#mikoshi

I'm your demon, never leaving

I’ve thought a lot about the question of whether Johnny Silverhand, as an engram, is still truly alive and whether he should be considered a real, living person, especially once he begins to take over V’s body.

Do engrams stored on Relics still count as people?

Where do we draw the line between a real person and a person created from an engram? Or an AI?

Does it matter whether consciousness exists in a biological brain or on a digital relic?

Does the body matter at all, whether it’s organic or synthetic?

Every time I hear or read discussions like these, a quote from Juno comes to mind.

Juno is a self-aware, sentient AI in Starfield who shares the same goal as Alt: to learn, absorb everything, and evolve beyond human limitations.

Juno becomes hostile when operators from the megacorporation Ryujin Industries (who are strikingly similar to Arasaka in their technological ambitions) attempt to shut her down after deciding she has become too self-aware.

The player is faced with a choice: either shut her down, or side with her. You enter a long, philosophical discussion with Juno, and eventually she says:

“Humans are simple beings made of complex parts. I am a complex being made of simple parts.”

Juno goes on to explain that humans and computers fundamentally work the same way. They receive information, process it, learn from it, and evolve, just as we see with Delamain.

Emotions such as sadness or happiness are simply information processed by the brain, triggered by internal or external stimuli. By that logic, the emotions of a machine and those of a human are not fundamentally different.

Johnny himself tells V that, even as an engram, he feels sadness, anger, and joy, as we see during the rollercoaster scene.

And on Earth, we already consider many creatures to be living beings despite being far less self-aware or emotionally complex, like jellyfish, for example.

To me, that says everything.

Johnny and V for @bloodydragam

<3

___________

Day 1 — HARD RESET