Mister John Silverhand

Codename: The Mystic

“There is no greater power than the power within yourself”

From his first stage persona as the enigmatic leader of the hit band Samurai to his current incarnation as a leader of the CyberRevolution, Johnny Silverhand has always been a mystery. What is known about him only adds to the confusion: possibly born Robert John Under sometime in the 1980’s, alternately the son of an Apple Computer programmer or a studio guitarist working the San Francisco club scene, Linder’s family is rumored to have been killed during the Collapse. Scattered records show he joined the United States Marine Corps (some records say U.S. Army) in 2004, training as a cybergrunt" soldier in the Special Operations Branch. It is now assumed, thanks to Silverhand’s participation in the Amnesty of 2009, that ‘Linder’ either went AWOL from Nicaragua, or was assumed missing in action early on in the War. But it is equally possible that the man known as Johnny Silverhand only assumed the identity (and dotags) of Robert Linder and may have been someone else all along.

Taking the handle "Johnny Silverhand,’ after the trademark chrome cyberarm he adopted in 2005, Linder embarked on a long and colorful career as a rockerboy. With his first band, Samurai he penned many of the anthems of the early 2000’s, including the "cyberpunk anthem’ Metal Soul. In 2007, Samurai broke up, with Silverhand and rhythm guitarist Kerry Eurodyne pursuing separate courses, culminating in the legend-ary tracks Chippin’ In and Never Fade Away.

For a while, Silverhand was content to remain a superficial party rocker, rarely penning anything of social consequence. Then, in 2019, lightning struck in the form of a botched Biotechnica -sponsored assassi-nation. What is commonly believed is that Silverhand emerged from "hiding’ nearly a year later to release Clone Wars, a highly political concept album detailing the abuses and dangers of human genetic tampering.

The truth (known only to a few in the CyberRevolution) is far more startling. The assassination was only partially botched; his body nearly torn in half by the bomb that ripped his AV-7 apart, Johnny Silverhand lay near death in a cryotank for nearly a month before his heavily-guarded hiding place was located by Alt’ Cunningham. The matrix•bound Alt’ sent her recently decanted clone, Alt2 Cunningham, to meet with Silverhand’s startled bodyguards. Her offer—to upload Silverhand’s engrams to the Net via the Soulkiller program, then download them into a suitable force-cloned body. With the evidence of her own cloned body to compare to the frozen one Johnny still maintained in storage after all these years, the Silverhand retinue was convinced, and allowed Alt2 to transport the cryofrozen Silverhand to Alt’’s secret cloning facility. With this final gift to the lover who had preserved her memory (and body), Alt’ left to wander Wilderspace, eventually coming to rest in the aban-doned arcology mainframe called the Ghost Town.

Eight months later, Johnny Silverhand appeared at a press conference to release the long delayed Clone Wars album

He knew he’d been put in a cloned body, and the fact added a special poignancy to his work—some call it Silverhand’s best to date. But unaware that Alt had actually uploaded his engram, downloaded a copy to the clone, and datastored the original, Johnny’ Silverhand was a subtly changed man. Having looked death in the face and returned to tell about it. he became a more political, committed Rocker. His next four albums (Ring of Fire in 2021, Surrendered Goblin 2(112, MediaGodsin 2023 and Street Armageddon in 2024 ) covered the gamut of the political spectrum, focussing eventually on the rise of the Incorporated States of America and its draconian policies.

In 2026, enraged by the ISA’s campaign to "control’ the CyberEvolved, Johnny Silverhand began a monumental new work called Tomorrow’s Child exposing the horror of the Incorporated Govemment’s inhumane program. The album was nearly completed when Silverhand’s luck ran out, and an ISA team murdered the rocker using an advanced AI-remote assassination device.

Once again, Alt’ Cunningham stepped in. Once again, a Silverhand clone was forcegrown from the frozen tissues of his original body. Lacking a fresh engram to work from, Alt1 was forced to uncompress the original and download it into the clone with a seven year memory gap. This time, she had to tell Johnny’ the truth; that the Silverhand he’d become was actually a third generation copy. And that if he was willing to accept the idea, he could be practically immortal.

She also asked for his help as a leader in the fledgling CyberRevolution. She got it.

He calls himself Mister John Silverhand, maybe to distinguish that he’s a changed man: older, wiser, more cunning. He is the teacher of Scanners, young Rockers and Rads who want to know how to reach the hearts and minds of America. He shows them how to craft a song, set up a rally, organize around a cause, spin the media circus. He is the consummate Rocker. And he’ll keep coming back as long as the ISA keeps killing him.