your branch and origin/main have diverged

Corpo V: Immediately loses access to Arasaka feeds, bank account, housing, becomes physically ill -> implied to be because of stress, stims, and hormonal implants, though never fully explained

Goro Takemura: We never see the exact moment Goro is fired, but we may assume he loses access/functionality immediately. Even wounded, he is able to fight off and kill pursuers.

Anders Hellman: Leaves Arasaka for Kang Tao of his own will and appears in good health and with cyberware that works well enough for him to analyze V and the Relic. Was additionally able to smuggle out proprietary info.

Hasan Demir: Walked out of his employer with a prototype actually installed in his head. Appears in fine health other than physical injuries from other sources. Unclear how much other cyberware he has and what the state of its operation is.

What does that tell us? People that corporations would have a good reason to kill to prevent from causing trouble or spreading secrets do not appear to have any cyberware which would allow their corporations to instantly kill them. ☝ But! Those who are kicked out and thus have no prior warning still seem to suffer some interesting consequences. And there's no reason we can't think about kill switches in general. Why wouldn't a fatal kill switch be available in these situations? Why are they disabled but not dead?

Threat Modeling

Let's set aside the Doylist explanation: if these characters were dead there wouldn't be much a story. While true, it's not very helpful to exploring in-universe reasons that might bring up more interesting questions about the inherent risks to implanting cyberware and how this effects individuals, organizations, and the choices they make.

The method I like to use for this is a sort of informal threat model. What's a threat model? It's when you analyze anything from a whole system down to a specific piece of functionality, and ask: what could go wrong? If you google this you'll find a lot of scary, verbose ways to accomplish this, but we're not being paid to certify a product or anything so we're just going to pants it. Three things we're going to cover:

What is a kill switch? What is a fatal kill switch?

How would it work?

What could go wrong?

What is a kill switch?

Generally speaking, the kill switch is what you throw when you want a thing to STOP. It is not a gentle shutdown. In this context, when I think of a kill switch I think of something a corporation can press to disable an employee who has gone rogue, is in danger of revealing company secrets, is endangering someone important, etc.

A fatal kill switch would ostensibly kill the person, rather than just disable them to make for easier pickup. Bob from accounting is about to sell your financial secrets to Militech? Explode Bob's heart.

How would it work?

Fear not! We do not need to know all of the technical details of how cyberware or technology works. Please behold my professional mockup of how a hypothetical corporate employee might use a kill switch on another hypothetical corporate employee:

Okay, okay, we probably need just a little more than that. Aside from this extremely complicated dashboard on the corporation's side, we would have to also intuit that the target of the kill switch must have cyberware AND that the cyberware must be able to receive some kind of signal from the corporation.

You might have picked up on the fact that we've already identified a possible problem: we can't explode Bob's heart if he's in an underground bunker with no cell signal. Of course this, like anything, is not necessarily a show stopper. Maybe Bob is claustrophobic and would never go underground. Maybe Militech has found a way to beam wifi through three feet of concrete. Maybe your story gets its tension from Bob hiding out until he can find a heart surgeon that does house calls.

One last piece: a kill switch designed to disable or slow down an employee might simply shut off cyberware or broadcast its location. Fatal kill switches must be able to kill. We could hypothesize how this works: if the cyberware blows up, turns itself off, poisons the user, drives them into a homicidal rage, etc. I leave this as an exercise to the author, as it's not really important to this discussion.

What could go wrong?

Always my favorite section. I'm going to break this up loosely by categories which you could use for future threat models but really you can do anything you like here. Examples here are broad but non-exhaustive. There are almost certainly some I've missed!

It doesn't work:

There's no clear signal between the switch and the cyberware and the switch fails

The cyberware receives the signal but ignores it or responds incorrectly (hardware failure or tampering could apply here)

The operator refuses to send the signal or pretends to but doesn't (human element)

Scenarios where the switch should trigger automatically fail

Accidental trigger:

An update to the corporation's software triggers the switch on all employees everywhere

Updates to an employee's cyberware triggers the switch

Damage to the cyberware triggers the switch

Misuse or Malicious Behavior:

A netrunner gets into a corporation network and finds the kill switch dashboard and uses it on one or more employees

An operator triggers the switch on someone they dislike or have been paid by outside parties to target

Netrunners find a way to send the signal directly to cyberware without access to the dashboard

An employee triggers their own switch to avoid being retrieved and interrogated

It's important to note here again that the implementation details themselves don't matter that much when doing this kind of modeling. We're also not interested in whether kill switches are good or bad. All technology has its tradeoffs, after all, and now we have a much clearer idea of why or why not a corporation may use kill switches.

So what's the takeway? That's up to you! Do you think all corporations use kill switches? What kind?

For my purposes, I arrived at this conclusion: Arasaka does use kill switches, but they are intended to disable and not to outright kill. The reason they do this is because the risk of fatal kill switches outweighs the benefits. The 0.01% possibility that a netrunner kills employs is not acceptable, when a disabling kill switch can still remove access & ability, while allowing for retrieval (and in cases of accidental/malicious use, recovery). We see this play out when Goro survives the kill switch, which is obviously bad, but imagine a hacker had managed to trigger it instead, and he still had to protect Saburo? In many other cases, other tools can be used to keep employees in line (as with V, loss of money, home, and power) without the same kind of risks.

One thing I have left out from this threat model is the discussion of risk mitigations or acceptance. What does that mean? It means that once you know what can go wrong you can think of safeguards to solve or reduce a risk. In my example above, Arasaka mitigates the risk of accidental or malicious trigger by choosing only to disable an employee rather than kill them outright. Not every risk can be mitigated, and very few can ever be fully avoided. Some, like the loss of a signal between switch & cyberware, simply have to be accepted!

Further Contemplation

This post is incredibly long already and if you've made it this far, I hope you've been enjoying yourself. This is one of my favorite things to do with existing worlds and I hope it's useful, or at least that this write up was entertaining.

By now you should also have picked up on the fact that I like asking questions. :3 This is the technique that allows me to figure out the most interesting questions to ask myself when I'm writing and developing, which derive naturally from the very broad and simple path we've followed so far. Such as:

What kind of precautions did Anders and Hasan take before leaving their employers?

Corpo V is a white collar worker and Goro is Saburo's personal bodyguard. Are there other Arasaka employees which might be considered more disposable?

Do corporations lie about whether they can and do kill employees this way? Even if they don't, is it considered a useful tool to keep people inline?

How might the risk appetite of corporations changed regarding kill switches over time? Did they used to be used more often? Was there a point where netrunners did hack in and mass trigger this type of switch? Are there rumors or evidence of something like that happening?

How does all of this change how employees might act or think about their employer? Their own autonomy? Whether they agree to certain cyberware upgrades or are forced into them?

“I thought the same,” he said. “Why are you here so late?”

It was true that he was also here at a strange hour, but he had implants which allowed him to operate on a much shorter sleep schedule than the average person. V had no such implants, and in fact had been advised to rest as part of her continuing recovery. He also knew that reminding her of this was one of the quickest ways to start an argument.

“Prefer having the place to myself,” she said, her clipped tone. It was not an admonishment but a distracted, almost shy admission. The corner of her mouth lifted in a crooked smile. “Away from prying eyes.”

Her attempt at deflection did not distract from her discomfort. He should have guessed without asking why she might be swimming at a strange hour in an empty pool– her flat chest marked her as aberrant in Arasaka’s eyes. She had resisted “correction” during her reinstatement, and been granted a very begrudging exception, solely on the basis of her partial integration with Silverhand– a condescension that did not shield her from the judgments of her peers or her superiors. It was not a matter she enjoyed discussing.

“Am I prying?” he asked, cautiously.

She cupped her hand in the water and he had to sidestep to avoid a spurt of water aimed at his shins. Her expression had relaxed into mischief, bright gray eyes shining despite the dark circles underneath. “Not if you join me.”

His heart flipped in his chest. They were playing a dangerous game, one that risked their positions and in V’s case, her conditionally granted freedom. Scandal could easily turn Hanako’s favor. But there were no cameras here, no supervision, no prying eyes. Not on this floor. Not here.

“I do not swim,” he said, shaking his head. He had once, before he had had such extensive prosthetics. He still possessed the ability, but his lack of buoyancy made the exercise tedious and so he preferred to stay on solid ground. “And I am not properly dressed.”

V scoffed, hauling herself out of the water and padding over, looming over him as she dripped water onto the slippery floor and his feet. She had filled out since her dance with death, added some padding to stomach and the curve of her hips that made his hands itch with the longing to touch. But there was a weariness to her that still lingered. He wished he could feed her properly, add some protective bulk to her tall frame and soften the hungry lines of her face.

Regardless of her troubles, she was still handsome. She set her shoulders back under his gaze, bare chested and skittishly proud. He found himself sinking into a strange mix of lust and jealousy at the youthful skin of someone still in her thirties. She had scars, but they were minor– a shiny stab wound under her left collarbone, a small puncture on her neck no bigger than a fingertip, a faded bullet wound in her thigh, and a line along the right side of her rib cage so expertly tended it was nearly invisible save for the fact he knew it was there. The seam where her left forearm turned from pale skin to brilliant red chrome was smooth and flawless.

“You could always take those clothes off,” she said, in a low voice.

He gently grabbed her jaw, watching her pupils dilate almost imperceptibly. “It is very late for you to have such energy.”

She pressed her left hand against the small of his back, cool wet fingers leaving behind a perfect imprint as she urged him a little closer. Her eyes danced but her expression was guileless. “Can’t sleep unless I burn it off.”

Goro opened his mouth to reply, but a loud chiming sound made them flinch and startle apart. It quickly became clear it was only the clock on the wall announcing the hour, for the benefit of any gym member who’d turned off their notifications and lost track of time. V threw her head back and laughed, the loud, brassy sound echoing through the room so he could hardly resist joining in. Then she wrapped her arm around his shoulders, holding him close as she dragged him backwards into the pool.

The impact was a shock, cold water engulfing him from head to toe. Tangled together, they sank like a stone until his shoulders settled on the bottom of the pool. He opened his eyes to find V looking down at him with a grin on her face before she released him and kicked upwards for air.

He righted himself into a crouch and then launched himself upward, breaking the surface easily and anchoring himself with one hand on the edge of the pool. V’s laughter greeted him, and a generous splash of water in her face only increased her mirth. He pulled himself out of the pool, sending a small wave out that washed back around his hands as he sat down on the edge, water pouring out of his clothing and weighing down his hair.

He pulled his shirt off to wring it out, as V dove again, retrieving his sandals from the bottom and setting them down by his side. She put one hand on his knee to hold on to as she lazily tread water, letting it reach her chin as she studied him. He wasn’t self-conscious about his body– it had served him well, and he’d made the decision to keep the layer of organic skin around his torso as an emblem of that appreciation. But he was old and covered in thick, ugly scars, and it still baffled him to see her naked interest.

“I should have guessed…” he grumbled, as he finished wringing most of the water from his shirt and turned to toss it onto the nearest chair. “…that I would become drawn in by your schemes.”

“Schemes?” V repeated, in fake outrage, before her expression suddenly became sly. She grabbed his other knee and hauled herself out of the water until they were face to face, her elbows locked to hold her in place. He dug his heels against the wall of the pool to maintain balance as she rested her weight on his legs. “What if I make it up to you?”

He pretended to consider the offer, enjoying the way her grip tightened on his leg as she waited for him to answer. Patience had never been her strong suit. “What do you propose?”

In response, she leaned in and kissed him. Her lips tasted like chlorine, soft and warm from her exertion. That warmth washed through him, making him fantasize about hauling her closer and– V pulled back gently, exhaling in quiet amusement at his expression.

He hummed. “Is that your proposal?”

“To start,” she said, and he suppressed a shudder. When he ran his thumb over her cheek, she closed her eyes and tilted her head back, exposing her throat.

“You tease me,” he grumbled. She grinned, and in a flash of irritated inspiration he picked her up under the shoulders and tossed her easily back into the water.