Fuzz [TL9-10]
$1,000/dose. LC varies.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Case in point: when it became clear that government and corporate entities had access to technology that could track you via your DNA — or, worse, create diseases specifically keyed to it — there soon came effective countermeasures. Which then spawned counter- countermeasures, and so forth; but, honestly, anything that keeps grey- or black-market genetic engineers busy chasing their own tails is probably going to be worth it, from society’s point of view.
Essentially, what Fuzz does is ‘scramble the DNA’ of the target’s epidermis, hair, sweat, and saliva. This is done at TL9 via a genetically engineered virus; at TL10 nanobots are used, which allows Fuzz to also be used to duplicate somebody else’s DNA signature. Fuzz does not affect blood, sperm, or living cells; it is strictly confined to technically nonliving secretions and substances produced by the human body. This has the practical effect of making most skin and hair samples useless in terms of forensic examinations, as well as making it much harder (+4 to resistance rolls) for target-seeking pathogens (GURPS Bio-Tech, pg. 115) to work against the target. This bonus can and does change; as noted before, as soon as a new version of Fuzz comes out genetic coders rush to come up with a counter to it, and then the people working on Fuzz rush to counter that, and so on, and so on. This continues into TL10 — and, indeed, until super-science comes up with a way to make sure that humans never ‘contaminate’ the environment at all.
One ‘dose’ will last about a year, although most government- or corporate-sponsored panimmunity programs will treat old versions of Fuzz as being ‘diseases’ to be cured. Legality Class is technically all over the place, but it is difficult for even a CR6 dictatorship to keep LC effectively below 3. The demand is simply too high. Most societies with strong democratic and/or capitalist structures will often have political fights over whether to regulate Fuzz at all (i.e, make it LC4).
The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.
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