I’m afraid I don’t remember the game very well at all except to say that it involved a conversation with a scientist who has uploaded their consciousness. At times, if you ask questions it can’t answer it will respond by saying that it is a facsimile of the scientist and can only do/say certain things. I would very much like to play this one again, if only I could remember it more clearly!
It could be Andromeda Apocalypse — Extended Edition. There is a computer called Logan, the last remnant of a civilization (and I think containing uploaded brains). It guides you through a space station long abandoned. The game has a lot of flashbacks.
A typical response from Logan sounds like:
LOGAN://“That’s beyond my grasp.”
(Edit: also, is there any chance it involves phonographs? It could be Slouching Towards Bedlam, which involves a little cube-shaped robot that follows you and has responses arranged in a grid).
Andromeda Apocalypse sounds very similar, and I’m going to play that one a bit to see, but I have a hunch that it might be too new. I think it was probably before 2010 when I played the one I’m thinking of? I wish I had more to go on here
Sorry if I’m bugging you with suggestions, but this is fun for me!
It could be the once-very-popular TADS game Glowgrass, in which the character is an archaeologist exploring 21st century earth (and finds things such as frisbees and skycars):
Neural transfer. A technology only crudely developed by the Ancients, but the potential would have been in place. Is it possible this girl was desperate enough to risk a full-mind simulation? To copy her entire soul to a machine?
Or possibly, one of my favorite games of all time, Deadline Enchanter, a bizarre, surreal game where the narrator is some sort of uploaded consciousness sent to you as a message. It includes weird lines like:
I will Implement one person. For “local color.” Quick–do you see him?
and
Listen. This will happen. This will really happen. Do not assume that this is a “phantasm of the implementation.” You step to the edge of the hole and fall down. Off. Into the emptiness. The drawing burns in your hands, but you hold on, because there is nothing else to hold onto.
Not bugging me at all. Deadline Enchanter looks great, but I don’t think it’s the one. It does seem really similar to what I recalled, doesn’t it? But I don’t recall the “letter” aspect that this game seems to have?