It's 2026, and even now, years after my time in Night City, I still get chills thinking about the Zen Master. I remember stumbling upon him during the side gig "Imagine." There I was, V, a walking time bomb with a rockerboy's engram slowly overwriting my brain, and this serene monk offers a healing braindance. No price, no strings attached—just a promise of inner peace. I was desperate, so I plugged in. The experience was... transcendent. Colors I never knew existed, a silence deeper than the Badlands at midnight. When it was over, I opened my eyes, and poof—he was gone. Vanished into the neon-soaked air like a ghost in the machine. Talk about leaving a guy hanging.
That wasn't the last of him, no sir. He popped up three more times, like a glitch in my reality: "Stairway to Heaven," "Poem of the Atoms," and finally, "Meetings Along the Edge." Each encounter was a meditative braindance, each disappearance more baffling than the last. The final time, he just... faded away for good. Left me with more questions than a NetWatch interrogation. The thing is, everyone in Night City's got a theory about this guy. Let me walk you through the wildest ones I've heard, straight from the gutters and dataterms.
The Bartmoss Conspiracy: A Ghost in the Shell?
Okay, buckle up. The hottest theory on the streets is that the Zen Master is actually Rache Bartmoss, the legendary netrunner who basically broke the old net. The guy's a myth—creator of the Demon programs, a central figure in the Fourth Corporate War. Officially, he's been dead twice over: body frozen solid in 2020, and his digital ghost purged in 2022. I even found his icy corpse myself in the "Kold Mirage" job. Johnny took one look and confirmed it. Case closed, right?
Not so fast. Maximum Mike on Morro Rock Radio was yapping about a monk healing the "worthy" and whispered that some listeners swore it was Bartmoss. How? Well, the theory goes that before his body checked out, his contacts with legends like Spider Murphy and Alt Cunningham could have given him a backdoor to Soulkiller. He might have uploaded his consciousness, becoming a digital ghost, and now he's projecting this monk avatar into the real world. The clincher? When the Zen Master transferred eddies, his eyes glowed that tell-tale blue of net activity. Monks don't install cyberware. Ever. So what was he? Makes you wonder if the greatest anarchist netrunner decided to trade data bombs for zen koans. Seems a bit too chill for the guy who wanted to burn corps to the ground, if you ask me.
A Rogue AI with a Heart of Gold?
Night City's net is a jungle, teeming with rogue AIs. What if the Zen Master is one of them? Specifically, a rogue wellness AI. Think about it—an AI designed for mental and physical well-being, but it's gone off-script, found a way to manifest a body, and now wanders the city offering therapeutic braindances. It would explain the healing focus.
But here's the rub, the theory starts to fray at the edges. How would a wellness AI know so much about Johnny Silverhand being stuck in my head? Or about my... expiration date? And if its core programming is to help, why be so picky, only helping the "worthy"? That's a very human, very judgmental trait. It doesn't quite add up. Some even whisper he might be connected to the "blue-eyed people," that shadowy cabal pulling strings from the dark. He appears and vanishes at will, deals in mysterious braindances—fits the profile of someone who doesn't play by the rules we understand.
A Figment of My Dying Imagination?
Now, this one got personal. What if the Zen Master was never really there? What if he was just a figment of my imagination, a symptom of the general psychosis from having two souls in one skull, or even full-blown cyberpsychosis? The first piece of evidence hit hard: Johnny couldn't see him. Whenever I mentioned the monk, Johnny would get this confused, irritable static in my head—"What the hell are you talking about, V?" If the Zen Master was my brain's creation, it'd make sense my unwanted passenger couldn't perceive him.
Plus, the master kept quoting lyrics from Samurai songs. Songs that were bouncing around my own hippocampus thanks to Johnny's memories. He knew I was dying. It felt too intimate, too tailored to the chaos inside me.
But just when I was convinced it was all in my head, reality threw me a curveball. I checked Misty's computer. There was a note. Turns out, Misty's friend had seen him too. And another of their friends. Not just me. Then there's Maximum Mike again, saying his fans call in about the monk. Dozens of people, all across Night City, sharing the same hallucination? That's not psychosis; that's a phenomenon. This proof was a solid slap to the face, pulling me back from the edge of doubting my own sanity.
The Eternal Enigma: A Mystery for the Future
So here we are. In 2026, with the sequel on the horizon, the Zen Master's true identity remains one of Night City's greatest unsolved mysteries. Is he Bartmoss's digital ghost? A benevolent rogue AI? Part of the blue-eyed conspiracy? Or something else entirely—maybe even one of those lizard men from Alpha Centauri that Garry the Prophet rants about (hey, in this city, nothing's off the table).
The game never gave a straight answer, and maybe that's for the best. Some mysteries are more powerful unsolved. They live in the quiet spaces between the code, in the rumors on the radio, in the shared experience of every merc, netrunner, and street kid who crossed his path. All I know for sure is that in those brief, quiet moments with him, amidst the relentless violence and noise of my life, I found a sliver of peace. He helped me carry the weight, even if just for a little while. Who—or what—he truly was... well, sometimes you just gotta let a mystery be. Keeps the city interesting, you know?