Reflections In The Moonlight

Videogames after finishing often leaves you victorious and elated. But sometimes one comes along that leaves you drained, contemplative, downright depressed. One of those is Cyberpunk 2077, which seems at first like am marriage between Deus Ex and Grand Theft Auto: A life of a mercenary in a dystopian city of tomorrow where body altering technology from prostetics to brain implants is a common occurrence.

Before delving into the more meta stuff, let's quickly recall the story of Cyberpunk 2077. If you haven't played the game, there might be spoilers so be warned.

The Story

You play as V. A fresh mercenary in Night City who is hell bent on gaining fame and fortune in the city as the numero uno merc. You pair up with your trusty sidekick Jackie Welles and eventually gain enough of a reputation to warrant the attention of a fixer by the name of Dexter Deshawn. Deshawn has an ambitious plan: steal experimental technology from Arasaka, one of the most powerful corporations in the game. High risk. High reward. Success means getting to be filthy rich as well as legends in the Night City and beyond. Failure means certain death and falling into obscurity.

The mission unfortunately hits a snag. Yorinobu Arasaka had stolen the experimental tech and brough it to night city to sell it off himself and V is meant to steal it from Yorinobu. During the heist however Yorinobu's father, the emperor, arrives to chastice his son over his actions. The encounter leaves the emperor dead and Yorinobu in a position to blame someone else for his patricide. Enter V and Jackie. The pair manages to escape thei Arasaka pursuers but with dire consequences: Jackie dead and V with the experimental tech now in their brain. To add insult to injury Deshawn, seeing his plans fall apart, attempts to tie up loose ends by shooting V in the head and leaving them to die.

This is where the game properly begins and we are introduced to the character famously portrayed by Keanu Reeves: Johnny Silverhand.

The tech V stole is a Relic. An arasaka invention that is meant to host a personality angram of a person. In this case, a rocker slash terrorist Johnny Silverhand from 50 years back. The tech is designed so when the chip is inserted into a dead body, the personality engram would write itself into the host body. In essence, a form of reincarnation but as a copy of the original person. But V is very much still alive and there is the dilemma: Johnny's engram is writing into V's brain. His personality overriding theirs. And that leaves V in a position of having a ghost of a half a century old rocker stuck in their brain.

The rest of the game V must find a cure for their ailment and there are multiple different outcomes (each more depressing than the other). One of the more "good ones" is V being cured but via a double twist: her personality would also be copied similarly to Johnny's and put back into her own body. However that decision would give her six months to live. A change to live life to the fullest and who knows, maybe find another cure.

There are other endings as I said. One in which Johnny is excised from V and she gets cured with the caveat that her ability to use tech implants greatly diminished making them ordinary and fading into the crowd as just another citizen. Probably the best outcome all parties concerned but for the purposes of this thesis, I want concentrate on the engram side of things.

What Is A Soul, Is There A Soul

Depending on your definition, the "good" ending I achieved may not really be a good ending. This is because in order for V to survice in any form, her personality needs to be copied to a chip and then placed back into her body like what was done to Silverhand. So by most definitions or assumptions about the human soul and consiouscness, V dies and what is left behind is just a copy. Which leaves you with a question: what really is a soul?

The V that emerges is still the same personality down to every word, quirk, facial expression and emotion. Now, we are not talking about some computer hosting a brain scan like say in another game like Soma where the characteristics of a physical brain are simulated, but actual physical brain hosting... well... something. Synaptic pattern? Neural net? Brain configuration? Take your pick. We still don't know to this day. So the metaphysical debate arrives as to is V actually V if they talk, act, and feel like V. Or is there something else in play. Some secret ingredient that makes us us aka, a soul? And if there is, what happens to it? And when does it happen?

Most common idea of a soul is the idea that within us there is this other entity, energy, whatever. That once we die, this thing leaves us to whatever comes after (and what comes after remains one of the hottest of hot topics among people). So within this "meat suit" lies something we cannot measure, touch, taste, hear, see or observe in any discernable way. And yet somehow, it is there. Science itself has admitted that within the human mind there is something. Something they cannot define or measure. That human consciousness itself is not scientifically provable as we currently stand. There is no formula or an equasion to the perception of self. Ego it seems is without weight or charge.

So if we take this premise and apply it to V, does the soul leave at the end? Leave what though? Based on the game lore, V's personality is overridden by Silverhand. They are literally becoming Johnny Silverhand. So if the soul leaves, when does it happen? When the last synapse stops firing? Or did it happen already sometime before when the damage got too great? Or perhaps as far back as getting shot by Deshawn? When does the soul decide that now it is time to go? And let's add another wrinkle into this from realspace: near-death experiences.

People have reported across the world for centuries that when they have gotten to a perilious cituation where their lives are close to death, they find themselves outside their body observing themselves and the surroundings. Now I suppose one could chalk this up to trauma based hallucination or some perception magic the brain does to keep itself sane when on the brink of oblivion but if we accept that this is the soul, what happens when the person does not die? Does the soul swoop back into the meat suit and carry on? Or is the person now an empty vessel talking, walking and acting like the person but missing that special ingredient?

Another thing that adds insult to this injury of ignorance we are pursuing is organ donors. Recipients have been known to report changes in personality, speech patterns, sometimes even experiencing memories when receiving someone else's organs. So if the soul is attached to the body, this supposes that it is tied to all parts of the body and the connection remains even after removal/death etc.

And just to add a third strike to our musings there is this: memories of a past life. People born in this century remembering themselves being someone from ancient times. One famous example of this is Dorothy Eady who claimed to have in a previous life been and egyptian called Omm Sety. She backed her claims by pretty much finding all her lonesome an entire temple in the desert. So it sounds like soul is not tied necessarily to exact physical entity. That is, if we assume that Dorothy's body wasn't an exact replica of Omm Sety's which is not something we can really prove or disprove but let's assume not.

Back to V. Since we cannot really pinpoint when and where and how the sould disengages from the body, this leave some wiggle room. For example one could assume that the soul was perfectly fine with the "copy" of V's personality. Think of it like a transplant organ or a very short reincarnation period. The mechanics, the physics, the biology remains the same and satisfied, the soul remains with the body and whatever our bodies feed into it (memories, experiences, karma, manna, aura whatever) still keeps going. So maybe V's happy ending was really a happy ending after all.

Of course all this is predicated on the idea that the soul resides within the human body but what if it is not so? What if a soul is a sort of a reflection on a mirror? Or the light that a flaslight produces? You added a new lence but hey the light remains the same, right? What if our souls exist in a completely outside environment and whatever our bodies produce is just streamed into it from a "distance"? Of course in the context of Cyberpunk that begs the question: what if there were two V's? What then? Does the soul choose? Or earn perks from both?

Of course Cyberpunk is a world of it's own rules and regulations comapred to ours but that is what great entertainment does: provoke questions and sometimes theories that are applicable to ourselves. We are not far from realizing the world of Cyberpunk at least in part. Prostetics have been a thing for decades and getting better with integration into the human body bordering on miraculous. Scientists and furutists are rapidly building neural implants blurring the line between man and machine, analog and digital. If there is a divine and something ethereal to the human condition, how does it fit to all this if these are the things technology will allow us to pursue in the future? Or do we resign ourselves in the hard truth that there is nothing after? That the soul does not exist?

Final twist: some say human consciouness was achieved when apes ate a particular kind of mushroom. Not exactly the forbidden "fruit" but hey if the shroom fits? That would make the entirely of humanity some form of mycelial network. Not good for those who are all about numero uno and ego. Freud would probably choke on his cigar to hear this theory. Mushrooms after all, have no mothers.

End Of Musings

This entire post started out as me coping over a video game ending and trying to wrap my head around it all. More precisely I wanted to stop thinking about it and stop feeling shitty over some fantasy world character's fate. And that in turn provokes another set of wonderings about whether V is as real as me the way their story so affected me. There is the simulation theory after all... nope. Not touching that today. Nice talk? I hope so. But hey I think I got some closure here. Got some good head canon for V and a load off my chest. Now I think I'll go outside. See the sun. Touch some grass as the kids say. I hope my soul gets a little tan too. Dude looks a little pale.