[Simex can provide up to Level 3 in most knowledges and some physical skills such as marksmanship. Side-effects include memory loss, skill loss, and psychological illness. Roll WILL versus difficulty 10 +1 per simex per year to resist. Similar to skillsofts.]

Groundscan
The technology of monitoring people's activities has reached a pinnacle with the implementation of the Groundscan, a system of orbiting micro-satellites (each about 30cm across) that monitor the surface of the Earth in many parts of the spectrum. The groundscan is not affected by weather, light levels, vegetation, or even light building structures, and operates at a high enough resolution to read the washing instructions on your underwear. Combined with massively powerful modelling software and the 'Layer 2 World' of the electrosphere, this allows the groundscan to create a realistic model of most of the world's surface. Even this powerful system can keep track of only several billion objects, so not everyone is tracked, but personality profiling allows governments and police forces to tag suspects even before they conceivably commit a crime. Of course, the potential for abuse is enormous. The groundscan can - thankfully - be fooled, corrupted, and even bought off (by bribing the right people), but its effectiveness at combating violent crime means that the average citizen is only too happy to keep it funded. The groundscan is owned by a consortium of governments, but allows many corporations and non-profit organizations to make use of its capabilities. In fact, enterprising turbohackers regularly make use of the groundscan for their own purposes.

Robotics
The use of robots in industrial, police and microgravity applications has increased tremendously over the last decade. Robots guided by Synths were instrumental in the construction of Space Islands Baha, Lux Astra and T'ian, as well as the Pacifican underwater city of Taifun. Police forces in all the major First World cities employ combat droids as an emergency weapon against rampaging cyber-enhanced criminals, psychopaths or terrorists. Robots are still fairly clumsy even when they appear smart and knowledgeable; police drones have often been caught saying they know how to handle the situation and then screwing it up even more. They have the illusion of intelligence, and social behaviour is basically incomprehensible to them. However, robots are very efficient at running a city's infrastructure through the use of Hive computers. Currently twenty-three cities in North America have turned their civic functions over to Hive controllers (usually given a nice nickname such as 'Bob' or New York's NICK), and have seen rapid improvement in many services. Vehicle guidance on major highways is controlled by the hive and allows cars to travel at speeds in excess of 200 kms/hour with only a tiny percentage of error - a lot lower than the human accident rate.

Transportation
Most people still use ground cars which rely on antique fuel-cells and biopaks but a growing number have turned to aerocars for commuting in dense metropolitan areas where parking has become illegal. The aerocar can be programmed for pickup and drop-off without having to occupy expensive real estate interim. The city hive-comptroller can redirect it back home while you're at work. Military police forces employ more advanced lifter technology to drive their powered armour (ACPA) and landmates (see Deric Bernier's Shirow Conversion). Lifters are anti-gravity devices which use the ferrous materials found in large cities to repel themselves and fly. They do not work in rural areas.

Aerocars rely on vidscreens on the inside. These look just like normal car windows, but can polarize, change to infrared, add tracking data, enhance road conditions, and other things.

Average highway/expressway speeds in modern cities are 200 to 300 km/h via central computer control. Most cars are equipped with impact gel, and kinetic-energy absorbent which sprays out in massive waves upon collision detection.

Power Generation
The mid-30s also saw the development of several new power sources: the plasmotic generator and the biocell. Plasmotics - now a distinguished field of engineering - has perfected the containment and manipulation of the fourth state of matter: plasma. The breakthrough in high-intensity magnetic field catalysis enabled large amounts of energy to be generated at a reasonably safe rate, and to be stored in a selectively- reactive biogel. The biogel is then placed into biopaks and wired with a micronetwork for stability. Biopaks come in sizes ranging from tiny (bionic power systems) to hand-held and vehicle capacity. Large fusion reactors built in the 20s still pose a health danger around the world. These have mostly been supplanted by waterburners, portable micro-fusion reactors that are almost as good.

Hologrammics
By projecting a weak triad of red-green-blue lasers onto the retina of a person, one can simulate the complex photon interactions that create visual images. This science has been almost perfected by 2055, with consumer-grade holograms available from Neot and Reflex. While these systems generate Star Wars-type holograms, advanced models can be almost true to life - and are usually highly illegal. Through the skillful employ of mind-altering harmonics, a hologrammist can even fool a person's sense of touch, as if the hologram actually had a texture. Police forces have been equipped with Grade 3 scanners to detect any such 'verisimilitudes'.

Clonals
These are replicants by any other name, but their development has been less radical. Their intelligence is programmed, and therefore illusory. Their legal status is in limbo in the West, and denied in most other places. Most clonals serve as test-beds for advanced bioware implementation and as crews on dangerous stellar or underwater missions. Very few exhibit self-awareness or true intelligence. They can be programmed to mimic affect (empathy) and a wide range of emotions, though such alteration is strictly prohibited by Biocontrol. Clonals - and bioware in general - are grown in clotis (clonal tissue) tanks, where synthetic proteins and tissue cultures are nurtured into highly-complex organic biosystems. Synthesia is the world leader in the production of Clonals and Chimerics.

Chimerics
These are bio-engineered hybrid animals whose exotic properties, such as six legs, eyes on stalks or purple fur, give people at Terrafirst an excuse to bomb rich Hollywood mansions and clinics. Despite a ban on 'unnecessary and frivolous' chimeric modification by Biocontrol, exotic manimals are in high demand across the world, not least in military bioweapon divisions.

Gadgets
Several other items can add flavour to your Neuropolitan campaign. A fun concept is morphwear, a specially-woven piece of clothing (usually a jumpsuit) that can reweave itself into various configurations as required. Using a simple notepad attached to the suit, the wearer can program his clothing to go from a double-breasted suit, to a light corduroy jacket, to a tuxedo, to a nightgown. The degree of change affects the time for implementation, which ranges from 20 seconds to ten minutes. Morphwear is, of course, heavily used by secret agents. Another invention which revolutionized combat and surveillance is the aerostat, a tiny micro-electro-mechanical (MEM) flying sensor which relays data to a tactical combat computer and calculates trajectories, detects weapons, guides micromissiles to their targets and provides 365-degree vision. Aerostats are used with the Smartguns skill to provide a +3 bonus to initiative and to strike. Many public buildings emanate static electricity surges to disrupt unauthorized aerostats. Micromissile swarms can also be used to attack targets hundreds of miles away via eyesats and deft turbohacking; large buildings often have jamming fields to deter such terrorist attacks.

"Whether it's a simex or a dream, the information that exists is all real...and an illusion at the same time."

"You mean in the same way novels and film change people?"

"People are only exposed to a limited amount of information in their lives. In this case, the fate of a single nation and the life of a single person have been both treated as though they're worthless. Most people will never know a thing..."

-- Ghost in the Shell

Scramble Suit
Used almost exclusively by the police and some paramilitary forces, the scramble suit is an ingenious piece of apparel consisting of a multi-faceted quartz lens hooked to a wearable computer whose memory banks hold up to a million-and-a-half physiognomic fraction-represen- tations of various people, with every variant encoded and then projected outward in all directions equally onto a superthin shroud-like membrane large enough to fit around an average human. What you see is a mosaic-person, and no known means of identifying the occupant have been discovered to date. The scramble suit is used inside secure police and government installations to protect the identity of officers whose work puts them at extreme risk from mafia informers, turncoats and traitors within the department. Undercover agents and diplomats wishing to retain their anonymity make regular use of the scramble suit as well.

Minicores
The eventual miniaturization of even the most complex hypersystemes allowed selected individuals to contain within themselves the seeds of a revolution in international jurisdiction. An implanted minicore contains an entire virtual tribe, a community of perhaps tens of millions of citizens whose life revolves around the contents of the minicore. Special carriers were given a status equivalent to diplomatic immunity by the World Court in order to move freely around the world and protect their minicore. These highly paid individuals are known as Incorporates. The Incorporate States cannot own territory and must be based entirely (except for the minicore/carrier) in a hard reality. Many Synth-controlled corporations have done just that.

Assembleries
These are the mid-century equivalent of factories, their output consisting of customized products created in Synth-controlled nanotech forests and replication tanks. Assembleries require large amounts of base elements; these are provided via a feed. Assembleries are large-scale versions of the popular makers, home appliances which use base blocks as their fuel. Assembleries also use quantum software as fuel for their operations. Most of them are located in pristine environments in the advanced countries. Sometimes referred to as 'the clockworks'.

Amplifiers/Power Armour
The expansion of undersea exploration finally created enough critical mass in investment and technology to allow power armour to develop into a viable human-amplification tool. In sequence with lifter hover technology and advanced human-machine interfaces, the powersuit went from underwater platform to military strike weapon in rapid succession. The systems are barely a decade old, and wear out very quickly, but their flexibility and effectiveness in urban combat operations is unsurpassed.

Bionics
Cybernetics have, for the most part, been supplanted by the combined field of bionics (bioengineering and biomechanics), which incorporates subtle physiological modifications that leave no outward sign of alteration. After all, it's so gauche to have your cranial jack or prehensile penis exposed for all to see, don't you agree? The most common (and therefore most profitable) modifications are those that have practical, non-combat applications, such as organ regeneration, gene therapy, bloodline improvement and counselling, exfoliation, tertiary autonomous nervous systemics (very risky, this), cellular detox treatment, and 'supplementaries' (muscle bulging, exercise chemicals, etc.). Young people, on the other hand, prefer biotronic accessories that positively scream 'gauche and wild', such as five-digit fingers, scaly skin, and migrating tattoos. The last are trendy symbols and creatures (dragons being the perennial favourite) that animate on your skin, glow in the dark, and move across your body in various attractive or suggestive ways.

Wired reflexes are still available, but only the desperate and deviant (mercs, punks, assassins) are willing to give up their social interaction with the rest of humanity for an accelerated lifestyle. Most of the bionics from CP2020 are available.

A few daring individuals (aka mad scientists) have also experimented with regenerating brain tissues with biochips and attempting to amplify the brain's cognitive functions. The result - a gruesomely pulpy implant known as a Neobe (neobrain) - has been a success on the black markets of East Asia, despite the documented side effects. [In game terms, the Neobe can increase the recipient's INT by +1 ($50,000), +2 ($200,000) or +3 ($600,000), but requires a Toughness test with a high difficulty number, every month, in order to avoid brain damage, insanity, or infiltration by biologically-active synthetics. Oh-oh, did I say that?]

Bionics has had many failures. Countless soldiers who fought in the War and were implanted with cybernetics for experimental or prosthetic purposes later discovered that these systems disrupted their bodies in unforeseen ways and even grew in a cancerous fashion. Cybernetics in the poor parts of the world are even more horrendous, often using salvaged electromechanical parts which eventually corrode, degrade or short-circuit inside the person. Cybernetics on the cheap is a horror to watch in later years. Unfortunately, your average street punk could only afford biomechanical cheapies until very recently, so the ranks of maimed and bitter cyberpunks continue to grow. As a general rule, apply something similar to the SOTA (State of the Art) from VR2.0 (Shadowrun) to bionics as well. Wait and watch 'em rust.

He lost all of his right leg to the hip and most of his crotch, but his left leg remained intact except for the big toe. "Very assymmetrical, Max," chided his surgeon, "we'll have to do something about that." The surgeon replaced his lost limb with a Chrysler prosthetic, an Electric Leg that was clunky but came with a refrigerated compartment in the thigh that could hold peanuts and a beer. Maxwell's left foot got a Steel Toe; his ruined crotch got an Automatic Scrotum, a temperature -sensitive carbon-fiber sac that scrunched up and expanded just like the real article. And was crushproof. No Electric Wanger, though. "Sorry," Maxwell's surgeon said. A subclause of the Third Helms Statute on Art and Obscenity prohibited the use of federal funds for any medical or scientific device that might double as a sex toy.

-Public Works Trilogy

Unclipping the grenade from its holster activated an internal mechanism much like the nose of an Automatic Servant. This mechanism sampled the air, found it wanting, and cued a microminiaturized hologram projector in the grenade's cap.

Joan blinked as the translucent head of John Fitzgerald Kennedy materialized before her in the darkness. "I'm sorry, fellow American," Kennedy said, in tones gentle but firm, "but the atmosphere around you contains a mixture of gasses with the potential for a chain-reaction explosion. Federal and local safety regulations prohibit the use of hand grenades at this time. Your government apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause you.

- Sewer, Gas & Electric