Biomer

What is Biomer?

Bio-polymer is synthetic flesh, and it can be configured into muscle, skin, or connective tissue. Biomer was a product of the medical industry and was created for burn victims, and people who had suffered major body trauma.

What can Biomer Do?

Biomer can be used to replace skin, muscle, connective tissue, and fatty tissue in the body. It cannot be used to replicate any sort of organ, gland, or bone.

Biomer is flat, stat wise, and doesn't give any bonuses to those who have it grafted to their bodies. In contrast, myomer, synthetic muscle, offers greatly increased strength. The main advantages of biomer is that it requires almost no support once it is grafted to a patient, and is much cheaper than more traditional augmentation and modification.

The most common use of biomer is in the application of healing kits. It is also commonly found in med-pod systems, bioforges, cloning operations, and cosmetic reconstruction surgery.

How is Biomer Made?

Biomer is a chimera, a hybrid of mycelium and human DNA. This material can be grown in vats like mycoprotein (which it is) and configured to present itself as muscle, skin, or whatever else is required. This rendered material can then be used as 'fuel' for bioforges and med-pods to replace missing tissue. This makes the material cheap and easy to produce, and being fungus based, it grows rapidly.

Biomer was downplayed because it didn't augment or improve anything, in contrast to designer genetics, or cybernetics. It was quickly relegated to 'low medicine' and supplied on subsidy to the public hospitals. Likewise, the low cost and fungal source of the material was used to undermine it's value. In a world where designer genetics and cybernetic implants are fashion choices, having missing limbs cheaply replaced, and burns healed in a few days were considered less than stellar.

Biomer Plants grow large tanks of bio-polymer and are considered low level operations. They combine water, sugars, and heat along with a starter seed into tons of biomass. This biomass moves through processing lines where it is coaxed into sheets, strands, and then into the sizes and shapes that it is needed. The most common method is rendering the biomass down into a paste (neutralizing the fungal RNA) and then running it through a bio printer. For cloning operations, the biopaste is packaged as 'bio-gel' and shipped to body farms. The bioprinters make the bodies while the clone embryo is coaxed into developing into just a head and central nervous system than is half grafted half grown into the printed body.

The Unexpected Biomer Booth

An unexpected boon was the biomer spray booth. Similar to spray tan booths, the biomer spray booth sprays a layer of 'skin' onto a host, giving them a literal second layer of skin that moves and breathes with their own. Once the biomer is applied, it is quick and easy for print jets to apply color, patterns, logos, etc, to the biomer body sheath, allowing a person to be both clothed, and naked in their own skin. Hot colors and trendy patterns dominate, creating the skintight clothing of the future aesthetic.

Biomer Inlays are small items and devices that can be applied to a biomer sheath before it fully sets, and include things like dazzle, bioteletrix, muscle tracers, flexible screens, or artistic ornamentation. Some fashion choices include mirror panels, studs, spikes, decorative scales, and other appliances to create cosplay options. face dancers also use this technology to create their peel away false faces, Mission Impossible style.

Biomer grafts are permanent, as they integrate themselves into the body of the host and 'become' host. In contrast, biomer sheaths only last for a few days at the longest as the material is no longer being sustained. The sheaths can be 'fed' with nutrient baths, and if cared for properly can last quite a while. If damaged, they have almost no ability to repair themselves, but can regenerate in said nutrient baths. Most are worn for a day, and then, peeled off. There is an entire genre of immersion devoted to peeling or being peeled out of a sheath, sunburn style.

Alternate Sheath Uses

UV Blocker - a sunblock sheath can be worn, sprayed clear, allowing for a host to be exposed to a large amount of sunlight without being sunburnt. UV blockers can also be used in a dazzle camouflage pattern to spoof computer bio-scanners.

Race Change - a person can opt to temporarily change their visual race, and adopt the skin coloration of another race. This is commonly used for fantasy applications, but some use them for race-play. Depending on locale this can be seen as highly offensive, or as socially educational.