Saburo's engram

[Bart The Greatest]

I have this problem with the Arasaka ending. I will describe it a bit longer, I hope someone will want to write back and possibly explain some things to me.

First, I will explain (if I understand it correctly) the difference between Soulkiller, Relic 1.0 and 2.0.
Soulkiller is a program written by Alt Cunningham to create the digital self of netrunners floating around the Net. It was supposed to take netrunning to the next level, a bit like HDDs and SSDs. This meant, more or less, that the netrunner left his body and appeared on the Net completely, as if in a new world. However, it could go back to the "protein clipboard" if the connection was maintained. In a way, Rache Bartmoss himself worked similarly from the fridge, but I will stop here in order not to mix up.

Relic 1.0 is a record of personality and memories for family and descendants, but WITHOUT self-awareness. It's a Soulkiller marketed under the name "Secure Your Soul". A digital record of our self that can answer simple questions and be a collection of data from our memory, but without the element of consciousness that Arasaka steals.
Simple - the family gets a digital record of the "soul", but the digital record of the soul consciously goes secretly to Mikoshi. Of course, the first owner of the soul dies after the transfer, so the rich do it consciously before they die, or choose to die as a result of this operation.

Relic 2.0 is a prototype created by Anders Hellman with permission from Saburo Arasaka. It was to be an internal affair of the highest level of corporate governance and was never to be sold.
R2.0 is a biochip on which the content of the soul with the awareness of the Mikoshi harvest can be poured into the new body. Practical immortality, as long as we are not attached to our original body.
This type of biochip may be located in an emptied body but with sustained vital functions, or it may be located inside the brain of a living character and override his personality. Which is kind of torture and another corporation f***ing.


This is how I see it. I could be wrong somewhere, many things are still unclear both in the game and in the original Cyberpunk manuals.


Now comes my question: in the Arasaka ending, as Hanako leads us to Mikoshi, we are confronted with the Saburo engram. We even have the opportunity to see Jackie's engram!
And it totally doesn't bother me. Engram Saburo appears to be a record of the soul WITH awareness. But to do that you have to die. Unless not, then I don't understand anything anymore.
My point is, Saburo couldn't confirm V's words that his son had killed him, which made Hanako believe us. If he has made his digital copy without dying (i.e. normal clients are duped twice?), then such a copy knows only until copied. Saburo could not confirm that he had been strangled by his son because he had no way of knowing it.

However, if he made a digital copy consciously, then who met with Yorinobu in the tower? After all, his body was already empty? So that we understand each other, you CANNOT have a copy of your personality.
I'm in my body and I'm in digital same time. There is NO such option. But that's the case with Saburo...


Someone will tell me that the transfer of Saburo's soul occurred after his death. Yeah, but in this case, it's... Jackie's case. Our soul flies away, our brain begins to die, and what can be "saved" looks like Wells' engram. A terrible prison of self-fragments.

And I don't understand it. In my opinion, this is a script error, quite serious. And if not, the explanation must be so perverse that I hard don't understand :/

Hope someone reads this and helps me explain. Thx.

[nichosi]

no answers in game only speculations
arasaka had SK2.0 until Alt was released by Merphy in 2023
saburo could transferred his living engram (as JS) and then copied it to the body while original stayed on the server
then he decided to develop new technology to return to new body because couldn't find Alt
yorinobu was afraid of it and killed him

[Muscarine]

The issue with Soulkiller isn't that it kills the person or fries their brain, it's that Arasaka both don't have the technology to keep the body alive if the connection is severed, and they don't know - yet - how to reupload the engram's data without either killing or frying the original brain data; and more importantly how to even wake the subject up after the copy procedure (see Alt's death for all that combined)

We could argue brain necrosis because it happens very fast, but what's important here is that live or dead makes no difference, Soulkiller doesn't "extract your soul" it interpolates your brain's neural/chemical/adn/whathaveyou data into binary data and such

It's not another "state of the soul", engrams are indeed copies of already existing data
From here it's easy to deduce they simply extracted Saburo's data from his body (brain necrosis aside)

Hence why engram Saburo knows everything
But engram Saburo isn't Saburo, only a copy
Just like Devil engram Jackie is not original Jackie

That's where there is a big difference between V and everyone else
V wasn't disconnected, so she's still alive during the whole Mikochi trip - but it's not her or her soul in Mikochi, it's here engram/copy who was basically just born

Sure Mikochi engram Johnny (who's technically a copy of a copy at this point) calls it a transfer of psyche, but it's also very clear that's not how Alt would define it

On top of it as a Deus Ex Machina (up to you to judge if it's a good one or not) Alt is capable of both removing engram Johnny's data from V's brain, and upload engram V's data into V's data, not perfectly, but still something Arasaka have yet to achieve - although this is also due to the Relic 2.0 breakthrough, since we're years of progress after Alt's death

That means ending V is still original V, but with Johnny data removed, and a small addition of short lived engram V data
Basically V wakes up from artificially induced coma, with artificial additional and subtracted data

The whole 6 months to live (not really) issue has to do with the Relic rewriting her DNA in a way that basically means her drivers are now incompatible with her hardware and causing a general system failure, to use computer-ish terms
Because Alt can't rewrite DNA - that's the only narrative shortcut you need to swallow for all of this to make sense

With Devil V the only 100% sure death is signing the Arasaka contract, leaving without signing is not all that pessimistic, it's technically a lesser and much gloomier Star ending, with Hanako foreshadowing V possibly becoming the next Adam Smasher

For Temperance, engram V gets to "live" forever, but original V isn't dead either, she's rewritten to accommodate the Johnny conflict, and for engram 1 Johnny to take over for good, with the addition of engram 2 Johnny data
Which is probably the worst possible ending for original V, at best completely dead for good, at worst locked-in syndrome with the additional horror of somebody else moving your body for you (kinda like the movie Get Out)

Star and Sun are both original V but with more or less Johnny leftovers and a different existential goal, the famous peaceful life or blaze of glory

If it seems far fetched to you, remember this is a game where AIs rewrite people's entire brains with just signals and images (Jeffersons questline)

[Bart The Greatest]

Originally posted by eNkee:

saburo could transferred his living engram (as JS) and then copied it to the body while original stayed on the server

It's not possible. You can exist either in the body or digitally. And even if that were the case, the engram wouldn't know what happened to the bodily form anyway, because there is no connection between them.

Originally posted by Muscarine:

It's not another "state of the soul", engrams are indeed copies of already existing data
From here it's easy to deduce they simply extracted Saburo's data from his body (brain necrosis aside)
Hence why engram Saburo knows everything
But engram Saburo isn't Saburo, only a copy
Just like Devil engram Jackie is not original Jackie

This is the simplest explanation, but it still doesn't suit me, and the dying brain cannot be ignored. Brain death usually occurs 5 minutes after blood circulation has stopped. Then the irreversible processes of "turning off" neurons begin.

So Saburo's engram should be like Jackie's engram, and he would only remember more distant things. Like Jackie talks about borrowing a car from V or getting into a higher league, but doesn't remember the Arasaka tower.
Meanwhile, the Saburo engram (that is, Saburo HIMSELF) behaves like one that is ready to penetrate into a new body, the body of his son. And such a "soul" transfer, as it is described here, cannot be done.

[Muscarine]

You should listen to Saburo's conversation with V again because ultimately we could talk for hours about life, death, data, soul, reincarnation and whatnot, but ultimately nothing engram Saburo says confirms he was there during original Saburo's death
It's as easy as Hanako could have told him beforehand

As for Jackie... he's not just an engram i can tell you that much
He only appears if you send his body to Vik
Arasaka took him away and probably used Soulkiller to dig on what happened (which is also why the board already knew Yorinobu did it)
But the engram Jackie you meet is a shell with not even a clear memory of you
Broken by questioning or simply a damaged copy for multiple reasons, up to you to decide

And whether you think he's a soul, a memory, data or anything else in between, that's a central question the game keeps asking while drowning you in various symbols and metaphors, and one it takes a lot of precautions not to ever answer

[Grahor]

Originally posted by Lord Bart:

So that we understand each other, you CANNOT have a copy of your personality.

So that we understand each other, that's where we radically differ. You certainly can have a copy of your personality. At some point in their independent lives those personalities will stop being each other, so to say, but both of them will remain the same personality that existed when the copy or copies were made.

I don't want a discussion, we aren't going to convince each other in anything, I just point out that differences in personal opinions on the matter exist, and thus there is no common answer for everyone.

[Booba]

My understanding from the game dialogue is that Soulkiller is an AI which separates consciousness from flesh.

Relic is an immortality product/service sold by Arasaka or otherwise used as a kind of insurance for high-level executives (Saburo).

Soulkiller was used to forcibly intern Silverhand in Mikoshi, the data-vault of the Relic program.

Presumably, other (but similar) means were used to make a digital backup of Saburo but his engram was also stored in Mikoshi as part of the Relic 2.0 program/internal service.

But yes, you can “copy” a person’s consciousness according to the game lore. In Alt’s own words, Soulkiller is named what it is because that’s all an engram is: a copy. Consciousness, the true soul, is lost in the process.

[Bart The Greatest]

Originally posted by Muscarine:

It's as easy as Hanako could have told him beforehand

No no, Hanako found out about her father's death from Saburo himself.
Though earlier... soon after you abducted me... I sought his counsel.
Her words in the Arasaka's basement.

Originally posted by Grahor:

I don't want a discussion, we aren't going to convince each other in anything, I just point out that differences in personal opinions on the matter exist, and thus there is no common answer for everyone.

It's not about persuasion, but about technology and facts. Engram is not simply a digital copy of the human self, in the sense that you both have the original Word file on disk and its exact copy on a flash drive or in the cloud. Once copied, you exist only in digital form, your body dies.

Originally posted by Scuba Steve:

In Alt’s own words, Soulkiller is named what it is because that’s all an engram is: a copy. Consciousness, the true soul, is lost in the process.

No, that's what a lot of people don't understand - the soul isn't lost. I would liken it to a certain element of Star Wars
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Transfer_essence
Only instead of the Force ghost is the Machine/Digital ghost.

The problem with Alt is that she's a wild AI, resulting from the hard disconnection of the mind from the body. It was only because the original Soulkiller was a netrunner program. Then Arasaka modified it into a product known as 'Secure Your Soul'.
So the Alt thread and her dialogues are just a mix-up, and I think they should be left alone.


Anyway, the matter is still unsolved for me. But thanks for the conversation.

[Muscarine]

Originally posted by Lord Bart:

No no, Hanako found out about her father's death from Saburo himself.
Though earlier... soon after you abducted me... I sought his counsel.
Her words in the Arasaka's basement.

What ?
No

Engram Saburo existed before original Saburo's death, of course Hanako would talk with "him" since he's the successor

Hanako and the board learn of how original Saburo died from Jackie's engram, just like engram Saburo does because either Hanako told him or because he can access other Mikochi engrams himself (remember, Mikochi is a prison)
Why else do you think they would bother intercepting and stealing the body of a low life thief ?

edit - here, some reading for you
https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.php?threads/spoilers-cats-pyramids-and-egyptian-symbolism.11068541/page-2#post-12744860

[Bart The Greatest]

Originally posted by Muscarine:

Engram Saburo existed before original Saburo's death,

Well, this is the second part of the problem that my friend pointed out to - if Saburo's engram existed before his death and it was a "full" engram, with the awareness of will and decision, an engram that could be implanted into a new body (in this case, his son's) that is, you can have a copy of your consciousness (what I call your soul, but also what the game is about) without your body and live on earth at the same time.

And this does not match the basic assumptions of Soulkiller and Relic 1.0 :/

Originally posted by Muscarine:

Why else do you think they would bother intercepting and stealing the body of a low life thief ?

This is of course clear - to find out what he knew about the heist. The question is, how much of his remnants told them in terms of brain necrosis? In my opinion, they didn't learn anything because it was too late.

And if they found out the truth, we go back to point one - Hanako went to her father's engram and told him that his original soul and body had stopped "working".
(I don't ask where Yorinobu was in all this anymore)
But if she hadn't come and said? Engram isn't a data backup. Imagine that Saburo lives another 10 years and suddenly dies, naturally. Nobody updates his Mikoshi engram. And what does his immortality look like? He can go on living by placing an engram in a new body, but has a decade of ignorance of the world...

Originally posted by Muscarine:

edit - here, some reading for you
https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.php?threads/spoilers-cats-pyramids-and-egyptian-symbolism.11068541/page-2#post-12744860

Thanks, that's an extremely interesting topic, although looking at body language in a game where characters might load in the wrong direction or something...

*** they have found a way to use Soulkiller on people and not killing them in the process, i.e. after disconnection ***

That would explain everything, unfortunately it isn't mentioned anywhere in the game. Besides, there is such a shard
https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Secure_Your_Soul:_Short-term_Priority
...

[Muscarine]

Originally posted by Lord Bart:

That would explain everything, unfortunately it isn't mentioned anywhere in the game.

In this particular case it's detailed enough that we can draw some conclusions

That's not to say my theory on engram Saburo is 100% correct, because the game always stays purposely vague anytime it has to deal with data vs soul
But what my theories say at least is that the cues exist, whether or not i interpret them correctly

It's pretty much up to us to collect as many clues as we can but ultimately draw our own conclusion depending both on logic and personal philosophies
Meaning some players will always disagree with some others, no matter what

Some things like V died or not at Mikochi will always be a polarising subject because we don't get a definitive answer, because we're not given the option to acknowledge the conundrum through V's dialogues, and because there are valid arguments for both outcomes

Ultimately though, what that tells us, which is also what Misty spends her time telling us, is not to take everything literally
Because a lot of the game's substance resides in the figurative too and V's journey is first and foremost a metaphoric and existential one

I hope many of the players who are completely convinced "V always dies anyway" will take some time to look at the story from a different perspective, because that really isn't what it says
Hopefully that'll get a better reception when and if the game gets better
Because the story on its own, and main cast, staging, acting, etc, are definitely worth it

[0-0-Bram]

one thing that should be mentioned is when a netrunner loses connection to their body, the body dies. so their soul is only ever in one place; either the net or the flesh. that said, don't see why an engram couldn't be copied once it's digitalized. but given Alt wants to take the souls from makoshi and incorporate them into herself if she could just copy her own, maybe even over and over again, leads me to believe it's not possible to make copies. then again, maybe there's so many souls in makoshi that it would save Alt a century of copying, and that's why it's worth her while?

Another possibility for Saburo is he was connected wirelessly. And, as he is human, might have repressed his memory of being murdered or even lost it when his vitals dropped.

[Xalmachi]

So just a bit outside most of what we've mentioned, what about the Twins in the first Beat 'em Up? If twins can achieve that sort of sync, surely there is a way to replicate that link somehow to provide Relic biochip hosts for eventual takeover and save the original bodies occupant. Not to mention they could essentially groom and breed their own Relic host farm. Arasaka is far too large to not have the ability for that. Kinda makes me wonder other than being found out by an ethics committee (and obviously developer time) why that isn't a possible lead to trace even if it ends up as a bad end or dead end after a few missions or alluded to in lore.

[Bart The Greatest]

The case of the twins is something completely different, based on the Neural Oscillation Synchronizers. A completely different stuff.

[Arid Drifter]

Originally posted by Bart The Greatest:

I have this problem with the Arasaka ending. I will describe it a bit longer, I hope someone will want to write back and possibly explain some things to me.

First, I will explain (if I understand it correctly) the difference between Soulkiller, Relic 1.0 and 2.0.
Soulkiller is a program written by Alt Cunningham to create the digital self of netrunners floating around the Net. It was supposed to take netrunning to the next level, a bit like HDDs and SSDs. This meant, more or less, that the netrunner left his body and appeared on the Net completely, as if in a new world. However, it could go back to the "protein clipboard" if the connection was maintained. In a way, Rache Bartmoss himself worked similarly from the fridge, but I will stop here in order not to mix up.

Relic 1.0 is a record of personality and memories for family and descendants, but WITHOUT self-awareness. It's a Soulkiller marketed under the name "Secure Your Soul". A digital record of our self that can answer simple questions and be a collection of data from our memory, but without the element of consciousness that Arasaka steals.
Simple - the family gets a digital record of the "soul", but the digital record of the soul consciously goes secretly to Mikoshi. Of course, the first owner of the soul dies after the transfer, so the rich do it consciously before they die, or choose to die as a result of this operation.

Relic 2.0 is a prototype created by Anders Hellman with permission from Saburo Arasaka. It was to be an internal affair of the highest level of corporate governance and was never to be sold.
R2.0 is a biochip on which the content of the soul with the awareness of the Mikoshi harvest can be poured into the new body. Practical immortality, as long as we are not attached to our original body.
This type of biochip may be located in an emptied body but with sustained vital functions, or it may be located inside the brain of a living character and override his personality. Which is kind of torture and another corporation f***ing.


This is how I see it. I could be wrong somewhere, many things are still unclear both in the game and in the original Cyberpunk manuals.


Now comes my question: in the Arasaka ending, as Hanako leads us to Mikoshi, we are confronted with the Saburo engram. We even have the opportunity to see Jackie's engram!
And it totally doesn't bother me. Engram Saburo appears to be a record of the soul WITH awareness. But to do that you have to die. Unless not, then I don't understand anything anymore.
My point is, Saburo couldn't confirm V's words that his son had killed him, which made Hanako believe us. If he has made his digital copy without dying (i.e. normal clients are duped twice?), then such a copy knows only until copied. Saburo could not confirm that he had been strangled by his son because he had no way of knowing it.

However, if he made a digital copy consciously, then who met with Yorinobu in the tower? After all, his body was already empty? So that we understand each other, you CANNOT have a copy of your personality.
I'm in my body and I'm in digital same time. There is NO such option. But that's the case with Saburo...


Someone will tell me that the transfer of Saburo's soul occurred after his death. Yeah, but in this case, it's... Jackie's case. Our soul flies away, our brain begins to die, and what can be "saved" looks like Wells' engram. A terrible prison of self-fragments.

And I don't understand it. In my opinion, this is a script error, quite serious. And if not, the explanation must be so perverse that I hard don't understand :/

Hope someone reads this and helps me explain. Thx.

im a few years late but here is how i see it about the whole engram/personality construct, let me ease the pain of wondering about how and what... Johnny Silverhand is gone... what remains is his personality and memories on a thumbstick/thumbdrive/flashstick... designed to overwrite another persons mind and there you go, JS is "back"... if you copy someones memories and personality traits and inject the memory chip into an empty shell, its not that person anymore, its a copy even though it does and says same thing the real person did before... unless in cyberpunk 2077 they are literally able to take a persons soul like they were able to in Nier universe, and literally store a soul in a thumbdrive... but in cyberpunk 2077 it is very vague...

[Vela Darney]

I think what's very interesting in the game is that entire discussion V can have with those two monks about souls and engrams and whether a digital copy of a person is really a person or not, and whether they still got a soul or not. It's one of THE essential discussions in every Cyberpunk kind of setting - what's a soul? What's the defining characteristics of a soul? Can a machine have a soul (think of TNG's Data, for example, or the Replicants from Blade Runner - soulless machines or real persons)? No easy answer or solution to that ...

As for the Saburo problem:

- take Original Saburo
- run Soulkiller on him but leave him plugged in
- Original Saburo is now digital, basically a bunch of ones and zeroes (to put it simply) in Mikoshi
- copy bunch of ones and zeroes that is Original Saburo (he's digital, digital stuff can be copied, only a question of whether your computer's powerful enough to do so, so not a problem for the most powerful, technologically advanced corporation on the planet, that's also in possession of the most powerful datafort) and paste to Mikoshi
- you now have Original Saburo and Copied Saburo
- send Original Saburo back to his still plugged-in body
- stash Copied Saburo in Mikoshi as "backup" (Saburo's no dummy, he knows it's entirely possible, very likely even that he'll die under circumstances where a) a new, suitable body for him might not be immediately accessible and b) there might not be time to put him through Soulkiller before he dies, which would result in a damaged engram - see Jackie)

Fail to see the issue there.