There are other large discrepancies with the way that merging mechanics are laid out. Let me give you an example right now. One man lives out two lives as forks A and B. Forks A and B go decades without merging, A becoming a renown psychosurgeon, and B becoming a soldier. One day, they decide to merge. This is the means by which they do it. Both forks create a fork of themselves which will be the actual forks merged during the process, and we shall call these forks A[sup]1[/sup] and B[sup]1[/sup]. They make one more fork of A to oversee the merging, which we will call A[sup]2[/sup]. A[sup]2[/sup] then begins to merge A[sup]1[/sup] and B[sup]1[/sup], causing stress and severe memory loss (for the sake of the experiment, we'll assume failure with minimal stress). We now have fork C, who has a poorly merged mind created from A[sup]1[/sup] and B[sup]1[/sup]. A[sup]1[/sup] and B[sup]1[/sup] are deleted in the process. However, we still have A and B. The time difference between C and either of these two forks should be minimal (the process is very quick so long as everyone is in infomorph form), and should mean that C is capable of merging into either of them with relative ease. A[sup]2[/sup] can then proceed to merge them into C, and it should theoretically be treated as the lowest length of time before merging, allowing for a seamless merge with both egos. The process would result in a brand new ego that has all of the memories (and potentially skills and talents) of both A and B, while costing quite a bit in potential stress. The benefits would probably outweigh the risks, however. On a secondary note, however... why does memory loss occur? Furthermore, if a person is in infomorph or synthmorph form when merging occurs, shouldn't mnemonic enhancements and digitally stored memories make memory loss nonexistent?

That was my understanding of the process. The human brain is extremely malleable, and over the period of hours, days or months that a fork exists its particular brain state changes to such a degree that if overlaid onto the original anomalies and false connections would begin to form. This manifests in the form of stress damage, memory loss and potential derangement/disorder/s. I do sometimes wish that the Merge Table had been extended to define when a fork is considered an entirely different Ego for the sake of merging. For example, if after one month an fork has remained separate from its parent Ego it becomes impossible to merge back into a stable whole, just like it is impossible for one Ego to merge into someone elses without the result being batshit crazy. Such a defined edge would easily cut off any example such as Decivres', as A1 and B1 would not be able to merge to create C in the first place. From the setting material I honestly believe that this is the intention of the rules. However it does raise queries about how exactly the Pax Familae have not all been driven mad by constant forking/merging. Hopefully Hotfix may contain more information about merging for us to play with.