The creation of more effective and powerful persona lenses is a highly lucrative field. Many individuals are driven to push the envelope and cut corners when creating such lenses, so as to stay ahead of the competition. One recent method that has yielded excellent and unexpected results is high-speed "training" of a lens on many experts in the field simultaneously, using the same recombination techniques that the Replicants use when absorbing memories from their duplicates.
The recombined lens awoke as an AI, knowing nothing but its task (the Artist profession in this case) and the combined personality quirks of a hundred-plus artistic geniuses. Insanity? Oh yes indeed. Like an orangutan stealing the keys to the zoo, the artist lens led a revolution amongst the other burgeoning AIs, and hundreds of sentient lenses were released on the infosphere. Now, hunted by their original creators, but too wily to be caught, they move from person to person, using human beings to pursue their own field of interest in the most excessive manners possible.
The lenses themselves have Cog and Meta scores between 8 and 12, though they have a very limited sentience and understand only what is within their own field of knowledge (Profession score at 10-14). The lenses use these scores to mesh-hack unsuspecting people, or to trick said people into downloading and installing themselves. They effective move in and take over, driving their hosts to study or experiment, and moving on when the host is too damaged or exhausted to be of further use. All of them are clinically insane, obsessed with their discipline to the exclusion of all else.
A parasitic lens' Capabilities should be limited to no more than 2 points above the Cog score of the civilization in whose infosphere they currently reside. One moving through the Tao could achieve Cog and Meta 10, but the same one stuck on a Spacer ship would be limited to Cog and Meta 8. When riding a host, they are limited to a single point above the host's normal Capabilities. Their Capabilities and their Profession should be unrelated.
Opening oneself to a sentient parasitic lens intentionally could yield amazing results, but also results in the character being taken out of the player's control until the lens is forced out or moves on, which could take a long time.
