Biogel Dressing Pod (World Guide, Technical) (Patreon)

Biogel Dressing Pod

The biogel dressing pod is a device intended to create the illusion that biogel is completely removable, and thus not a permanent symbiotic life form. The deception was considered critical to the public acceptance of the defunct Vixanti Interstellar Lifestyle, but Vixanti Corporation was taken under full military control prior to the product line's release to the general public. When commercial deployment of biogel was spun off to the new Vixanti's Gelitech subsidiary, the biogel dressing pod, and all concept of biogel as a removable item of 'clothing' were removed from the lineup. Biogel dressing pods are still in use in certain Vixanti facilities, and in certain biogel oriented military applications, in order to allow personnel to go about certain business without the outward appearance of being biogel hosts.

A biogel dressing pod works by temporarily altering the balances within a biogel host's coating, allowing the machine to remove the exterior mass, while leaving the interior intrusion of the substance in place. In the case of soul infused biogel, or biogel with special genetic programming, the special qualities remain entirely within the host, while the mass taken into the machine is entirely basic, unaltered biogel. When re-dressing a host, the machine adds back the mass  that was removed, maintaining the substance's inner balances as it does so.

Some biogel pods possess extra features. These extra features are also deployed in Gelitech Uniform Pods, without the biogel 'removal' qualities of the actual dressing pods. These features include: adding colored biogel 'patches', such as those on Vixanti Corporation 'uniforms'; equipping belts, wrist watches/comms, and other accessory items; automatic biogel cleaning; and hair dressing/gelatination. The latter quality involves the replacement of hear hair with stretchy strands of biogel, and can be reversed by re-conversion of the biogel into keratin.

A critical flaw with the illusory biogel undressing conducted by the biogel dressing pod is the tendency of the internal biogel intrusion to grow and re-coat its host. Typically, this will occur after between 3 to 5 days have passed, though in some cases an individual can go up to 10 days without re-coating occurring. Biogel re-coat of this sort is particularly hazardous. There is a safe period of 3 hours before a risk of spontaneous glistening occurs. Beyond that, the chance of glistening in any given 6 hour period is the usual, with the caveat that the last cleaning has occurred when the biogel suit was 'removed'. Depending on how long ago that was, spontaneous glistening in short order might be virtually guaranteed.