Simulant is an ongoing project being researched by Interest-9 scientists that combines the best aspects of both human and machine and are frequently billed as the next step in human evolution. The technology gradually improves throughout the theta wars, making them indistinguishable from the average person with a few standard facial cybernetic implants. A main attraction of a simulant is that a human being can upload their conscience and memories into a polymorphic AI (or later, a true AI) granting them vastly improved cognitive ability and a much longer lasting body in expense of a great deal of humanity.
Ethical viability is argued amongst Interest-9 but as we all know, many consider ethics merely an inconvenience by I9, and are of little concern to a certain emotionless cybernetic society. For this reason, research is banned in most countries. Subsequently, the idea of simulants is non well known outside scientific communities. Only the most hidden and seedily funded labs have anything to do with simulant R&D.
