Infection

Agent Smith: Do you know what the best thing about being me is?
[All the doors open, lots of Smith clones step out]
Agent Smith: There's so many of me!
- The Matrix Reloaded

Level 4
Quantum minimum: 6
Dice pool: Charisma + Infection
Range: touch
Area: -
Duration: Permanent
Effect: The nova can turn others into copies of him.
Multiple actions: No

This power combines the clone power with the parasitic possession power: the nova infects another person with his identity, making the other person into a copy.

The nova needs to be close to the person for a sufficiently long time, preferably several hours. Very intimate contact or the transfer of body fluids speeds the process considerably (a “vampire” nova making other people drink his blood in an erotic ritual has it much easier than a nova trying to infect the airline passenger next to him). This transfers the quantum resonance of the nova onto the person, making the person gain the nova powers and hopefully a similar personality. With enough successes the nova will create a near-clone.

This power does not work on novas. It is based on the quantum resonance nature of novas: it transfers quantum resonance to the microtubuli network of other people, but cannot overwrite the resonance of another nova. Since all infected by the same nova share the same resonance they are to some extent the same nova – a nova distributed between many people.

Note that unless the nova has telepathy or something similar the infected versions will not be able to communicate when they are far from each other. They have a general sense of each other’s location and state through the quantum links, but nothing very particular. The death of one of them is felt very vividly and causes a serious distraction. A serious weakness is that if one of them is drained of Quantum (for example by trying to regenerate as he is being killed) all others are also drained.

They are as loyal to each other as the nova would be; some novas have enough hidden self-loathing to get themselves into real trouble. The original is in no way unique to the infection-clone, and could die without having the others vanish.

System: Successes are resisted by willpower. Each success transfers one level of quantum or one level of “selfhood”. If most successes were rolled on the charisma dices, put the first success on selfhood, otherwise on quantum, and alternate. For each quantum point success, the infected person gains one level in all mega-attributes and quantum powers up to the infector’s level. The effects on the mind are similar to Parasitic Possession; with four successes devoted to personality the transfer is nearly complete, with two the infected person will be similar to the nova but still retain some traits and core values of his previous life. Appearance changes slowly to make the appearance and build more similar; with ten successes everything (including gender) is changed, with five the nova and infected person look like siblings or even twins.

For example, a quantum 6 nova gains five successes. He will either produce a version with up to 3 dots of his quantum, powers and attributes and some of his personality, or a weaker version with more of his personality. In both cases the person will start to look like him after a while.

The infected version will share the same quantum pool as the original, and can spend from it freely. They regenerate quantum as if they were only one nova, although the infected individual in the most optimal resting state will determine how much quantum is recovered. This usually puts a limit to the number of simultaneously infected novas; if too many are infected they run out of quantum and start to revert to normal.

Similarly, temporary taint gained by one of the infected affects all of them.