The machine that lets users experience ancestral memories in Assassin's Creed is called the Animus.
In the series, the Animus is a device that interprets genetic memories carried through a person's DNA. A modern user enters the machine and experiences memories belonging to an ancestor, allowing the games to move between present-day scenes and historical adventures. The concept provides the central link between different time periods.
The original game presents Desmond Miles as an unwilling participant in an Abstergo Industries experiment. Abstergo uses the Animus to investigate the memories of his ancestor Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad. Later games introduce other Animus users, portable versions, and modified systems, but the machine remains the franchise's defining science-fiction technology.
The Animus is sometimes confused with Eagle Vision, which is a perception ability used by several protagonists, or with the Bleeding Effect, a side effect of repeated memory synchronization. The Apple of Eden is an Isu artifact, not a memory-viewing machine. These terms belong to the same fictional universe but describe different things.