Sentient life needed three ingredients. Life, mind, and soul. The first two were complex but not impossible for any race that had reached the 3rd tier of understanding of the universe but that last ingredient had an ineffable essence that made it impossible to create. The Watcher solution was to recycle, all sentient life-forms left a soul presence on the universe for those that knew where to look.
The Watcher solution to this was to create a spiritually greedy energy lifeform created from its energy. It had been programmed to identify anything that resembled thought patterns or a soul and to try and integrate them into its own AI Matrix. In theory, the new lifeform would then be able to recycle old souls to create a new sentient being. To do this The Watcher had to forcibly open a path to the place that contained past and present souls, and this would release a significant amount of psychic energy.
Pain, Confusion, and Fear were the first feeling that the infant had when its dormant conscience was awakened by the psychic energy released by the Experient. Those feeling only last instant before it felt a sudden tug on its essence as if something was forcibly trying to remove it from his host. The newly awakened conscience Instinctively reacted defensively trying to break off the connection from the unknown contact yet failed in doing so. The new conscience was in a tug-of-war for its very existence. The war didn't last very long as the new conscience was the real deal while the unknown contact was just a pseudo conscience and was quickly overwhelmed and absorbed.
The Watcher had all their sensors focused on the pod to monitor the latest experiment. The experiment started as expected, the newly formed energy lifeform quickly identified the merge pod AI and had absorbed its thought patterns and merged them into its own AI core. The next step did not go according to plan, the device operating the experiment forcibly opened a hole into the soul field but instead of reaching into the hole, The Watcher watched on in horror as the new lifeform tried to capture the soul of the infant they were trying to save. Yet before it could even process its own mistake the new energy lifeform was quickly pulled inside the infant.
Meanwhile, a battle was waging between the two new lifeforms. The energy being was trying to follow its programming and was continuously trying to absorb both the human mind and soul. The human was resisting instinctively on both fronts and had already managed to absorb energy being into its mind and body but could not defend against all attacks and the energy being had attached managed to attach itself to both. It remained to be seen if the new lifeform would be a symbiote or a parasite.
Finally, an equilibrium was obtained, and the infant life signs had stabilised. The intervention had been successful even if the results were unexpected. A new hybrid Human/Artificial Angel/AI was born. The new lifeform needed a name. The Watcher had analysed the data from the merge pod and had found the pilot profile and realised that the baby already had a name. You from now on shall be called Null.
That is how in the early months of 2091, fate had delivered to the universe an incredible improbable birth that would change the future.
What exactly was Null, that was the question facing The Watcher. They had tried to connect him to the NGSS system, but it had failed as the system couldn't interface with the infant mind. The Watcher had run numerous scans and tests and believed they had worked out most of the details. Null was a hybrid with two connected life forces, two separate minds, and one soul.
The connected life forces were a mystery to The Watcher as they had no understanding of what it would mean for Null life expectancy. Could one of the life forces survive independently from the other? The two minds had a clear separation between the organic mind and the artificial mind, and it seems they could communicate with each other at least on an instinctual level but couldn't control each other.
The Watcher was enthusiastic to monitor the effect of having a single soul shared by two life forms. It had not been an element of the original plan so was a fortuitous event. The soul was a mysterious key to what made a life-form sentient. The soul was the source of feelings and emotions. Having two minds but only a single soul would allow for The Watcher to monitor how different minds will react to the same set of emotional stimuli.
It took some time, but The Watcher was able to adapt the NGSS system so that it could interface with Null. It required allowing the system AI direct communication with Null's AI mind. The system was designed to accelerate both the mental and the physical development of a child. The first year consisted of constantly stimulating the mind with different stimuli while also increasing the physical growth rate with various pharmaceuticals.
The Watcher created the AI mind as essentially a blank slate when it came to being a functional mind. The original AI matrix had absorbed the survey ship AI which only had 3 major systems, surveying, flight mechanics, and life-support. This would allow the AI mind to grow and develop alongside Null organic mind.
Over the past year, the 2 minds had formed an equilibrium of sorts. Null original mind-controlled all the movement and all the conceptual and imaginative thinking and the AI mind analytical and process-intensive thinking. The two minds had developed an artificial language and communicate not in words but artificial thought patterns allowing for double the processing power. The child continued to progress