Cloning and brain scanning

[ReHerakhte]

I'm putting this here for dissection and critique of the members of the forum.
As some of you know, I am planning a new Dark Conspiracy campaign and a big part of the game flavour will derive from the technology differences between the various wealth levels of society, particularly when it comes to medical tech.
While I have the wealthy and corporate elite having regular access to cybernetics, gene manipulation for their unborn children and so on, I also want them to have access to cloning with the possibility that the PCs may get lucky and have this offered to them should they get injured or die.

I'm using the concept presented in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie The 6th Day so that "blank" clones in various stages of age are held, literally on ice, until needed. Then genetic material from the patient is introduced to the blank and it then takes on the physical aspects of the patient. Various other modifications are done (e.g. muscle grafting, bone shaping) to sculpt the blank into the form of the patient.
But this then presented a challenge of how to transfer the memories and personality of the original to the clone.

So... I've been thinking about the following and I would love to get your input, whether that be insights, ideas, criticisms, what-have-you.
It doesn't need to be highly realistic but I don't want to just handwave it all. I want it to sound plausible to the Players specifically because they will be aware that the wealthy have significantly advanced medical help available compared to the majority of the population.
These are my notes so far, it's basically a worksheet idea so they notes aren't presented in any sort of rulebook format yet: -

The wealthy have many medical options available that are not open to those on lower incomes. This ranges from advanced technology & techniques to drugs (e.g. anagathics to reduce the effects of aging) to cybernetics as well as cloning.
Cloning is not openly discussed and it is not advertised in public, the only place to find out about it is either be a patient at a medical centre or clinic that provides for the wealthy, be someone who works at such a place or to have been told by one of those two.

Even the Mikes employed by the wealthy or the Corps are not particularly aware this option exists. However the wealthy make regular use of it to clone pets and important animals (e.g. racehorses) and also body parts. For the wealthy, genetic engineering has reduced or even removed many potential defects from children before they're born but that's no insurance against damage later in life.
Cloning provides the spare parts for those who suffer such damage.
Any PC who comes from the wealthy Career is going to know about this, whether they tell the rest of the group is entirely up to them.

There's also a few who have complete clones made of themselves, either as body doubles for security purposes or to ensure that they live on if they suffer premature death. Some specialist companies maintain farms of human "blanks" in the same manner that pet cloning services maintain "blanks" of animals. Think of the Arnie movie The 6th Day.
These blanks can be encoded with genetic material from the original so that it is physically the same.
To have the same personality and more importantly, the same memories, is a harder task and costs considerably more money.

But there are those that can afford it, they have brain scans done of the animal or human they want preserved and update those scans regularly. When it becomes necessary, those scans are literally uploaded into the brain of the clone and then the clone "is" the original (however the clone's memories are only as good as the latest updated scan).
The tech for this is derived from ET technology, another reason it is kept so hush hush.
Some of the ultra wealthy have gone as far as having a semi-permanent link from their brain to the cloning facility so that their scan updates several times a day.

Note that it is beneficial for the PCs to learn about this at some point so that the Referee can offer it as a way out if a PC gets killed and can be be given a brain scan in time.

Note that even without updated scans, a successful brain scan can be done after the person has died and for this reason, some wealthy people and even some medical services that deal with the wealthy, carry brain scan machines to deal with this eventuality. This means they can be found if a PC dies - there's no certainty, but there's always a chance.
The time for game purposes is CON score + 1d6 x 10 minutes - meaning that the average CON score of 5 will have 5 + 1d6 x 10 minutes before the brain has started to decay. That means a person with CON 5 has at least 60 minutes to get their brain scanned for cloning purposes.
The 1d6 roll represents random differences in people (or animals), physically & mentally and Empathically (and even spiritually).

This time period can be extended if a specific medical procedure is carried out. The body must be chilled to induce coma in the patient. As long as the body stays chilled and "not quite dead", the time needed to get the body to a brain scan can be increased by CON score + 1d6 x20 minutes meaning that, using the example above, the CON 5 person will have at least two hours to get a brain scan done
If the body can be kept on artificial respiration/circulation, the time can be further extended to CON score + 1d6 x 1 day. Again, using the example above, a CON 5 person would thereby have at least 6 days to get the brain scan done - as long as their body was kept artificially alive for that entire period of time.

Brain scans can still be conducted on the dead person if these times/medical conditions are exceeded, but there will be some lose of skill points in random Skills and there may even be personality changes (maybe refer to phobia charts for some guidance on adding this as well as physical disability charts?). For every hour past the times listed above, the person will lose one Skill level from a randomly chosen Skill. However once this time period exceeds hours equal to the patients CON score, they will then start to lose complete Skills (i.e. the entire Skill, it gets reduced back to zero) for every hour past their CON limit.
Once the patient has reached twice their CON in hours past the time frames given above for brain scans, the brain is dead and scanning will not recover enough to successfully programme a clone.

The idea behind the last paragraph is to give the Players a dilemma - get a brain scan knowing your PC will have some memory loss and with a very good chance of complete memory loss for some Skills and maybe some physical problem or let the PC die.
You have a maximum time limit, if you exceed it, you have a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" decision to make.
I'm not particularly in favour of killing off PCs but the chance of Character death should always be there so that Players feel the threat and don't get complacent. I'll admit that the dilemma idea is designed to increase their angst about potential Character death.