Emergency Self-Construct

When Alt Cunningham first created the Soulkiller program, she envisioned it as a way of electronically pre-serving the intellects of dying people. That's the basic idea of this program set-up. It consists of an underground copy of Soulkiller, a special high capability interface (won't work with any other interface than plugs), and a lot of memory … a LOT of memory.

The Soulkiller program must be found among the programming community. It's always copied, which makes it dangerous. Alt used some fairly unconventional coding to make it possible, and she put plenty of copy-protection into it to make sure it wouldn't become common (or stolen).

The interface is a special computer with an expensive memory buffer. IVs hand-made, and needs a minimum of 10,000eb in parts, plus an additional 20,000eb for the memory buffer. It's big—the size of a mini-frame—and needs a land-line hook-up, particularly if you're going to upload to the Net. Cellular is a no-can-do proposition; there's too much drop-out for that.

Finally, the set-up needs great amounts of memory to store the user's neural patterns. A minimum of 500 MU is needed to store the basic personality, with no real memories or skills. Each skill point to be transferred over takes up 50 MU; every 100 MU devoted to the user's memories comprises 1% of a person's life memories, starting from a base of 5%. (Alt had a lot of MU available!) These MU can be from a single system (albeit a big one) or can be scattered through the Net (storing one's knowledge throughout the Net is a bit like amnesia; you're without the specific knowledge until you access it). And there's no guarantee of how many empty MU you'll be able to find in the Net at any given time! (Ref's call.)

The Emergency Self-Construct set-up is supposed to save 'runners from being killed by anti-personnel attacks. If a 'runner with this outfit suffers damage to the Mortal stage, the program kicks in and drains his intellect and memories into an electronic entity. This is a one-way trip. It takes 2D6 turns to do this, but the E S-C program does cancel out Brainwipes, Zombies, and Liche programs as it's working.

This process is far from safe. The program usually has some glitches in it, due to the difficulty of breaking the copy-protection. Roll 1D10+4 (the program's Strength) when activated. If the total is less than the 'runner's INT, the 'runner's new INT will go down to the total. If the total is less than 10, the user will lose 10% of his/her memories and skills for every point less than 10 on the die roll. If a 1 is rolled, the program crashed, draining 1D6 points of INT from the user (just like Brainwipe)!

The new electronic entity has an INT equal to that of the former user (unless something nasty happens; see above); same for COOL. Treat the process as a 6D6 Humanity Cost operation and reduce EMP accordingly. REF is always 5 for controlling remotes. Skills may be saved as per the MI-I available; the new entity gets to choose which skills it saves, and no skill may be more than the total the user had before. Add +5 to Interface skill (maximum +10).

Source

 * Rache Bartmoss Brainware Blowout, pg.92-93