Just in case anyone else wanted to add to this story/universe I figured I would create a page that lays out how I'm approaching this universe.
Year: ~2003
World/Location: 2003 USA, or something relatively close.
Creators of T.S.094: Aliens
Background: Aliens have been studying humans for decades, but abducting people one at a time is too time consuming and doesn’t generate data efficiently enough for the alien’s studies. To get around the abduction bottleneck an alien grad student developed T.S.094 and the device to put the data collection in the hands of the humans. Each time a person captures a trait and shares it via T.S.094, the aliens also receive a copy of the trait for their archives. To incentivize the hairless monkeys to capture more and more traits, they added in the deliver feature to the device so that people would have a reason to seek out unique and desirable traits.
While the aliens aren’t monitoring each user 24/7, they do keep tabs on the users to make sure no one is trying to tell the rest of the world about the software. If a user does start telling people about the software the aliens abduct the user, and that person is never seen again. The aliens will also go in and clean up the collateral damage by wiping people’s short term memories. Kind of like Men in Black.
Software Notes: The software is locked to the PC that it is installed on and can’t be copied and moved to another PC. The only loophole would be moving the old hard drive into a modern computer. Which could be the setup for a modern version of the story.
The GUI boots into the alien’s language, which is why no one is ever able to figure out how to use the software without the package that arrives the next day. The software only has a few functions: Search, Downloads, and Settings. Those work pretty much like you would expect. You can search a database of .HSAT files (homo sapiens attribute files) and download them. The handful of settings that people can adjust are just related to downloads and file storage.
Device Notes: It looks pretty much like a modern digital camera, except there is a button that will make a keyboard pop out of the bottom of it.
The capture function of the device requires the person to capture their target twice. The first capture is kind of a like a rough draft. It gets the basics about the target and then the user must specify the trait that they want to capture. This is why there is a keyboard. The user types in the specific trait they want from the target and then they capture the target a second time. The second capture will acquire the specific trait and save it in the quality that the user has selected.
The deliver function is even simpler than the capture function. Select a stored trait, and deliver to the target.
Trait Quality: Keeping on the mp3/music theme there are 4 different qualities of traits: Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4. Think low quality mp3 to FLAC.
To explain the qualities I’ll use the example of a male hand being captured and delivered to a female target.
Q1 – Low quality. When the hand is delivered to the target it will not blend in at all with the target’s forearm or other hand. The hand will look male, but there may be some slight differences from the original male hand that it was captured from.
Q2 – Medium Quality. When the hand is delivered to the target, the target's forearm will adjust to better match the new hand and the target's female hand will grow a bit larger. The target will be aware that they’ve received a new hand, but it won’t be as painfully obvious as a Q1 trait. The delivered hand will look almost exactly like the captured hand.
Q3 – High Quality. When the hand is delivered to the target, it will be pretty much a duplicate of the originally captured male hand. The target's forearm will grow to better match the new hand, and the other female hand will grow to almost match the new male hand. The target will still be aware that their hand has changed, but a 3rd party may not notice the new hand. If the target has a trait that is similar to a Q3 trait that is being delivered, they may not even realize that they've received a new trait.
Q4 – Lossless Quality. The delivered hand will be a 1 to 1 match of the captured hand. The target’s other hand will also match their new hand, and both hands will blend in seamlessly with the target’s forearms. The target will also get phantom memories of their new hands/forearms that makes them believe that this is how they've been.
The different trait qualities work the same for mental traits that are captured and delivered. The higher quality the capture, the more seamlessly the new trait fits in when delivered to a target.
Device Storage: The device can store up to 1 Q4 trait, or 10 Q3 traits, or 20 Q2 traits, or 40 Q1 traits.
Trait Size on HDD. Q4 – 100mb, Q3 – 10mb, Q2 – 6.66mb, Q1 – 3.33mb
Using a combination of Q3 and Q4 traits a target could be completely transformed into a new person with a full set of phantom memories to match their new physical and mental makeup.
