A. Riley: Log Entry #33.984-C - "Project Hollow Head, Overview"

Rigel rarely builds just a single prototype for their projects. Given their role in stabilizing and patching the dragonlings' genetic code, finding a stasis pod in storage containing a male anthro dragonling did not surprise me. What surprised me, however, was Rigel's nonchalant "sure, go ahead" when I asked them if I could bring that clone out of stasis. I guess with the project officially over for years now, all I was offering to do was to clear a stasis pod.

Bringing the clone out of stasis would be the easy part, of course. The difficult part would be to get it to do anything at all. As with Nerys' sister Raki, this clone was a complete blank. It required a neural pattern to be uploaded into it. It had a fully-functional brain, but no connections applied to the neurons and no data stored in them. If I deactivated the stasis pod it would simply lay inert, breathing and pumping blood through its body without any sentience. And so started my journey into the center of the brain, trawling through terabytes of Rigel's research data on the 'lings, trying to build a virtual neural network that I could iterate digitally until it achieved sentience. I'll detail that process in a later log entry (when I don't have such a headache), but suffice to say... it took a few months. Despite the upgraded cooling, my processing server was running white-hot by the time the final hundred million iterations on the code were run. But, eventually, it was done.

I downloaded the pattern into the blank clone. His name will be Erik, in honor of ancient mathematician Erik Ivar Fredholm. For now, I need to crash. I can barely keep my eyes open. I'll do a final review of the code tomorrow morning, then bring the clone online. I hope he likes his name.

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Art and log by Holtzworks, Erik belongs to me.