=User's Guide To Forks= 
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Forking is one of the last great taboos. It challenges the basic assumption that an ego is unique, and for many transhumans—even those with otherwise extensive physical or mental modifications—the thought of being a “copy” is distressing if not terrifying. Throughout the system, one’s place in society depends on active management of personal identity and information, and forks threatens that position. Balanced against those significant risks are the manifold benefits of forking, including heightened efficiency, more engagement with events and society, and increasing depth and range of an ego’s experiences without increasing the time needed to have them. Some even see it as a way to whole new modes of being that are impossible to explore without forking. For all these reasons, forking is and has been controversial, and there are many competing and conﬂicting views and approaches to its legality and use. Though the Jovians have institutionalized an outright ban on forking into their legal system and civic culture, forking is outlawed or heavily restricted in many habitats well outside the political reach of the Junta.
History and socialization play a significant role in these opinions. Both forking and uplift were relatively new innovations before the Fall, and their implications and use were not settled issues before the catastrophe. During the Fall itself and the ensuing evacuations, many inner-system habitats struggled with a huge inﬂux of refugees and infugees, and the loss of records made establishing and defending identity both incredibly difficult and vitally important.
The informational chaos of the time resulted in thousands of cases of backups being activated while there were unknown surviving primary egos unable to prove their identities. As identity was re-established and habitats began to share data more reliably, there were often-dramatic conﬂicts between these unintentional forks who began to ﬁght over which held the primary identity. Alpha forks may have been instanced for months and were unwilling to be re-integrated. Survivors may have suffered horrible mental trauma that technically made them less stable or competent than their backups.
Survivors and forks both brought charges against the companies that held and managed backup and re-instancing, sometimes as joint suits, sometimes separately. The social and judicial fallout from these cases clogged [[Lunar-Lagrange Alliance]] and [[Mars|Martian]] legal systems for years. It also resulted in hundreds of cases of forced merging, forks ﬂeeing capture by ego-hunting ﬁrms, or bitter legal battles that saw forks survive as individual egos on the condition they create new identities for themselves.
All these troubles inﬂuenced inner system law to greatly restrict even voluntary, planned forking for more than a few hours and so hopefully avoid any repeat of those cases. Short-duration forks are easy to document and track through sleeving and backup facilities, and the chance of misadventure or ego differentiation is kept small, so there’s little likelihood that the fork would object to merger and reintegration with the originator.
Regardless of the duration of a fork, most habitats hew to the 0.1% rule. If an alpha fork of an ego has more than a 0.1% differentiation in their ego map, they are no longer considered the same person as the originating ego. Habitats vary wildly in their response to this threshold being crossed—including requiring immediate forced merger with the primary ego, desleeving and deleting the forked instance, or treating the fork as a separate ego. The latter cases are often used as excuses to detain the fork for illegal entry to the habitat, misappropriation or theft of habitat resources such as atmosphere and power, and a host of other offenses that tend to accrue heavy ﬁnes and legal liability for the originating ego. Though some forks have obtained legal status as egos, they remain in a precarious situation as their originators might appeal to different laws or standards that still treat the fork as property, an impostor, or a non-person.
Now that transhuman society has had time to stabilize again, the discussion of forking is becoming more prominent in public discourse. The majority still view it negatively. The memory of the trauma and social displacement from the Fall is still a vivid scar for many, so the idea of anyone willingly exposing themselves to such risk is broadly seen to be both frightening and foolish.
There are also bioconservative social and philosophical opinions that oppose forking, seeing it as the worst sort of transgressive excess and an affront to the value of an individual human life. The most common argument is that merging or deleting a fork is murder, so it is best not to create them at all. Ethical objections focus on the often self-centered intent of people creating forks for speciﬁc tasks or purposes: if an alpha fork is generated, it is a whole and complete ego, so holding it subject to the dictates and designs of its originator is slavery by another name. Creating beta forks or lower is even worse, as it only compounds the previous objections by building in handicaps and limitations that purposely hobble the forked ego. These arguments have been part of the social discourse on forking since before the Fall and have made an impression on the thinking of many transhumans.
Though not dominant social factors in most habitats, almost every major religion holds ofﬁcial positions against forking. The central argument is that each person has only one unique and irreproducible soul. Forking is, at best, an exercise in cruelty that creates an awareness that thinks itself a complete being but can never be anything other than a deluded copy that is spiritually stillborn. Engaging in such behavior for convenience or personal interest is viewed as a serious moral and spiritual hazard. The few faiths that publicly embrace forking are fringe groups and ideological extremists. The low standing of such groups in society reinforces stereotypes that forking is a strange and dangerous practice that isn’t an acceptable part of broader transhuman culture.
Even in communities without ideological opposition, resource limitations can make it almost impossible to acquire the morphs, hardware, or computational resources needed to instance multiple forks for any length of time. Unless an individual can provide everything they need for themselves through work or are lucky enough to be living in an unusually resource-rich habitat, running multiple instances is seen as self-obsessive, greedy, and antisocial. Others point to the many transhumans still struggling to secure and improve their circumstances post-Fall and claim that bodies and resources used to maintain forks would be better used by others. Even the wealthiest inner system elites that can cover all expenses out-of-pocket could be seen as insensitive and declassé when there are so many bodiless infugees or others barely able to afford cases.
Despite the restrictions and difﬁculties surrounding intentional forking, it has been a slowly growing trend ever since the technology to do so was available before the Fall. Most people who run forks do so regularly, and the most common reasons are utilitarian. Even with the legal restrictions and social stigma, it is still possible and practical to run short-term forks that are only active on the mesh or in simulspaces.
Academic, business, and political leaders are often possessed of unique knowledge and insights and may have several vitally important circumstances occurring simultaneously that require their involvement. A hab administrator forking to manage a crisis, a scientist making rapid progress on critical research by overseeing several lines of experimentation simultaneously, or a hypercorp exec steadily raising proﬁts by being present for literally every major meeting all bring beneﬁts to and can help shift the opinions of many people.
Likewise, anyone working in remote circumstances, from gatecrashing teams to the staff of far-ﬂung habitats, will often encounter issues that require additional stafﬁng that can’t be gotten any other way. The signiﬁcant objective beneﬁt of forking in these circumstances has helped the practice maintain a widely-recognized core of legitimacy that has protected it from being totally banned. That the practice is often most available and most beneﬁcial to members of the social and intellectual elite is helping forking make steady progress towards broader acceptability. Some people just don’t give a damn about the broader opinion or what they see as needless restrictions. To these self-described visionaries, forking is an area that transhumanity has neglected to its detriment. Though rare, there are some who want to explore radically different social models and modes of being that are based on and manipulate forking in creative and frightening ways. Forking is not just a useful possibility, it is central to the way they choose to live.
==Multiplicity: Being One Among Many== 
In the attempt to create some means of approaching the often-disparate ideas presented by these radicals, social and scientiﬁc discourse has largely settled on using the umbrella term “multiplicity” to refer to the wide variety of practices based around the regular simultaneous instancing of more than one copy of the same ego. The goals and methods of multiplicity advocates all use forking as a common enabling mechanism, but take it in very different directions. Within the bewildering variety of approaches some loose trends are taking shape.
Humanity has a long history of turning innovations towards the pursuit of pleasure, and **hedonists** have done all there is to do with forking. Orgies and bloodsport are by far the most common pastimes, but given the costs involved for the necessary physical instancing of the participants and damage the morphs can suffer, only the wealthiest can afford such extravagant amusements. Most who use forks for such pursuits quickly tire of the novelty and move on.
**Artists** pursue less indulgent uses of forking for unique cultural and social events. Brilliant dance compositions by the artist Dominique LeStrange have used up to a dozen forks simultaneously, and the recent performance of the show “One’s Self” at [[Noctis]] is widely regarded as one of the most signiﬁcant artistic events on Mars in the last ﬁve years. As more people with cultural caché explore and use forking for art and entertainment, they help improve public perception and counteract the stories or narcissistic pleasure-seeking. Forking for this type of use is almost universally short-term and is coming to be seen as only the start of what can be accomplished.
A more serious practice that is also catching some general notice is the instancing of multiple forks as a hive personality working with or under the direction of the originator ego. Though the forks in a hive are instanced and active for long periods of time, they maintain synchronicity and unity through regular use of merging and re-integration to share experiences and information. Individual forks can be of any quality, though alphas are preferred to minimize the risk of complication during mergers. Betas might be used for menial tasks or for work focused on a very narrow activity, but are very rarely if ever re-integrated with the the primary ego. Deltas, if they are used at all, might be spun off for speciﬁc errands and simply deleted after use; practitioners of this approach jokingly refer to them as drones. Provided that hive egos are regularly merged and re-integrated, they maintain compliance with even restrictive habitat laws, so hive personalities might be found almost anywhere in the system. This practice is used by some meta-celebrities, politicians, and business elites, but is also popular with several noted scientists. Excepting icons such as Keiko Rush or Elisz, the most noted hive personality in the system is Claudia Ambelina, the originator ego for all members of the [[Pax Familae]] organization.
A subset of hives reject using alphas altogether, and the **autocrats** governing them rely instead on betas and deltas. Primary egos of an autocratic bent will almost never re-integrate with any of their forks; this helps them maintain a clear separation and superiority over their lesser selves and defend their standing as the only “real” version. Many inner-system habitats treat betas and deltas as property and not people, so autocrats can and often do subject their forks to restrictions and limitations in their quality of life that would be distasteful or intolerable for others. Since the forks themselves are limited or pruned and only created for speciﬁc tasks it is very likely that they’ll be kept exclusively in VR simulspaces or run as infomorphs if they have to work with outsiders. More often than not, they are deleted or put into cold storage whenever their immediate task is completed. [[Cognite]] execs are well-known in corporate circles for this type of forking, but it’s also rumored to be widely used by Gorgon Defense System’s R&D department to help speed up product-development times.
Where autocrats are very functional in their use of forking, some take the commoditization of their forks even further and have gained a reputation as slavers that proﬁt by selling forks of themselves into indenture. Other multiplicity advocates hotly condemn the practice, but with the return of indenture to the legal codes of most habitats and the creation of IndEX, indenture contracts quickly became a center for economic innovation. With the landmark ruling of the Lunar-Lagrange Alliance’s Supreme Judicial Court in Shelby v. Shelby, it was deemed legal for an originating ego to negotiate and agree to an indenture that bound a fork before it was created. Though there has been widespread public disgust over the ruling and a proposal is being brought before the Planetary Consortium to ban the practice, it is legal for now and IndEX is actively brokering contracts. As much as market forces enabled the practice, however, they are also holding it back. Most corporations and individuals refuse to touch the contracts for fear that they’ll soon be nulliﬁed. Outside of IndEX, though, there has always been an underground market for soul-trading; any backups that ﬁnd their way into the hands of [[Nine Lives]] or similar cartels are almost certainly going to be forked and sold repeatedly.
**Families** are similar to hives in that the forks are all created to work together with one another, but families seek to build social units that work and live together for extended periods of time without merging or integration. Forks are created from the originator and edited psychosurgically to fulﬁll roles for social relationships that the originator desires. Since the likes, attitudes, and proclivities of the core personality remain present in each fork, it’s easy for the originator and its iterations to form and maintain strong, long-lasting relationships. Though most often used for companionship to create friends or “siblings,” there are some who create forks to populate intimate relationships as lovers, spouses, or children. Given the intended long or permanent duration of the forks and the attendant illegality and social stigma, this approach is very rare and limited almost exclusively to a few isolated habitats with small populations and infrequent contact with other communities. If a family is too inwardly focused, it can also lead to extreme social isolation and a rise in misbehavior as any pre-existing personality disorders or negative traits are ingrained and reinforced. The perception of being anti-social and disordered makes family personalities an easy target for anti-forking commentators, though few other multiplicity adherents do much to defend them.
Blending the strengths of hives and families and avoiding the complications and cost of both are twins—those who run and maintain a single fork of themselves. Most often instanced as an infomorph, twins frequently use the multiple personalities mental augmentation or ghostrider modules and mesh accessories to be able to split their attention and efforts. Though many of the beneﬁts are available very efﬁciently with cyberware such as multi-tasking, the focus is less on efﬁciency and more on the companionship and awareness brought by having a fully instanced ego sharing your life with you. Serious twins work to establish an equitable relationship where one ego isn’t always or exclusively in control, mentally or physically. The fork is allowed to persist more or less permanently, growing and developing on its own with only infrequent re-integration with the originating ego. Over time, one twin may even decide to change the relationship and backup or instance separately. Though situations like this can be difﬁcult, they can also have very positive outcomes, as in the case of Armon and Lawrence Weaving, who ultimately decided to separate and pursue their own successful careers as a psychosurgeon and consultant with [[Skinaesthesia]], respectively. Parasitic twins are far less equitable, keeping one instance limited or dependent on the other. This could be a beta fork, but in order to retain the greatest efﬁciency it is usually an alpha fork that has undergone psychosurgical modiﬁcation to become more subservient and affection-seeking from the primary ego. The dependent fork is most often kept as a muse or virtual minion.
Standing aside from the other approaches are the survivalists. Since the Fall, there has been a widespread focus on transhumanity rebuilding a robust population, and some argue that forking is the best way to do so quickly and effectively. While infugees are steadily re-instanced through indenture programs, they come back to society out-of-touch and less-equipped than others who survived the Fall intact. The ﬁrst generation of transhumans born since the Fall is still in its infancy and, given the horriﬁc failure of the Futura project, speed-raising new egos in VR is an attempt few are willing to contemplate. It will take years for the next generation to develop and become a strong, contributing part of society rather than a precious liability. Survivalists argue that those with valuable skills should create permanent forks of themselves and spread across current habitats in the system, and into the exoplanets beyond the Pandora gates to help re-establish transhumanity. The most extreme ideologues have even suggested taking forks of entire habitats or the whole of transhumanity and sending them off in ﬂeets of colony ships with different destinations. Creating forks of transhuman society outside the solar system and, hopefully, beyond the reach of the TITANs and any other existential threats should dramatically improve the likelihood of civilization enduring. While some criticize these ideas as foolish, their supporters are quick to point out that transhumanity almost fell to the TITANs precisely because the vast majority of the population was still concentrated on Earth. Firewall has a number of so-called “backup” cliques that support this view, and they are slowly rolling out some low-key social manipulations to forward their beliefs.
Where multiplicity pushes boundaries, the **ascendants** shatter them. To them, forking is only the ﬁrst step down the path to entirely new, posthuman modes of being. Ascendants go beyond forking to challenge basic ideas of personhood: Why should you only merge with forks of yourself? Why not manipulate and change forks to create entirely new personalities? Why not incorporate multiple egos into one cooperative or communal consciousness? No one yet publicly supports such blatantly posthuman positions, but Professor Rokuzawa Chi at Titan Autonomous University has published research and articles on forking and individuality that seem to be laying the groundwork for the exploration of such ideas. The practices and pursuits of these people are radical and incorporate untested psychosurgical techniques as well as illegal merging and integration experiments. More than once this has resulted more than once in horribly traumatized egos or personalities that are so different from their sources that they can’t be considered the same person. Given the dangerous nature of the ascendants’ efforts, there is little more than rumor to go on, but there is some indication that progress is being made in reﬁning psychosurgical techniques that allow for the re-integration of forks that have been separate and active for months or years and have developed to the point of being different people. A few crypto-communities on the mesh are also increasingly using the term choruses to refer to groups of disparate egos that are sharing a single instance and ego map and operate under some type of collective awareness and decision-making. These are both signiﬁcant recent developments and have attracted the attention of the Planetary Consortium’s Oversight division, Firewall, and, strangely enough, the ultimates. Each of these groups sees in these developments a potential reverse-engineering of TITAN techniques and a signiﬁcant threat in such a dramatic departure from transhuman norms.
==Stored Forks== 
Characters without cyberbrains that regularly make use of forking but don’t always have easy access to an ego bridge can keep a non-active fork on hand in storage. An inactive fork does not take up the space of an ego and can be stored in almost any computerized device. Forks are usually heavily encrypted and only kept on secured devices to protect forknapping. When the fork is needed, the stored fork can be copied and then activated. An active fork counts as an ego and follows the normal fork rules. Reactivated forks suffer from lack and so will need to be brought up to speed; at the gamemaster’s discretion, the fork may also need to make a Continuity Test. This practice is most commonly employed with beta forks.
==Long-Term Merging== 
For situations where characters wish to reintegrate a fork that has been separate for extended periods (longer than a week), follow the normal Merging Test rules, but use the Long-Term Merging table (below). Choose one ego to be primary; the memory loss indicated affects the memories of the non-primary fork.
||||||||~ Long Term Merging ||
||= **Time Apart** ||= **Modifier** ||= **Success** ||= **Failure** ||
||= 1 week to 1 month ||= −30 ||= Minor memory loss, 5 SV ||= Severe memory loss, 1d10 + 6 SV ||
||= 1 month to 2 months ||= −30 ||= Major memory loss, 1d10 + 5 SV ||= Severe memory loss, 1d10 + 8 SV ||
||= 2 months to 6 months ||= −30 ||= Major memory loss, 1d10 + 6 SV ||= Total memory loss, 1d10 + 10 SV ||
If attempting to merge a fork that has been divergent for longer than 6 months, use the rules for Merging Different Egos, below, but with a lower modiﬁer: –30 for forks divergent from 6–12 months, –40 for 12–18 months, and –50 for 18–24 months.
==Merging Forks with Advancements== 
If a fork has been separate enough to improve new or different skills, gain or lose traits, or even change their aptitudes, those differences are normally lost during merger as only the memories are prioritized for retention. It is possible for a gifted psychosurgeon to also transfer the skill, trait, or aptitude development, however, but not without cost.
Any attempt to transfer skills incurs a –10 modifier to the Psychosurgery Test for every 10 skill points or every specialization. Transferring new ego traits incurs a –10 modiﬁer for every 10 CP the trait is worth. Aptitude points add a –10 modiﬁer per point when transferred. If successful, the merged ego gains the skills points, traits, and/or aptitude points, but takes an additional 1 SV for every 10 skill points, every specialization, every 10 CP of traits, or every point of aptitude. Additionally, the character must spend Rez Points to purchase these advancements as normal. If the character does not have the Rez Points available, they owe a Rez Point debt, and any new Rez Points earned must immediately go to to pay off this debt. If the Psychosurgery Test fails, no advancements are gained, and the subject takes an additional 3 SV for every 10 skills points (or portion thereof), specialization, 10 CP of traits, or aptitude point.
==Experimental Ego Mapping Techniques== 
The psychosurgical techniques for forking and merging cover standard and well-known procedures. Research and experimentation is ongoing, however, and a number of untested and potentially dangerous techniques are available for people willing to take risks. As an optional rule, gamemasters can allow characters to participate in or even attempt these unorthodox psychosurgery techniques. Note that due to the risk and possible illegality of these procedures, ﬁnding a psychosurgeon willing to attempt them often requires going through backdoor or black market channels. Gamemasters should require a successful Networking: Criminal or Networking: Hypercorp Test and the expenditure of major favors.
||||||||~ Experimental Merging ||
||= **Time Apart** ||= **Modifier** ||= **Success** ||= **Failure** ||
||= Under 1 Hour ||= +20 ||= Seamless ego with memories intact from both ||= Solid bond, memories intact (1d10 ÷ 2, round down) SV ||
||= 1–4 hours ||= +10 ||= Seamless ego with memories intact from both, 1 SV ||= Memories intact, (1d10 ÷ 2, round up) SV ||
||= 4–12 hours ||= +0 ||= Solid bond, memories intact, 2 SV ||= Memories intact, (1d10 ÷ 2, round up) + 2 SV ||
||= 12 hours to1 day ||= −10 ||= Memories intact, 3 SV ||= Minor memory loss, 1d10 + 2 SV ||
||= 1 day to 3 days ||= −20 ||= Memories intact, 4 SV ||= Moderate memory loss, 1d10 + 4 SV ||
||= 3 days to1 week ||= −30 ||= Memories intact, 5 SV ||= Major memory loss, 1d10 + 6 SV ||
||= 1 week to1 month ||= −30 ||= Memories intact, 6 SV ||= Major memory loss, 1d10 + 8 SV ||
||= 1 month to 2 months ||= −30 ||= Minor memory loss, 7 SV ||= Severe memory loss, 1d10 + 10 SV ||
||= 2 months to 6 months ||= −30 ||= Minor memory loss, 8 SV ||= Severe memory loss, 1d10 + 12 SV ||
===Merging With Memory Retention=== 
Recent developments have resulted in merges with better memory retention, though with a risk of increased mental stress. In this case, the Merging Test is the same, but use the Experimental Merging table.
===Merging Different Egos=== 
Merging two minds is a drastically difﬁcult and dangerous affair. Only the most skilled and daring psychosurgeons could ever hope to succeed, and even then the outcome depends on luck almost as much as skill. This procedure is incredibly complex and is a Psychosurgery Task Action with a minimum timeframe of 10 days and a –60 modiﬁer. The character can take time as usual. This same process is used for forks that have been divergent for more than 6 months.
One ego must be nominated as the primary ego during the merge. The merged identity will retain that ego’s aptitudes, skills, ego traits, memories, and motivations, modiﬁed as follows:
* Choose 2 aptitudes that the secondary ego has at a higher rating. Increase these by 5 each (but notmore than the secondary ego’s aptitude rating).
* Choose 2 aptitudes that the secondary ego has at a lower rating. Decrease these by 5 each (but not less than the secondary ego’s aptitude rating).
* Add 1d10 ÷ 2 (round up) skills the secondary character has, that the primary ego does not, at their full rating.
* Choose 1d10 ÷ 2 (round up) skills that the secondary ego has at a higher rating. Increase these by 10 each (but not more than the secondary ego’s skill rating).
* Choose 1d10 skills that the primary ego has that the secondary ego doesn’t have or has at a lower rating. Reduce these by 10.
* Add all of the secondary character’s Negative ego traits.
* The combined ego gains the Mental Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder) trait.
* Use the lowest Moxie of both characters.
* The combined ego retains 75% of its primary ego memories and 25% of its secondary ego memories.
* The combined ego suffers 2d10 + 10 SV.
If the test fails, the combined ego is for all intents and purposes a shattered, insane personality, haunted by fragments of its former minds. Most are simply brain-dead vegetables. Treat as a gamma fork NPC and add the following changes:
* The combined ego loses 1d10 skills entirely.
* The ego suffers an additional 1d10 + 10 SV.
* The combined ego retains only 50% of its primary ego memories and 0% of its secondary ego memories.
* On a critical failure, double SV suffered.
If the test succeeds, choose one of the following effects for each 10 full points of MoS:
* Increase one aptitude by 5, up to the highest rating possessed by either ego.
* Increase one skill to the highest rating possessed by either ego.
* Remove one Negative ego trait.
* Add one Positive ego trait from the secondary ego.
* Increase Moxie by 1, up to the highest rating possessed by either ego.
* Add 25% of one ego’s memories.
* Reduce the SV inﬂicted by 2.
* Exchange one of the primary ego’s motivations for one of the secondary ego’s motivations.
Even if successful, the composite ego suffers a –10 penalty on all tests for one week as the new identity comes to terms with its newly-integrated thought patterns. On a critical success, halve the SV suffered.

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