So, I was watching a show with a friend & this idea struck me, you have a well trained person who is programmed to have a secondary personality completely overriding the main personality with a trigger, but something goes wrong & they swap randomly. I think this could be an interesting NPC to place with a group of runners.

My question..How would you all handle this idea? I was thinking of creating 2 characters & creating a Personachip & have them change at certain times or intervals. But what would those of you on Dumpshock do?

If I am not mistaken, you should read the SR novel 'Tails you Lose' by Lisa Smedmen.

one reviewer explains it better than I can:

When a key employee is extracted, Alma Wei, a security specialist, finds herself in the middle of a baffling investigation. Worse, the victim is the researcher Alma needs to to repair some of her malfunctioning experimental implants. Despite her efforts the researcher turns up dead. And DNA evidence points to Alma herself as the shadowrunner who performed the extraction. Suddenly she only has a few days to find the real culprit before a cranial bomb is set off in her head.
Thus begins a story of two women, Alma herself, and Night Owl, the shadowrunner who killed the researcher. They were both members of the SuperKids, a specialised breeding experiment designed to create exceptionally talented individuals. When the experiment is broken up after eight years the children lose all contact with each other. The story expands to include several fixers and mages, various gangs, three dragons and an unusual financial advisor who lives in a condo beneath the ocean. The plot takes countless twists and turns before the truth is finally uncovered. If you miss a couple of early hints final section of the book will come as a real surprise.

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Basically the two personas are the same person if you have not guessed, and it takes a while for Alma to figure this out.

So building on this you will have to work in things like what do the two different personas do and how do you cover the lapses in time and such? Most go with cycles so one persona is the day one and when they go to 'sleep' the other side awakens and runs the show until they in turn shut down for the original persona to emerge.

I am actually thinking that it will be more of "programmed responses" or something to that extent that mak,es them change, I want the possibility of it happening during a run. One personality will be a high class professional Runner, the other will be more mild mannered, possibly a mechanic or a something of the like.

I am just trying to determine the crunch of the situation. As mentioned I am thinking of creating 2 complete characters, One as a Shadowrunner, the other as more of perhaps a face or something that worked in Corp society, they will know about the other personality & know before the other is going to take over (the show I saw is "My Own Worst Enemy" for those who might be wondering)