trained your body up, then you can get other boosts.
The impressive thing is the low Body cost for these things. They’re using clonal tissue that doesn’t do anything exotic (as far as your biochemistry is concerned). The rebuild is the sensible (though radical) alternative to the version you see cheap thugs sporting: vatgrown muscle tissue that’s been grafted in and is going to tear them up because the rest of their body isn’t designed for those stresses. )<<<<<
— Talks-With-Cats (03:41:36/02-02-55)
>>>>>( And sorry, you can’t get new bodies run up that have built-in, “natural” bioware. The genetic tweaks that produce bioware have side effects that ruin the host body as a complete organism. You also have to have your cyberware installed after you recuperate from the transplant, because you need a conscious mind to develop the proper reflexes for using cyberware. Of course, you can have a nice new body that will only require a few months of physical training to be performing in the top range of its metatype... and that can hold a lot of bioware.
A cerebrospinal transplant also isn’t a substitute for Leónization. You can put an old brain in a young body, but the old brain will keep aging normally. )<<<<<
— The Smiling Bandit (Strikes Again!/Ha-Ha-Ha)
Did your time in a garage band in your teens leave you slightly hoarse after you grew up? Are you constantly dogged by an accent that sets you apart from the haut ton? With a simple vocal cord operation and our staff of expert voice coaches, we can have you speaking and singing like you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth.
| Vocal cord adjustment | 0BI | 2,500¥ |
| Speech therapy (per month) | 3,500¥ |
Do you just know, deep down, that you’re not the sex your doctor says you are? Do you want to experience life on the other side of the gender fence— or get the best of both worlds? Modern technology has the answer. We can provide you with the equipment to function as a member of the opposite sex, or even a hermaphrodite. If you’re really serious, you can even go for a cultured fully functional reproductive system. Either way, you’ll want to spring for the rebuilt glands that will tell peoples’ noses about your new self just as much as their eyes!
| Sex change (superficial) | 0.5BI | 5,000¥ |
| Sex change (reproductive) | 1.5BI | 35,000¥ |
| Pheromone change | 0.3BI | 12,500¥ |
>>>>>( Well, if you’re really serious about changing your identity, this is one way to get some distance from your trail. Some street docs might offer a bargain rate on a mechanical change using “type O” human tissue, but I’ve treated more than a few dytegangers that had problems with the hormone balances. The operation evidently does involve sticking appropriate glands in, as well as the more mechanical surgery.
The full-on reproductive sex change is much more expensive, but I’ve heard of corporators arranging for them when they needed to pull off that critical family alliance or to carry on a family name. It involves a pelvis rebuild along with everything else. Note that even a cultured hermaphrodite conversion will still sire and birth regular males and females— they haven’t figured out how to make it inheritable yet. )<<<<<
— Talks-With-Cats (03:21:16/02-02-55)
>>>>>( “Dytegangers”? I’m almost afraid to ask... )<<<<<
— Southern Gentleman (12:35:38/02-03-55)
>>>>>( Dytegangers are a mostly a Seattle phenomenon— they’re like posergangs, but instead of getting facial surgery to look like someone famous, they’re all hermaphrodites. I get a fair number of them turning up with injuries— a lot of men react badly when it turns out that “girl” they’ve invited up to their room has male equipment as well. I’m just glad I can tell the difference when I assense them carefully... it saves on embarrassment. )<<<<<
— Talks-With-Cats (20:16:24/02-03-55)
>>>>>( The ones that haven’t gone for the pheromone change also just plain smell wrong; if you have a good nose, you can track it even through perfume. )<<<<<
— Barry (19:41:33/02-04-55)
Our staff of talented physical therapists includes internationally reknowned dance instructors and martial artists. If you’re learning to walk again after getting a new set of limbs, need to saunter or stride correctly after a sex change, or just looking to wow the papparazzi as you walk through the crowd, they can make your smooth moves into reflex actions.
| Physical therapy (per month) | 5,000¥ |
>>>>>( Changing the way you move is an important part of a complete identity change. I’ve made some decent nuyen teaching aikido at shadow clinics for just this purpose while waiting for heat to die down. )<<<<<
— Barry (14:55:02/02-03-55)
>>>>>( Aikido— hey, weren’t you the Troll Physical Adept who was teaching wine tasting just before your martial arts class? That was unique.)<<<<<
— IC Skater (14:59:16/02-03-55)
>>>>>( Thank you. I break a lot of stuff in my profession, but my favorite thing to smash is stereotypes.)<<<<<
— Barry (15:18:41/02-03-55)
>>>>>( Getting Enhanced Articulation as part of the identity change process helps make the change a lot more radical, too. )<<<<<
— Feral (19:04:21/02-03-55)