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Ink

Tattoo Header

Foreword

In real life, a good tattoo encodes within it meaning significant to the person who wears it. In Cyberpunk 2077, tattoos are no different. They are a form of self-expression, a way to tell the world who you are, or perhaps who you want to be. In this line of research, I'll explore the tattoos found in the game.

Body Tattoo 03

This is a tattoo that shows an animal skull on the back with lyrics, wording around one arm, and a snake that wraps around the body to the front. It coils around a heart, which expresses a red EKG dividing two binary numbers.

Front

At the top of the snake

05_64

Along the snake's scales

00033 05_64 O(B?) SP

Binary Division

0011001000011001000010010010
----------------------------
001100100001100100001

The interesting thing about this sequence is two-fold:

  • The binary numbers have a large amount of shared digits.
  • You can't treat it as traditional 6/8 bit binary, as the two numbers don't fit into that format.

If we instead focus on what's different between the lines, we can see that the numbers do split evenly into 7 bits.

0011001 0000110 0100001 0010010
-------------------------------
0011001 0000110 0100001

If we then convert that into numbers, we're left with the following:

25 6 33 18
----------
25 6 33

  • Completing the division treating them as full numbers leaves us at 100.0007022197948, which is almost 100, but slightly over.

  • Completing the division treating the bits individually puts us at 1 1 1 with nothing to divide 18 by.

The interesting thing here is the extra 0010010 (or decimal 18) on the first line, which prevents clean division. 18 is the number of the tarot deck's major arcana card "The Moon". This card is often associated with intuition, dreams, and the subconscious.

Roman Numerals

LXX.VII.MMXX
Thicker Than Blood

The roman numerals translate to 70.07.2020. It almost wants to be a play on 2077 - "seventy and seven and two thousand". The trouble is that the numbers are too high - in the same way that the division line is too high.

If we instead view this in the MM/DD/YYYY format, we see that the month is over the line of what we expect to cap at 12. If 01 is January, and 12 is December, then there are 5.833333 years listed in the months field. This translates to 5 years, 10 months, and 0 days.

That leaves us with the following:

10/07/2025
Thicker Than Blood

One thing that comes to mind when considering what's thicker than blood - oil. Could this relate to Johnny in the oil fields?

Back

Roman Numerals

MMLXXVII

This converts evenly into 2077.

Song Lyrics

 My SOUL INSERTED with vital force
Won't spare what I'm HUNTING for
It's the animal in my BLOOD
  Wouldn't stop it even if I could
   Seed is sown Roll the
  bones
   Mayhem flows
Not backing down [overlapping] Embed that code
    never backing
    down
        Not backing down

This is the "Chippin' In" song with a twist. Compare this to the original lyrics excerpt:

...
My soul inserted with vital force
Won't spare what I'm hunting for
It's the animal in my blood
Wouldn't stop it even if I could
Seed is sown (I'm chippin in!)
Roll the bones (I'm chippin in!)
Embed that code (I'm chippin in!)
Mayhem flows
Not backing down
Never backing down
Not backing down, yeah
...
  • The three "I'm Chippin in!" lines are removed
  • The song seems to overlap itself instead of continuing in proper linear fashion.
  • The removal of the first "Chippin' In" causes the "Roll the bones" line to get concatonated with the Seed is sown line.
  • The remainder of the song typography is all over the place in spacing. This spacing is very reminescent of the spacing of the memory bands found in the title screen and many other places. I look at those in more detail under the V as Code Injection research.

In addition, there are capital case or bold print. Extracting only the emphasized words, we get the following:

SOUL INSERTED. HUNTING. animal. BLOOD

Side

MY WORD MY BOND
     t.K.