349: Grey Boy

ENTRY 349: Grey Boy

"Some egos resleeve like they're changing clothes. Some stick with the meatsack they're born in 'til they die. A couple want to explore a new body, or think that resleeving will solve all their problems. Me? I guess I wanted to make a statement. Take a step that I couldn't step back easy. It's about commitment, see. If you want to push your limits, to see how far you can go, you can't leave yourself an easy out. So when I went grey, I went all the way. See, lot of exhumans take the easy way out - abandon the whole humanoid form, go for something that looks exotic. Not many of 'em twig that being exhuman is more than a weird morph, it's a state of mind. You gotta change your perceptions, not just your look."
- Grey Boy, interview with Exhuman Spotlight (AF 8)

Deep down, most transhumans are the same - whatever they might look like on the outside, biomorphs share anatomical and genetic similarities to other Earth-based life, the majority of synthmorphs and pods are generally humanoid, and almost all transhuman egos are recognizable as human. Key word: almost.

Grey Boy designed the greymorph from the ground up, based on a theoretical left-handed Z-DNA structure. On the outside, the greymorph looks like a pop culture reference a century or so out of date, but on the inside it is as alien as transhuman science can get - instead of bones, for example, it has a flexible cartilaginous endoskeleton with an arrangement of "floating" bony plates protecting critical organs. It has orifices most transhumans would need a degree just to name, and one of the byproducts of its respiration and digestive systems is a nerve gas. More than that, the greymorph brain was deliberately designed to be hard for contemporary transhuman technology to sleeve in and out of - as alien as Grey Boy could make it and still be able to interact with transhumans. One sleeved in, it took three years of therapy for Grey Boy to adapt to the greymorph, to learn how to operate things that look like knees and elbows but really aren't, to parse sensory information his new brain fed him as colors he didn't have names for, and why chalk tasted like candy to him now.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
20	12	20	13	20	14	21	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	2	42	8	84	40	8	65

Morph: Greymorph (Unique Biomorph)

Skills: Academics: Genetics 80, Academics: Philosophy (Anarchy) 34, Art: Fingerpainting 24, Deception 25, Fray 36, Free Fall 30, Gunnery 19, Infosec 25, Interests: Pre-Fall Science Fiction 40, Interests: Tobacco 22, Interests: Xenobiology Culture 40, Interests: Xenopsychology 35, Interfacing 30, Language: Native Czech 80, Language: English 75, Language: Russian 60, Negotiation 35, Networking: Autonomists 15, Networking: Criminals 15, Networking: Firewall, Networking: Scientists 25, Profession: Geneticist 37, Protocol 21, Unarmed Combat (Claw) 40

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Bioweave (Light), Circadian Regulation, Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Poison Glands (Nervex, Psi-Opener), Enhanced Senses (Echolocation, Enhanced Vision), Eidetic Memory, Fractal Digits, Hibernation, Medichines, Neurachem (Level 1), Oxygen Reserve, Toxin Filters
Traits: Addiction (Nicotine, Minor), Greymorph*, Morphing Disorder (Level 3), Social Stigma (Exhuman), Claw Attack (1d10 DV, use Unarmed Combat skill)

* Greymorphs are treated as xenomorphs in terms of being affected by psi (see Eclipse Phase 222) - asyncs suffer a -20 modifier and +1 strain using sleights against them - and are unaffected by Enhanced Pheromones (Eclipse Phase 305). In addition, Greymorphs may only ever create delta forks (Eclipse Phase 273-4).

Seeds

• Having spent the last several years acclimating to his morph and finding himself, Grey Boy is at the point where he's happy being on his own - unfortunately, the universe has other plans. It turns out having an "alien perspective" is a marketable quality, and he's getting besieged with offers from everyone from xenocultists looking for an alien love messiah to hypercorps looking for insight on the Factors. Firewall hires the player characters to make contact and convince Grey Boy to lend his unique perspective to protecting transhumanity - a transhumanity he no longer really feels a part of.
• Grey Boy keeps his ear to the ground on developments, and hears a rumor of a Jovian Junta military black research project - a psi-opener tuned to xenomorphs. Intrigued, he hires the PCs to steal the research - all they need to do is bust into the heavily-fortified military habitat and copy the files. Of course, there is the minor problem that the Junta was experimenting with the psi-opener on live xenomorphs...who are now loose in the compound.
• A new drug is making the pretty young morphs in the club sick - and the media is reporting that Grey Boy has gone missing. The PCs are hired to look into one of the drug deaths, and the clues they follow just might take them to a xenocult that's harvesting Grey Boy for his secretions - the drugs to raise funds, the nerve gas to stockpile as a terrorist weapon - but the leaders are stupid enough to let the nerve gas bleed into the psi-opener, hence the club kid deaths.