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Life without memory

A topic by Coruscare created Oct 05, 2021 Views: 333 Replies: 6
Viewing posts 1 to 4
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Memory in the game is a scarce resource, but in the real world what it allows is kind of taken for granted. So I'd like to ask: what's the experience of a user like if they have little, or even no, access to external memory? Do they experience time at all? Is it like waking up in the same day every day, not knowing a thing about the last day? Maybe like one of the people in Groundhog Day that don't experience the loops? Do they have a name? Or a favourite anything? How much of World can they process with only their built-in RAM?

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

There is a hint of this theme in the top-level server description page for Sirius (PDF page 86 of the HW_Book in spread format). Users who have chosen to opt out of the “memory game” are called Innocents and there are at least enough of them to be statistically-significant.  They aren’t currently elaborated on much, but you’re already on the right track with these questions: one can infer that existence without long-term memory makes them live a sort of Groundhog Day-like existence.

Every user has at least enough embedded processing and temporary recall ability (call it RAM if you like) to consciously observe their surroundings and follow through on short-term decisions and goals. I’m sure many, if not most, Innocents have at least a couple of fond recollections they haven’t gotten rid of or overwritten, they just aren’t actively pursuing more or maintaining a coherent self-aware timeline outside of the immediate present. For some users this is enough, although for obvious reasons they might have trouble explaining their justification if you asked how they arrived that decision for themselves!  Obviously, ownership of Memory storage allows for the development of a more complicated and self-aware long-term identity, and the majority of users described in the book are looking to acquire memories or at least hold onto the ones that they have and maintain a continuity of self-aware existence.

Anyway, the concept of the Innocents is not yet fully developed, at least in part because their motivations don’t obviously make for either great PCs or easily- understood antagonists, but I’m interested to hear how you choose to integrate them into your personal take on the setting. They will get more fully-fleshed out at some point.

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I see, so they can still have some form of identity with their RAM, but without external storage that's basically all they can have?

Now that I think about it, if someone got stripped of all the mem they've been carrying and then got derezzed, then... oh my god that's a vicious punishment to inflict.

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See: The Revisionists' Mindpurge ability.

I imagine it takes some special permissions or forbidden code to strip someone of their allocated memory. You can delete or destructively copy what's in stored in that memory (whether it's equipment or past experiences), but they'll still have the blank space to fill in most of the time. Still, I imagine it'd be quite a shock for a Revisionist crew's biggest rival to discover one of their own is suddenly an Innocent.

For my particular take, Users have some unspecified amount of built-in memory for "core memories" like Inside Out, with the rest accessed via common "Recall terminals." Accessing a recall terminal for stress relief spends a MEM slot on your sheet, representing keeping an additional memory to mull over. Core memories are more vulnerable from deresolution, hence Drift, and reiteration usually means constructing a new self from their archived memories. User XP represents additional built-in memory to work with, and thus function dots, special abilities, or playbook equipment. Losing one's UID also means losing permission to access their Recall archive.

Now imagining someone ending up as an Innocent because they kept reallocating their built-in memory from being spent on core memories so that they could carry more useful equipment.

One idea I've come up with is an Iterative Will, essentially for a User to leave an agenda to shape their next iteration's thoughts. For Innocent, it's called a "Mantra" as they tend to say it a lot when questioned. Usually, an Innocent's Mantra is short, with something along the lines of "I just wanna have fun," though some pseudo-crews of Innocent have longer, shared mantras that end up resembling sub-cultures. From this idea, I came up with a faction of mostly Innocent called the Revelers whose Mantra includes an elaborate initiation ritual when they manage to convince a User to become an Innocent and join their ranks. I'll need to come up with a sinister agenda for its non-Innocent members to nudge the collective toward.

Scary idea: Innocent whose idea of "fun" is a bit of the ultraviolence with their droogs, made scarier by the general consensus that Innocent aren't really considered responsible for their own actions, tying the hands of legal authorities. They also have little to fear from deresolution, so intimidation won't stop them.

Developer(+1)

In the new update, there is a Syndicate faction added ["the Directory"] which expands a little bit on some of these concepts! You can also find a little discussion of this in the Black Hats starting scenario, which uses that faction as a big part of the scenario.  Thank you both for raising this question, it helped me think through the implications of the setting a bit.



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They may not make good antagonists by themselves, but I've got a couple ideas from this, nonetheless.

Cultish hive mind that recruits Innocents and tinkers with their minds. They'd make good sleeper agents because they won't remember why they carried out their tasks, only that the impulse struck them.

Every User in my setting has a UID, and with certain forbidden Authority functions, a User can be stripped of their ID, functionally becoming a Process. Naturally, Innocents would make for good targets, and there are Daemons and Process who crave the privilege of User immortality.

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So, question that's come to my mind is how World's society reacts to Innocents. They'd be subject to exploitation, but without memory, they wouldn't have much of anything worth taking, and still being Users, they're still entitled to the privileges, including protections. I'm thinking Innocent could be marked in some way so that people can accommodate them, but that would also mark them as easy targets if someone can exploit them. I can imagine someone becoming an Innocent by a Daemon's bargain where they trade their memory for (quickly spent) Coin.

Of course, there's also the emotional reaction from other users, which would probably range from annoyance to contempt, possibly tinged with a bit of envy for their simple, constant wonder.