Historically, attempts in matters of teleportation have always been flawed, with a high probability of mixing the characteristics and structural constituents of objects together - only Yamatai managing to crack the formula with successful teleportation being a very very closely guarded secret. As a result, the consortium decided specifically to investigate unsuccessful teleportation. For years, even the most sophisticated teleporters severely damage the bacterial flora of a person, alter a small number of synapses and can unbalance hormones temporarily in users making the process particularly unpleasant and potentially even dangerous, resulting in abominations.

While these problems have mostly been solved and teleporters largely stable, the transmogrifier intentionally uses hardware flawed by design, intentionally introducing faults in a highly controlled way. Rather than moving a thing from point A to point B, the object is bounced back and forth – transitioning through all manner of corrupted forms before a desirable outcome is eventually achieved – creating a third object with the characteristics of both - acting as a melting pot of objects or even people.

This is all mostly thanks to the bizarre understanding of quantum reality Sourcian science and perception deals with, their observations and their awareness of probability. Functionally speaking, the device works with a 98% success-rate¹⁾. It is however enormous - with a massive energy drain needing at least the output of an entire starbase-like ship to operate.

The device itself works on a little known Sourcian principle of something called causality merger: that is causality is treated as a path through time and probability as two axis, the divergence of two objects can be aligned into a mean average. While this does not sound like much, it means the quantum “fate” of two things can be turned into a single fate which respects both input components.

Mechanically speaking, the process is running two things through an intentionally sabotaged teleporter and seeing what horrible abomination comes out the other side. Following the “monkeys with type-writers” analogy, if the process is done enough eventually something that isn't a horrible abomination or even a better result than the two original components can be created. It does of course take a long time and hence has to be performed in a pocket of compressed space where the rules of time and space can be bent just a little in respects to the process.

It should be noted if it isn't already realized that the process itself violates a worrying number of international laws and is ethically deplorable - given that thousands of battered, flawed, skewed and suffering replicas of any organism will be both made and destroyed painfully before an end product is reached.

The end product can either be unstable or stable, depending on the investment energy. This basically means was the thing made destroying the original components or by replicating it. In the case of a destructive merger, the two will remain united for a set period, having a half-life of a given amount of time before spontaneously separating back into their original and unharmed constituents.

Objects which use newly sourced material and create a unique “quantum fate” create a separate entity which has an almost indefinite half-life. What this means is the thing produced won't try to separate.

A flaw of the system is it requires an opinion or decision matrix as to what is better or worse in order to iteratively work towards a better transmogification product. This is done with a vast battery of scans, assessments of cellular cohesion of biological components, of mechanical elements and so forth as well as subjective understandings of what the “qualities” of those things were.

This of course involves loading a ROM Construct of a real person, or a designer-construct to do several hundred years worth of decision making within just a few hours: removing the tedious bar to entry of the process.

The resulting product is highly nuanced outputs which are skewed based on personal subjective opinions or interpretations and how these are expressed with the given materials: One person's fork is another person's spoon, so to speak.

Cohesion is a critical factor affecting the personality of a fused pair transmogrified. When the cohesion of two individuals is complementary a well formed personality much like that of a single entity may be formed, however if the two have poor cohesion it will be as if there are two separate minds arguing within the individual.

The technology itself is based on a battered device salvaged from the crashed Maras. Originally unidentifiable in purpose, when a functioning replica was made in order to study the device, its purpose became clear.

The original working prototype was about the size of a football field (verses the fist-sized ball aboard the Maras, due to technological differences. The primary difference was that of perspective and what defined “progress”: Sourcians with their unique quantum perspective and limited energy resources through much of their history focused on efficiency and optimization: Local space on the other hand preferring an approach of taking more and more energy as the aether seems to have neither drawbacks nor consequences).

The prototype in question was originally created to split wild uncatalogued strains of structol from materials for study – inadvertently creating a decontamination system. The device would later be tested with the crew of the akahar post-humorously.

The devices limited functionality meant it was unfortunately only able to recover individuals who hadn't passed a set point of contamination and could only be used on the ship's black box flight recorder, parts of its computer and elements of its engine as well as a few personal effects which were used to calibrate the removal process without the risk of harming affected crew.

The results successfully preserved the individual in question during initial testing before the transmogrification ship arrived: creating almost no noticeable difference from the original state of the crew. Importantly, medical data and known scans of people involved were also be used for the subjective assessment system in order to reach better results when dealing with personnel.

The Akahar itself and the Moro'ko however, were destroyed. In retrospect, the device's throughput and inefficiencies would have meant the “full” Akahar probably wouldn't have been saved unless the ship had reached within the first 6 hours of hull contamination.

A second version of the device, about the size of a small city was built beneath the remains of the blood moon which struck the surface of Lor. Much faster than the original device it is not portable – but can use data alone to produce a meaningful fusion, taken from a high resolution quantum scan of objects transmitted to it. It is thought in future that objects will be able to be scanned using a client device and then issue a return “blueprint” of what to print in return.

A number of simulations were performed with the device in test-mode, emulating atomic behaviors in massive cognitive modelling systems and then computing social responses to examine the behavior of individuals produced. While thousands of tests have been done, two note-worthy cases have been published internally within the consortium:

One of the earliest published results internally within the consortium is the combination of one Aiesu Kalopsia with one Rebeka Retena. The results were striking.

Physically the subject retained Rebeka's strength and height and psychologically her determination and inertia. Her aimlessness and inability to make complex decisions required for basic life-skills now had a rudder in the form of Aiesu's own very selfish goals which she formerly lacked the power to realize.

Power corrupts and the resulting product was no exception: Aiesu's inferiority complex becoming sadistic, Rebeka's frustration having a means of being calmed through the hedonistic tendancies of Aiesu. What was formerly apathy on Rebeka's part now had malice boardering on a death-wish. Stranger still, her own instinctive drives to care for a smaller person combined with Aiesu's skewed sexual interests created stalker-like tenancies and an unhealthy interest in conventionally sized males whom the fused result believed were children and would treat them as such: mothering individuals to death with a lack of clear comprehension of damage or death.

Primarily done to see what would happen if antithesis were to merge, Rebeka and SAINT-member Helen Klein have a known history: Klein destroying the Maras and the Maras itself being the sole reason for Rebeka's continued psychological motivation.

The simulated subject once again was dominated by the larger ego of the two: In this case Helen - a result which was unexpected. In intense study, the merged individual had an intense thirst for power and within the social simulation amassed resources and financial control through the use of organised criminal activity and by day 81 was applying pressure to political bodies and had formed a private army. On day 304, the subject committed suicide.

While throughout known space designer people do exist, a transmogrification in practice has been revealed to be greater than the sum of its parts. The combinations inherit the skills, perks, flaws and tendencies of real people. Combined, the effects of psychologically multiplying these traits results in “larger than life” magnifications of character. As such, the Consortium advises those using this equipment should demonstrate extreme caution.

Given that individuals can have a larger impact on history than any innovation, the decision was made to mothball the transmogrifier, internally classifying it internally as a social weapon of mass destruction before later (ostensibly) archiving it.