Thank so much for reading. For some of your questions, John remembered things from his past versions because he had a metal thing in the back of his head that kept his memories and the thing he plugs the memory wire into in the beginning (I know I didn't say this any where in the story but I thought it wasn't super necessary and wanted to keep a mystery vibe). The reason for the AI's motivation is the AI is suppose to be crazy/insane since it was damaged (that why I call the story broken mind) and that's why John comes back at the end because the AI was just making another clone of him for a different reason but messed up with his memories, accidently bring him back. And for the ending I was originally going to just have John die in space but I thought it was boring and not a good conclusion, so I made the open ended one instead. Hope this answers your questions.