This visual combines girl-1970399.png by JL G from Pixabay with computer-2930704, image by ItNeverEnds from Pixabay.

Back in the mid-90s, when I was preparing the campaign background for my rebooted superhero campaign, I had to think about cyberware – not the relatively reliable and semi-routine stuff that you would find in a Cyberpunk campaign, but the stuff that you would have before all the bugs were worked out.

I wasn’t interested in the cyberware itself, but on what it would do to people when the implantation process went wrong, and the ways that it could go wrong.

Now, as it happens, very few of the adventures that I’ve run in the 20-odd years since the campaign reboot started have actually involved cyberware, and the few that have done so have involved far more advanced cyberware than I had in mind when doing this background material, because the players had chosen to take the campaign somewhere that I had never intended it to go (to be honest, though, I now have trouble seeing any other way that it could go, the new location has become so central to the ongoing mythos of the campaign)!

But, in the months before Covid Lockdowns began to interrupt, a sub-campaign started containing some of the essential plot threads of the campaign that occur back in the originally-intended setting. And that means that the prep-work done almost a quarter if a century is suddenly becoming relevant again.

So I got out my campaign background, and took a look at the material I had prepared. Now, of course, things have advanced tremendously since this stuff was written. We now know more about the problems involved with artificial implants, we’ve solved some of them and are getting closer to reaching this point in real life. The original ideas, I have found, stand up fairly well; but there’s room for improvement and refinement.

Since I’m never afraid to do my campaign development in full view of Campaign Mastery readers (especially if I can get an article out of it!), that’s what’s on the menu for today. The material offered within this article can be used with almost any Sci-Fi or superhero campaign.

The article is going to be divided into three or maybe four parts. The first is this introduction. After that, in section two, I have a few slang terms in use amongst the cybered-up community and those who interact with them. Section three is mostly a recap of the cyberware faults from my original campaign background, tweaked and updated just a little. Finally, if there’s room, I have a few thoughts regarding the legal impact of cyberware implants.

Let’s go…

Cyberware Terminology

Most of the following terminology is street slang, but – like “Google” or “Xerox” – is slowly becoming part of the official language of the Cyberware industry and those that become involved in it.

• C-Grade – describes Commercial-Grade cyberware. Generally reliable, generally secure, generally NOT cutting-edge. Freakz with exclusively C-Grade enhancements are sometimes described as “Mallows” (short for Marshmallows).
• Chipped – a Freak with exclusively brain-enhancement chips.
• Chipnoia – a Meatchop who is scared of cybernetic enhancement, usually unreasonably in the eyes of a Freak.
• Cybertank – a vehicle operated by a living brain connected to cybernetic controls.
• Dataviz – virtual data displays relayed directly to the brain, including any form of sensory enhancement.
• Edgy – a Freak with enhanced or pre-programmed reflexes.
• Freak, Freakz, Freaked – someone who is cyber-enhanced, several such someones, and the act of getting cyber-enhancments installed. The full term is CyberFreak, but common usage has abbreviated it.
• Greased – Cyber-enhancements are expensive, and the better they are, the more expensive they are. Someone who can either afford to Freak due to personal wealth, or who has obtained a contract (usually requiring use of the new implants, potentially illegal) that will pay for the surgery.
• InLine – The cybernetic equivalent of online. Because it literally connects the brain directly to the internet, it is considered a more direct and intimate connection than traditional connection methods. Note that most of the hardware required remains external to the human at this time.
• Jacked – Having the implanted connections required to go InLine. The process of going InLine is sometimes called Jacking.
• Lone Wolf, Wolf-pack – Most Freakz congregate into gangs with strict hierarchies, rules, and command structures. Most such gangs have mutual respect and relations with each other. When an individual violates the gang strictures sufficiently to be expelled, he is described as a Lone Wolf. When a gang violates its arrangements with another gang, they are referred to as a Wolf-pack. Both terms indicate that the named is not to be trusted lightly. See also Samurai.
• Meat – Biological parts that are replaced or augmented with cybernetic mechanisms.
• Meatchop – An uncybered human.
• M-Grade – Military-grade cybernetics. Less reliable, more powerful, and frequently incorporating classified technology and/or weapons.
• Painted – Fitted with subdermal LEDs that provide camouflage or other cosmetic or visual styling.
• Parity Hole – A malfunction in cyberware is sometimes described as ‘Going Down a Parity Hole’.
• Protochipper – someone who uses prototype cyberware. Unreliable, dangerous, but very cutting edge. Often, Protochippers are addicted to upgrading to the latest tech.
• Racker – Someone who develops original cybertech and installs it in their own bodies.
• Samurai – Some Freakz who go outside the gang structure for personal reasons but who can still be trusted and/or respected by the gang are referred to as Samurai.
• Shadow – Freak with stealth enhancements.
• Slicer – A surgeon or surgical assistant who installs cyberware (technically, someone who does so illegally, but street slang usually doesn’t differentiate between legal and illegal enhancements).
• Streetware – the black market in (illegal / stolen) cyberware.
• X-Grade- Experimental Cyberware. Extremely unreliable and dangerous.

When Cyberware Goes Bad

The advent of cyberware has introduced new diseases and ailments that only afflict those who have been enhanced. In some cases, they are the result of poor designs or poor installations, in others they are normal diseases with new traits because of the enhancement of the sufferer.

Many of these terms have also emerged from street language, and hence they have an informality that is unusual in describing medical conditions.

{Some of these are old, the rest are new].

• ChipRage Syndrome – This is believed to result from a malfunction of the neural implants used to control cyberware or from substandard implants or even botched implantation. These failures trigger a unceasing fight-or-flight response that spikes adrenalin production while flooding the brain with endorphins in a process very similar to a massive dose of PCP. The result is a berserker rage that usually ends in the death of both the sufferer and of several bystanders.
• Cyber Necrosis – Cyber Necrosis is a form of decay of organic tissue that has not been replaced with artificial components. Believed to be related to an excessive and uncontrolled immune reaction which causes the adjacent tissues to become inflamed and then rot in a manner similar to gangrene. Immunosupressants can halt the process but not reverse the damage; the alternative is further organ replacement. In acute cases, it affects the brain, causing aphasia and other brain damage which often proves lethal.
• Digitiphobia – This illness is a form of Paranoia which initially presents as one or more uncontrolled phobias not previously manifest within the victim’s personality. It is thought to be caused by faulty signaling within neural implants which activate the incorrect synaptic patterns, which in turn cause the brain to route its signals incorrectly, confusing conscious and subconscious thoughts. In acute cases, this condition can coincide with ChipRage Syndrome.
• Fantasyland – this is the result of rogue signals being received by the brain by way of cyberware. Since the brain can’t distinguish real from false, it begins to construct an alternate perception of reality that accommodates the false sensory feedback. The victim therefore becomes delusional. Most victims are fully capable of functioning in the wider community, though they may exhibit unusual reactions to certain trigger experiences. The sensory channels affected are a critical differentiator; minimal impact to the community results from the senses of taste, smell, touch, temperature, balance, time, etc; somewhat greater impact is experienced with auditory delusions; and the greatest impact stems from visual stimuli.
• Jackslash – Jackslash results from the overloading of nerve and synaptic pathways which damage the overloaded cells over time, reducing the effectiveness of the entire nervous system. The disease resembles a degenerative nervous disorder such as a malignant brain tumor in symptomology, including potential personality changes. A frequent side effect is the over-stimulation of one or more neurological pleasure centers, which transits to excruciating and unending pain when the synapse degeneration becomes pronounced, by which time the Freak is addicted. The name derives from the lurid description offered by the first reported case, who stated “it feels like Jack the F—– Ripper was slashing my nerves length-ways”. It should be noted that this disease is a non-fatal overdose of the pleasure centers involved; even when patients are given near-fatal doses of painkillers, they require ever-increasing levels of stimulation of the degenerating structures or they will suffer acute withdrawal symptoms which can include depression and suicidal ideation but may also resemble ChipRage syndrome.
• Snap Jackslash – An acute form of Jackslash which can progress from asymptomatic to severe pain in less than 24 hours.
• Identity Transection – Because the intensity of data transfer direct to the brain can be experienced far more sharply and strongly than ‘real’ stimulus, some people come to think of themselves as cybernetic organisms with some organic dependencies. This particular psychosis is known as Identity Transection. Little is yet known of the condition and there is no standardized treatment.
• Reality Corruption – This is the result of corruption of the data stream being fed to the brain to augment a particular sensory channel. Opinion is divided as to whether this should be considered a specific form of Fantasyland or is a condition in its own right. The case for the former is fairly self-evident; the principle case for the latter position rests on the psychological impact that attends a case, to wit: since the victim has enhanced perceptions within the sense affected, they are more likely to treat the corrupt information as accurate, and psychotic breaks in which the individual comes to believe that their cyberware is permitting them to see past or through a deception imposed on the rest of the world, are frequent. This in turn fuels paranoia and conspiracy delusions, which causes aberrant decision-making. Another point of contention is the question of inevitability – are all sufferers of Reality Corruption somewhere on an inevitable progression, or can the disease arrest at particular stages even without professional intervention due to the absence of other conditions such as paranoic tendencies?
• Remote Confusion – Dependence on GPS systems for navigational orientation can enhance an individual’s mobility, particularly if enhanced with low-intensity altitude/depth instrumentation to provide a 3-dimensional awareness of their environment. However, there are sometimes glitches in such systems as any user of early onboard-navigation systems can attest. Such navigational corruption in a cybered individual is known as Remote Confusion. Since such sensory inputs usually replace more conventional senses, making the victim dependent on the unreliable information, this can have profound effects on behavior, and can trigger other psychoses and neuroses. One recorded case of Remote Confusion thought that she was trapped in a bank vault, triggering an underlying claustrophobia that caused her to destroy the gas station that was present at her actual location.
• Rogue Hackware – It has to be assumed that any hardware which connects to the outside world (i.e. is not ‘air-gapped’) is now or will become hackable. There have already been demonstrated cases of insulin pumps and pacemakers being hackable. When a remote operator seizes control of a Freak’s implants, those implants are described as Rogue Hackware.
• Synapse Reversion – This is a form of phantom limb syndrome in which an organ that has been replaced or enhanced fails to respond to instruction because the ‘phantom limb’ does so in its stead. It is a physical manifestation of a dissociative state in which the identity of the victim becomes confused, leading them to think of the cybernetic implants as a separate being occupying the same physical form as the personality. Such secondary identities are often ‘free’ to act on behavioral impulses that the primary personality would not countenance and would suppress. This can cause a mailman to become a terrorist, transform a meek schoolteacher into a rapist, and so on, and as such is considered an extremely serious mental illness.
• The Twitch – When individuals with some underlying mental illness (including other forms of cybernetic dysfunction) employ a cybernetic connection to control machinery remotely, the mental illness can manifest in mishandling of the machinery or the misbehavior of such machinery. Such ‘mishandling’ may be nothing more than a slight recurring twitch, it may cause the machinery to reach for objects an inch or two to the left of where the operator thinks they are, or they may replicate full-blown spasming. Quite often, this condition is only triggered when specific actions or operations are initiated.
• Trigger – This occurs when individuals have supplemented their knowledge with chip-based information resources such as encyclopedias, mathematics co-processors, etc, when the data indices pointing to specific records contain errors. Sufferers are unable to separate the incorrect data from reality and therefore act on bad data whenever that particular subject is ‘triggered’. For example, all British Politicians may be identified as Maggie Thatcher, associated with Thatcher’s policies, and cause the victim to respond to encounters with such according to the victim’s attitudes toward Thatcherism.

This list of conditions only scratches the surface. It goes too far to suggest that every implanted individual suffers from some form of psychological or physical impairment, but the number of such individuals without some accompanying dysfunction are a very small minority.

There is a growing perception in some parts of the wider community that it will be necessary for the broader population to be enhanced in some fashion in order for them to be competitive in the social and economic arenas. The medical reality is the primary counter to that argument, but proponents point out that as design and construction of cyberware improves, such medical conditions will become increasingly rare and less of an inhibiting factor; they may delay ‘the inevitable’ but not prevent it.

Others react with horror to the notion of removing perfectly functional organs and limbs, or the implanting of unnecessary technological enhancements within the body, and the stage is set for some level of confrontation as this becomes a more acute social divide.

This question is complicated by the rise of cyber-religious movements, who consider the exhilaration of being able to surpass the purely human to be a religious experience. Some feel that the replacement of frail organic components brings them closer to God and blame all human failings on the organic elements of their bodies, for example. Other religious movements suggest that God is an emergent property of interfaced neural networks. Neither view is especially mainstream, but there are passionate adherents of both, and each has its own radical fringes. Some of the cybergangs espouse such beliefs and use them as a point of collective identity, for example the 49th Street Church Of The Elevated Chip-Set in Los Angeles.

Cyberware and the Law

Issues of diminished responsibility already create contention in many court cases across the world. When cybernetic implants reach the point of potentially impacting on the personality of the individual, such complications will only become more frequent and more acute, and it seems inevitable that at some point a defendant will claim that they were not guilty of a criminal charge because their cyberware could have been hacked.

There are two ways for this problem to go: either such claims get designated an affirmative defense, which forces the defendant to prove that their cyberware was exploited, or they are not, in which case it becomes part of the prosecutorial burden to prove that either such hacking did not take place, or that if it did, that it could not account for the alleged criminal actions.

It’s very rare that laws are made in anticipation of a problem. It’s far more common for existing laws to be shoehorned into a new application for which they were never intended to apply. Laws are responsive to changing conditions, in other words, and there may be a significant lag before the law actually catches up with the reality.

As a general principle, it is faster to regulate something (however inadequately) than it is to make it illegal, i.e. ban it completely.

The story of the MP3 is a case in point – attempts to ban it outright failed; even though short-term victories blocked or shut down this sharing service or that, there were five more ready to step into their place. What killed the file-sharing services was the advent of a legal alternative which brought the sale and transfer of MP3s (and other digital media) under an existing legal and trade umbrella. In particular, the prices being charged were smaller than the costs associated with using a ‘free’ service that could land you a massive fine or jail time, and the cost of the inconvenience of not being able to find what you are looking for.

If we accept these premises, then we might be able to get some idea of how the law will respond to these challenges by examining a few situations that can be considered analogous. No such analogy will be perfect, but at least we will have a starting point.

The unwitting cyberterrorist

Let’s assume that you have a computing device of some sort (a safe assumption since you need one to read this article), that it gets hacked, and is then used as part of a Denial-Of-Service attack or other cybercrime. To what extent are you legally culpable

My initial position was not at all, you’re a victim, just a means to the ends of those who actually initiated the attack. That perspective was quickly undermined by a Quora contributor who demonstrated that it was not so simple.

Kira Dark pointed out the legal requirement of due diligence

“If your computer gets hacked cause it was made intentionally insecure then the owner of the computer that got hacked to commit a crime is actually responsible. They are also charged as an accessory.

“If your computer is hacked and used in a crime by a 3rd party and you resist the authorities from finding who that third again there are charges that apply. Resisting under the point of ‘I didn’t do it’ is a different matter but if the authorities already have and demonstrate evidence that you got hacked and then your system was used in the commission of a crime and you make them get a warrant they can use this as evidence of obstruction charges.”

Only if your computer meets reasonable security standards – is only as hackable as anyone else’s, as Kira put it – are you not responsible.

What’s more,

“If the authorities can prove you actually had an honest chance at stopping or preventing the crime for example sat there and watched them do it when you could have actually taken action to stop it or prevent it without harm to yourself, you’re screwed, there are charges for that.”

Kira closed her answer by opening another can of worms: the liability of a manufacturer who creates cyberware implants that are inadequately protected against cybernetic intrusion. Consider this to be like releasing a model of car with inadequate brakes. If it’s the result of a design or manufacturing error, civil redress would be available to anyone harmed as a result, and the driver would be culpable only to the extent that they may have been disobeying the law. If it’s a situation that the manufacturer could not have anticipated, their liability is limited (but the experience will need to be incorporated into newer models). But if you did it deliberately, in order to make the vehicle cheaper, then you are going to be in a lot of trouble.

Of course, that particular analogy would – should – never happen in real life; government inspection should have discovered the defect in the braking system long before the vehicles went on sale. And that suggests that there would be, or would need to be, some regulatory agency charged with making sure that the cybernetic implants were ‘reasonably’ safe for their intended usage, and ‘reasonably’ resistant to attempts to abuse or compromise the technology.

Reflecting on that point resulted in the addition to my street lexicon of ‘C-Grade’, “M-Grade’, and ‘X-Grade’.

If the hacking of cyberware ever becomes a ‘thing’, incorporation of defensive software which gets regular updates would become, of necessity, a part of life with such implants, just as they are with mobile phones.

The hijacker

Lets say that you are out for a drive and stop to pick up a hitch-hiker who pulls a gun and forces you to participate in a crime. To what extent are you liable for the acts that you have facilitated and to what extent should you resist in order to protect yourself?

The key to this situation is the presence of coercion through the direct threat. Unless it can be shown that you were a willing participant or a co-conspirator (making the threat a sham), you would generally not be held responsible at all; you would be considered a victim.

But it’s not hard to imagine ways for this to get more complicated. What if the vehicle was inadequately maintained, and that the demands placed upon it at the hijacker’s instructions caused your vehicle to kill or injure a bystander? This could be construed as contributing to the outcome through negligence, and a degree of the blame would have to be shared.

It seems likely, in such a case, that a plea arrangement would be offered – the hijacker arguably poses a greater public risk, and making the case against him airtight would be a priority.

Things get murkier again if the hijacker escaped. In that case, the vehicle’s operator has little to offer in exchange for clemency, and is likely to have the book thrown at him.

Another permutation is revealed by the question, ‘What if the driver is not the owner?’

Any contributory negligence is the responsibility of the owner, not the driver – potentially mitigated if the driver knew of the problem and chose to use the vehicle anyway. But the issue of the legal culpability of the driver becomes a lot more problematic in this circumstance.

The Hostages

This notion comes from NCIS Los Angeles. Someone in a high-security position is forced to commit crimes when their family is taken hostage. (In the episode, there’s a plot twist when it is discovered that the ‘victim’ was a co-conspirator in planning the crime).

A threat to another can mitigate or negate culpability – it’s coercion again. But all those caveats about due diligence still seem relevant.

The messed-up

Finally, we need to consider the existing defense of diminished responsibility. Everything I know about this has come from American TV and is, therefore, suspect. It’s probably not too far off in broad, but the specifics have to be considered doubtful, and those are what I want to examine.

It’s not relevant in every case, that depends on the alleged crime. And it’s generally a discriminator of severity of guilt and punishment, not usually acquittal.

From Wikipedia:

“The defense [of diminished responsibility] is to be contrasted with insanity which is a complete but affirmative defense. In most jurisdictions a defendant would be acquitted on the grounds of insanity if the defendant established to the satisfaction of the jury that he suffered from such a mental disease or defect that he was unable to appreciate the consequences of his actions or did not know what he was doing was wrong.”

The successful use of an Insanity Defense results in acquittal – that’s what Wikipedia meant by ‘a complete defense’. Some jurisdictions have added the verdict “Guilty but insane” as a permitted outcome of the trial process.

One of the major differences between the two is that ‘diminished responsibility’ is not an affirmative defense, it’s up to the prosecution to prove that the alleged criminal was capable of knowing right from wrong and that what he was allegedly doing fell into the latter category. Insanity, on the other hand, is an affirmative defense, and the burden of proof is on the defense team.

In Scottish law, Wikipedia observes, a form of diminished responsibility can mitigate the severity of punishment.

Here in Australia, as Wikipedia notes,

…”diminished responsibility exists as a statutory partial defense in most Australian jurisdictions. The defense is only available in cases of murder and serves to reduce the offense to manslaughter.

It’s always been a contentious defense here, because a criminal sentence serves three different purposes at the same time – punishing the guilty, rehabilitation, and protection of the community. Diminished Responsibility weakens the guilt of the offender to some degree ranging from none to total, and reduces the need for rehabilitation in like degree, but exacerbates the danger to the public that is imposed in returning the offender to the community. At the same time, there is a general approval for those who suffer from mental illness or handicap to enjoy as normal a life as possible, especially if their condition can be regulated medically. The result is messy, to say the least, and far from settled.

My personal take on the issue is that the priority has to be public health and safety, followed by the health and safety of the individual, but that they are entitled to live as fully within the community as is possible provided that those priorities are satisfied, and any claim of diminished responsibility or insanity has to be assessed within those constraints. It might be an appropriate sentence for medication and counseling to be made mandatory for a period of time, or it might be necessary that regardless of mental state some form of incarceration under specialist care is necessary – each case is different.

Quite often, on TV shows like Law And Order, the defense will put onto the witness stand experts in psychology if they are planning to mount an insanity defense, but since testimony can be bought or biased, the prosecution demands the right to have the alleged criminal interviewed by their own experts. The judge has to rule on such requests, the defense has little or no say (they can attempt to persuade the judge to say ‘no’ but that’s often not as helpful to their client’s position as agreeing to the request). I have no idea how realistic this all is as a scenario, but it at least seems plausible (As an aside, I’ve often thought it a shame that the Jury, through the judge, can’t call independent experts to guide them through conflicting expert testimony).

Be that as it may, there’s clearly a lot of parallels between all this and the potential criminal liability of those with cyber-implants, insofar as those implants can induce an aberrant or abnormal state of mind. It’s no coincidence that so many of the cyber-diseases described in the previous section fall under this general umbrella.

ALL the factors discussed in this section are amplified – criminal responsibility, diminished responsibility, insanity, and the threat to public safety.

It’s hard to see a situation in which all jurisdictions throughout the world approach the issues raised in anything approaching a consistent manner. In some places, the potential defense will be considered a mitigating factor and investigation of the potential relevance to any case is likely to be put on the shoulders of the prosecution (or the ‘crown’, depending on where we’re talking about); in other places, the potential risk to the public will be given greater weight, and the cyber aspects of a case will either be ignored or made an affirmative defense.

It seems likely to me that the first will more frequently be the case in blue states, while the latter will be more common in red states – but the latter are also more passionate about individualism, self-protection, and weapons ownership, all of which argue in mitigation of this tendency and may even overrule it.

Legal turmoil is the most likely outcome, and a haphazard progress in updating legal codes to reflect the changes in technology.

So what else is new?

The only certainty is that this will, sooner or later, become an issue. There are too many potential benefits from the technology for it to be suppressed – everything from chips to overcome diseases like Alzheimer’s to Parkinson’s to smart limbs that are more life-like, to enhancements that overcome disabilities, to enhancements for the sake of being better at one’s job.

The progression to enhancements for their own sake seems inevitable, even though society as a whole would oppose such artificial aids, I think.

This is a social and legal issue that’s just over the horizon. Research into brain-machine interfaces is going on right now. We aren’t there yet – but devices like the cochlear implant and insulin pump show that the questions raised are imminent. This is Science Fiction on the verge of becoming reality, a process that won’t be complete overnight – it may take 40 years, it’s unlikely to take less than twenty – but it is coming.