Personality Overlay Unit

A Personality Overlay Unit is a psyche recording device able to transfer the cognition patterns and memories from one medium to another. The technology is not perfected and has severe limitations.

A Personality Scanner makes an editable, reproducible record of a Personality from any sophont. The record preserves the elements of a personality in a digital format. Brainscan technology is commonplace and part of modern medical diagnostic practice. Any AutoDoc has the ability to perform a brainscan (it takes about an hour). A recorded personality can be saved as an electronic file. For safekeeping and convenience, the recorded personality file is usually written to a Wafer.

A recorded personality can then be replayed into another sophont. This allows the wearer to become, for example, an alien doctor, perform with the same skills and understand the problem from that perspective while still retaining their own personality, training and viewpoint. This temporary overlay can only be into an individual of the same genetic profile. Overlaid personality elements are dominant; original elements are suppressed. But, overlaid personalities cannot (for very long) survive the slight variations in genetic structure encountered in non-donor individuals. The dominant skills and personality elements degrade and are usually gone within one week.

History & Background (Dossier)

In 1107 Professor C.R. Riket developed the Personality Overlay Unit. While this helped it was limited in that it could not transfer skills and abilities and also caused total personality alteration, blanking the original personality out.

In 1112 Dr. Emil Zinan working with Lancian neuroprocessors and magna-bubble storage systems developed a method of using personality overlays to create cerebral multitasking. By using personality overlays of top medical personnel from a variety of races stored in externally mounted data chips called ROM-constructs, the wearer was able to access the donor’s perceptions and knowledge while being influenced by the donor’s thoughts, emotions and even body movements. By interfacing the ROM-construct through the neuroprocessor additional personalities could exist within the wearer concurrently with the original personality.

While this has resulted in a great deal of original research and innovative work it does have a dangerous side-effect which has prevented its use in more general situations.

Each ROM-construct leaves a residual personality echo in the user which can lead to severe emotional disturbance and even permanent multiple personality disorders (...where an alien personality is possibly dominant).

References & Contributors (Sources)

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Far Future Enterprises or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Leighton Piper. "Library Data: Old Suns." Signal-GK 04 (1992): 48. via HIWG
• Jae Campbell. Encyclopaedia Dagudashaag (Signal-GK, 2017), 141.
• Marc Miller, Robert Eaglestone, Don McKinney. Starships (Far Future Enterprises, 2019), 253-254.
• Marc Miller. Agent of the Imperium (Far Future Enterprises, 2015), .