045: Catsphere

ENTRY 045: Catsphere

Most encounters with Catsphere involve the fifty-centimeter diameter sphere of advanced composite rolling down the hallway of a ship or habitat, subsurface LEDs blinking in strange patterns and quietly purring as it chases something. The actual nature of Catsphere is a bit open to debate; the most popular theory is that it represents an early and partially successful effort to uplift a common housecat in an unconventional synthmorph, but others include a particularly uncommunicative infomorph with a strong personal identification with felines, an experimental robot pet whose AGI broke free.

What is known about Catsphere is that it is an atypical, freely mobile, self-contained synthmorph that acts and responds pretty much like a Terran housecat. While fiercely independent it has a tendency to adopt certain transhumans, allowing them to provide it with electricity and repairs and to pet or play with it. On its own, Catsphere spends many hours of the day resting in visible sunlight or heat sources, unveiling the photovoltaic panels beneath its skin to recharge its batteries. It also has a tendency to chase any small ’bots or morphs, though it has no way to catch them, and to play with any other morphs of its own size.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
10	8	8	20	10	10	6	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
6	2	12	3	24	10	2	20

Morph: Unique Synthmorph

Skills: Academics: Anatomy 69, Academics: Felinology 60, Animal Handling 30, Fray 50, Infiltration (Shadowing) 65, Interests: Furries 50, Interfacing 25, Interests: Pets 45, Kinesics 55, Language Native Cat 78, Perception 75, Persuasion 60

Implants: 360-Degree Vision, Access Jacks, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Echolocation, Electrical Sense, Enhanced Hearing, Lidar, Magnetic System, Radar, Reflex Booster, T-Ray Emitter, Armor 8/8

Advantages: Animal Empathy, Danger Sense

Disadvantages: Limbless, Minor Addiction (Catnip nanoalgorithm)

At the gamemaster’s discretion, Catsphere counts as an animal for purposes of the Animal Handling skill and associated traits.

Using Catsphere

The simplest use of Catsphere is as a pet, either one that adopts the player characters or of some NPCs that the player characters are dealing with. Despite the difficulty of communicating with it (attempts to talk to it over Mesh links invariably involve soundclips of various cat noises and possibly images of small bugs and animals Catsphere has managed to run over), Catsphere’s suite of unusual senses, physical skills, and generally innocuous nature make it the perfect spy and associate, albeit one that can probably be bribed by a narcoalgorithm and distracted by a laser pointer.

On the other hand, gamemasters may take the tack that the whole cat persona is just an act disguising a human-level intelligence—in which case Catsphere can be potentially much more dangerous and challenging as an NPC antagonist, or the subject of social storylines focused around Catsphere’s unusual choice of lifestyle.

Seeds

• Catsphere desires a mate—or perhaps a litter. In any case, the ego within the sphere wants to fork and implant the copy in another version of its morph, but with its limited communication skills is having a hard time accomplishing this goal. Can it convince or trick the PCs into helping it?