Mesh-wide mail addressed to all members of the Genetic Engineering crew
I think we need to clear up a few terms before we get to work. There are a lot of rumours going around, and most of you are only truly starting to get your hands on the proper materials now that we've left port.
Are Asyncs real?
Yes. Humans infected with the Watts-McLeod Exsurgent virus are real, they're not a rumour. They possess a range of abilities categorized as psi-chi or psi-gamma, depending on their nature, and exhibit subtly altered brain patterns. No, they are not infectious. No, they are not agents of the TITANs, in most cases, some other variants of the Exsurgent virus can also convey the same abilities as the Watts-McLeod virus, but those tend to remain infectious and to do irretrievable harm to the victim's psyche.
Psi-chi? Psi-gamma? What?
Psi-chi is the category for abilities that allow the async to enhance his or her own mental faculties. They tend to be hard to detect and many can be emulated with skilled muses, properly written hardware or experimental psychosurgery. Psi-gamma is what you see in the XP's and movies, when some TITAN-worshipping maniac starts bending others to their will. Not quite as dramatic, but psi-gamma allows an async to affect changes to the minds of OTHERS without having to lock them in simulspace or jam tools into their cortex.
Psi-epsilon
You'll notice I haven't mentioned this before, because it's not something human asyncs have access to. Over the years we've carefully accumulated evidence that there is a wholly different tier of async ability only available to Exsurgents. Please review the material we've provided on this subject. But in short: Psi-epsilon allows an exsurgent, and perhaps one day sane, human, uninfectious asyncs, to visit physical changes on the world around them. This is the stuff they used to believe in back in the 1900's, but much more terrifying.
