The Personality Swap Egg
Robert T. Lopes [dis@mediaone.net]

I was the one who posted on usenet (and a few other web forums) about my
Furby swapping it's identity and behavior with my friend's.

I had bought one, and he had bought two for his daughters.  At his house
we spent most of the afternoon very frustrated with it's (mine)
nonsensical language which needed constant translation.  His kids tired
well before he and I.  So after repeated feedings and other interaction
I finally got an intelligible English phrase or two.  At that point the
kids now wanted me to make their's talk English too.  So I started with
one of them.  After a mindless gruelling hour I got it to start "making
sense".  So now the last Furby was waiting to be "weaned" of some of
it's Furbish, and I was SICK and TIRED of messing with these things.
But it was his littlest daughters' Furby, and she begging me.  So I had
just had mine and the other (learned) Furby talking to each other,
whereby they say their name and other chit chat to each other.  So I had
the bright idea that I thought I had read that they teach each other;
but now that I think about it that feature was probably of Creatures,
the PC game.  So I placed all three Furbies in a triangle hoping they
would all talk to each other and maybe even train the
littlest/youngest/dumbest one in the process!

Now my theory is that during this round robin fashion of comm'g with
each other some kind of crossed communication took place where
*possibly* the swap or at least the few bits that probably contain their
name, and level of maturity.  Which is really the only thing internally
unique about them as you know.  So I stand by my story about them
swapping personalities.  I had driven home and found that my Furby was
now not himself, different name and traits.  I called my friend and he
said that the "dumbest" one now had what was my old name, and it spoke a
good deal of English.

Now I will concede that what is very possible is that they didn't
exchange at all but during my three-way comm session that they both did
some kind of internal reset to some degree that they randomly got new
names and trait levels.  Even though the names they now had were each
others.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Bob