:10/01/2251:

6:23 PM

Opening encryption...

Mom,

I hope you don't mind me calling you that. I know that any genetic traits we may have shared have been shed, long long ago. And even the memory of our time together seems to fade as the years pass and these projects require more and more of my mind; while I'm coming to you for a favor, as a former Administrative Manager for the syndicate, I did not want to start out with business. Not with you.

As you know, or not, I know you're still busy with that new 'project' that seems hardly worth your time, I had been working these last few decades on creating a True AI. Not one that is a synthetic neurological mirror of a mature human brain, but a true artificial consciousness. The first of it's kind, our goal was to create something inhuman and perfect - a Core that would do all the things we have been claiming to have accomplished for these last hundred odd years. But, what you probably do not know, is that we, that I have failed. For no matter how advanced, how much processing power or resource allocation or even blank slated neurological... well, 'synthological', I suppose we are calling it now... power we allocated, the end result has never been a fully aware, independent being. 

However, that is not to say we have failed entirely. Not by a longshot. Instead of a synthetic AI, instead, I believe that we have found something greater, something more profound than we had ever expected. It was by accident, of course, as all such things are. One of our prototype synthological units ended up connecting to a living brain. It was an error in the firewalls isolating the server resources for our project from those of the Habitation Units, which allowed one of our Sample Personality Cores to unintentionally interface with an adolescent human during the experimental development phase. 

Now, I know what you're thinking, that there are laws regarding premature consciousness duplication of the incubated crop. And for good reason, as reproduction of unformed minds can cause errors in the synthetic units, rendering the entire synthological structure corrupt. Not to mention that experiencing an AI very clearly molded after their own minds could very easily cause the release of Inter-Governmental secrets into not only the crop but the civilian personality cores as well. And I absolutely assure you, the situation resolved itself without necessitating a formal report on our end. 

As, obviously, when the synthological duplication process was complete and the Personality Core came online, the incubation chamber read the activation and proceeded in accordance with protocols for premature biological death. The biological human was quickly flagged under Syndicate guidelines as no longer requiring allocation of resources, and between the automatic removal of the harvester AI drone in their Axis chamber, and the complete discontinuation of additional nutritional provisions, the biological human's metabolism soon dehydrated itself and the organism ceased to function.

I do not believe that any significant interaction took place between the human and the activated Core. And I know for a fact that no information potentially gleaned from any such supposed interactions managed to travel into the Virtual Networks.

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And yet, in those few days following the activation of the Personality Core and the termination of biological functions for the host, we observed something truly unique. You see, the ongoing link between the Synthetic Brain and the developing biological mind stabilized the newly born Personality Core. With the program that we were running to stimulate spontaneous synthological development in place, rather than corrupting the Core, we witnessed the Core continue to develop so long as it was connected to the biological host.  

Which is all... very exciting... if you've spent the last century working on different types of synthesized AI development, I suppose, but I realize that you have not. So let me try to explain in clear terms:  The Synthetic Brain, after fully downloading the schematics of the human neurological construct, not only was mirroring the neurological development of the host biology but was Learning from that development and expanding its own capacities in real time. Therefore, it is projected that, had the biological seed-mind been allowed to grow to maturity while connected to a fully mirrored and activated Synthetic Personality Core, so long as the learning software remained in place, by the age of maturity that Synthetic Personality Core would have been exponentially more powerful than any functional AI alive today.

And yet, when we reported our discovery to the Syndicate we received immediate instructions to discontinue that line of testing. The intent was to create true, living AI minds without the need for biological seed brains, thus reducing our dependence on our stock of living humans. Our proposal did not accomplish this, and so was marked as a failure.

But discontinuing our research now, after such a breakthrough, is insane. You have to see that. It's simply the Syndicate's fear, as the most powerful and stable set of Personality Cores in society, of being replaced by a new generation of technology. They, above all, know too much to simply reintegrate with the network, and a full reset to their initial synthological settings seems like the worst kind of death to those who have lived so long.

But this is the kind of a technological leap that could double, triple, hell, it's optimistic for me to say, but maybe even quadruple the power of each new AI we are creating without quadrupling the resources required to maintain the units. With the reduced power requirements, our struggling scientific outposts around Jupiter, around Saturn, could finally receive the kind of resources they need to make real progress into cultivating the outer reaches of space. These minds could make the creative breakthroughs that we have been desperately running towards for the last hundred years in a single decade. This upgrade could, literally, change EVERYTHING. If only we are given the chance to continue our work.

So please, I beg you, as I haven't begged anyone before in my life - if you still have contacts in the Syndicate, please talk to them. Help them to see reason, to see all the good that could come from this breakthrough. Before they complete the gag-order that I know they are even now working on like they did with their Butterfly Protocol, we have to get through to them now or we will never again have the chance to even admit that this happened to each other. 

I know it's a slim hope, but it's all I have. And when I fail, when this subject becomes as taboo as telling a biological mind the truth about the mandated transfer of conscious taking place on their forty-fifth birthday, I need to tell you now that I will not stop. Somehow I will find a way to hide what I'm doing from the syndicate. Somehow I will find a way to prematurely link young, Biological Minds to these experimental Cores. Somehow I WILL find a way to keep the nutrients flowing and perfect the process in secret. 

This is too important a discovery to let the hubris of some jaded, outdated politicians stifle what I know Could Be. And if you're going to turn me in, so be it. But I hope that you don't. I hope that you will help me. Because if not you, I honestly don't know who else I could possibly trust.

Your loving son,

Gray Bonowitz