Engram

A digital neural engram (also known as digital construct, Soulkilled Pseudo Intellect (SPI) or ghost) is the digitalized consciousness of a human being which has been transformed into coding form. They are created by using the program called Soulkiller, and many believe are the way to achieve immortality.Transmission
==Overview==
Digital engrams were originally produced by Alt Cunningham's project called Soulkiller. It copied the neural engrams of people but with the price of killing the subject, though she never used it on anyone. After obtaining the program in 2013, Arasaka modified it and improved it to be more effective and regulate its lethality.Never Fade Away (adventure) They were able to use Soulkiller without killing the target, though it wouldn't copy the whole person's brain, as doing so inevitably led to it being fatal. It is possible to use Soulkiller on a deceased person, though the engram will be more of an echo of the target's memories than a true personality.
Engrams are possible to be altered slightly after the copy of the original person is made, however these were reserved for the interrogation process at Arasaka. Altering engrams, even if slightly, was not allowed to the public.
It is said by some individuals that a someone's engram is not their true personality, as it lacks the "soul" of that person. It is only a shell of their own personality, and while it is quite similar to the original person, perhaps even enough to fool their close relatives, it is not exactly the same.
==History==
The origins of Soulkiller began as a data matrix module to contain artificial personalities, while Alt worked for an organization called ITS. Not long after creating it, she had discovered it could hold both living and artificial engrams. However, ITS had taken control of the system to weaponize it and rechristened it as Soulkiller. 
Not long after creating Soulkiller, Arasaka Corporation heard about the program and kidnapped Alt in order to steal it and use it for their own purposes. Alt was the first person to ever be hit with Soulkiller, uploading her mind and leaving her deceased unconscious body in the physical world while her digitized form escaped to the Net. Since 2013, Arasaka studied and improved Soulkiller, targeting more people with it; with a special interest in netrunners, corporate enemies and rivals. These digital engrams were stored inside the Arasaka subnets, which risked the effects of becoming rogue AIs.
In the decades since the Fourth Corporate War, many of these digital "ghosts" were able to find each other and gather in the Net, creating sanctuaries around deserted mainframes and city systems abandoned by their citizens and corporations. These ghosts usually wanted a safe place to live in peace. By 2045, it is rumored that Alt Cunningham has created a number of "ghost towns" in hidden areas of the Old Net.
Over time, in order to secure the engrams and control them, Arasaka created Mikoshi, an area of the Net in where they stored all the digital copies of Soulkiller's victims. The corporation's plan was to extract the personalities of celebrities, politicians and other important individuals through their "Secure Your Soul" program and create engrams of them to use for their own gains. By 2077, Arakasa's flagship project of Secure Your Soul was near completion, allowing wealthy clients to sign into it and keep their original minds persevered in Mikoshi by making a copy of their neural engrams.
Thanks to the work of Anders Hellman, leading bioengineer within Arasaka, the corporation managed to create a chip they called the Relic, which would store the engram of an individual. Its purpose was to allow people to communicate with the deceased via the chip, allowing for its users to see and interact with the digital copies of their loved ones. A secretive part of the project was Saburo Arasaka's personal request; a chip that, after inserting into a dead body, would restore its brain tissues and replace the original neural engram with a digital one. Thus, the copied engram would "resurrect" in a new body.Secure Your SoulLife During Wartime
==Known engrams==
===Cyberpunk RED===
*Aisha "Ai" Tang
===Cyberpunk 2077===
*Alt Cunningham
*Jackie Welles (dependent)
*Johnny Silverhand
*V (dependent)
*Saburo Arasaka
==Notes==
*Adam Smasher considered turning David Martinez into a construct but was dissuaded when Martinez showed no interest.My Moon My Man
==References==
Category:Programs
Category:Cyberpunk RED Technology
Category:Cyberpunk 2077 Technology
Category:Arasaka technology
ru:Энграмма