For too long a time, this game of truth and lie continued. To Troy, it was much more fun than last time they had done the test. In the start, it had been a little janky, trying to make the sentences equally complex. Now, after having been doing it for nearly two hours, getting anything said was easier, than just breathing.
"I have a severe fear of a character I saw on the television when I was a kid," Troy said, with a voice as calm as usual. Lately, his voice had even gained itself a small amount of hoarseness. He had talked a lot these past times. Troy needed to do some vocal exercises beforehand if tests like these became a regular thing.
Getting back on the actual test, he loved saying long statements like that oh so much. This was because of a very simple thing.
When he had been younger, stupider, and just generally not knowing too much about the world, Troy had taken himself a beginners class in psychology. He had failed said class, but that was a whole other matter.
In this class, the first few weeks had been about a certain subject called lying. What made a lie what it was, what signs were there of a lie, and how could one hide a lie. Don't ask him all that information. There was a distinct reason he got a failing grade in that class.
Now, if there was a single fact, which stayed with for the longest amount of time, it would be this; Hide your lies with truth.
It must have sounded outright wrong to most hearing it for the first time. It certainly did so, for the younger Troy. But, after having it explained with a few more words than that, it made so much more sense.
Humans, and all creatures in general, are lazy creatures. If we can get away with doing a lesser amount of work, without losing any of the gains, we will do so. This also goes over to the mental aspect of our mind. If we can ignore, most of what people say, while still getting the general point across our ears, we damn well will.
And, that aspect works so well in some situations. We can learn facts so much faster, analyse our surroundings with a single glance, and ignore most features of a face, yet still retain it perfectly.
But, this little trait of ours also comes with a few negatives. Troy was sure there were quite a few, but he only really listened to one of them. Namely, the one mentioning, where, in a sentence, the least amount of people would notice a lie.
Fact-checking was a regular thing we all did. But, we didn't do it constantly. That'd just be too hard. We listen to the first few words, check if they sound true. While that's happening, a few words slip by, but they can't be too important. Then you just do it again and again and again, until the sentence ends.
A good way, to know when the people were fact-checking would be to set something important-sounding just before the lie. The focus would be on the important stuff, and the little lie would be glossed over.
To use his own, earlier sentence as an example, the important part was him mentioning severe anxiety, and the lie was the part about him watching it on television. Troy had never owned such a thing, nor had any reason to do so. He had his brain-implant to work with, on that front.
But, Adam wouldn't know any of that, and it would at least confuse him, if not make him say the wrong thing.
Not the most perfect system in this world, but Troy didn't mind that too much. If it made his actions a bit more meaningful, and a little more fun to do, it was all fine in his mind.
Also, this whole thing was about making Adam learn more. Why shouldn't Troy be able to have a little practice during it too?
'You are lying. There has been no indication of you having a severe fear of any specific, fictional characters.', Adam sent out.
A fun thing to note was that Adam had stopped with pointing out his body positioning, as reasoning for his lying. It turns out that giving specific feedback on why Adam thought he was lying, due to specific body movements, made Troy try to avert those movements specifically.
He likely wasn't too good at doing so, but that didn't matter too much. What mattered, was that Adam had stopped using them as reasons, making all his reasoning half as good as it needed to be.
This caused Troy to outright just reject a lot of the answers, even if the base answer was correct. The explanations simply weren't up to an acceptable standard, which he had.
It did cause the difficulty of statements to fall with it, but that was an acceptable sacrifice. It was still fun to say weird things, even if they were a bit simple on the tongue.
With all that thought off, Troy pressed down on the red square. He didn't like it, but it was his job.
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After that, the whole cycle continued yet again. Troy would say some inane thing about himself or his opinion about something. Most of it would be true, with some smaller things being a lie. Adam would then be a success or not, nearly entirely depending on how well he explained himself. Troy had tried to relay this fact, about him nearly always being right, and just being bad at showing his interpretation, but Adam had just seen it as another statement to be assessed.
Such a thing was not too out of the picture with him, of course, but it was annoying to be at the wrong end of.
"I think too much about penguins' knees," Troy said, pointing out yet another way to lie to himself.
If there was one definite way to trick another person, it would be to first trick oneself. Now, this didn't work with most things somebody would say. Things like straight facts, which can be fact-checked through a quick internet search, was way out of the question. It had to be some kind of personal detail, which isn't readily discussed for any number of reasons. It can be something very personal, it can just be a delightfully obscure fact, which has no reason to come up in casual conversation.
And, the most difficult thing about this kind of lie, would, of course, be the part, where you trick yourself into thinking you're telling the truth. To Troy, at least, he has only found one, mostly-working method to achieve this. The sentence has to have been a true statement in the past.
This did complicate the nature of the sentence, even more, making this method only really helpful in situations like this. Nonetheless, it still worked, and that was all that was important to him.
Yet again using Troy's earlier statement as an example, it fits perfectly into his adequately explained system of lying. In his former time, and more specifically last week, he had been on a searching binge, trying to know everything there was about a specific kind of penguins. Yes, It was weird. He realized so, after trying to discuss with another, mentally-sane person.
The point was, in the past, this sentence would have been a full-on truth, with nothing to hide behind the words. A pure, truth.
A good thing about the body was that it didn't like to keep up with the mind, for most of the time. With him already having discussed it, with honest intent, his body would most likely attempt to replicate the general way he talked about it, including voice-work and body language.
With all that helping Troy on his way, and him not trying to think about his actions too much, he was sure of the results.
'You are lying. While it may have been true some time ago, your last-minute changes in tone and eye movement strongly indicate a too complicated thought-process for complete truth. With the sentence structure not being too complex, as in the opportunities for lies being less perjurious, the whole sentence is entirely false.', Adam immediately sent out, with no hesitation. If Troy wasn't being too materialistic, he was being even faster than usual.
Just as he expected, Adam completely demolished all his planning, turning it into yet another, simplified explanation on why he was lying. This time, he was at least being good enough about it, so Troy was able to give him the well-deserved tap on the blue square.
And, again, like nearly all other times, Troy tried to put up the difficulty immensely, Adam failing terribly in putting a good reason to his answers, without explaining how he got them to begin with, him falling in difficulty due to this, and the whole thing starting over again. Troy hoped he didn't mind it too much. Adam shouldn't, in his uneducated opinion. This was a constantly varying difficulty, with a hard to pin down number on it. Not that it had any number on it. Troy was just going by pure feel, but Adam probably didn't know that.
But, like all things that were fun to do, it had to end so much quicker than what was expected. Oh, why couldn't it just be like the boring stuff, and seem like it was going on forever!
*Brilliant work, you two! I haven't been as excited about these kinds of results, since the moment I heard the New Chess championship winners got a new career. *, Dr Fidelis' voice sprung out from the earpiece, with no warning whatsoever. Troy did the dignified reaction of nearly falling on his ass from it.
"Are we done now, then?" Troy asked, doing his best to act as he had always been standing upright.
*As much as it pains me to notify you of this, you are in fact done for now. Do slip out that earpiece, you have, and come out of there. You have a lunch break to attend. We are already over time if this watch of mine isn't lying too much. Better hurry, if you want something edible today!*, Dr Fidelis stated.
And that was all Troy needed as motivation, with him immediately bolting up towards the doorway out, the earpiece nearly being ripped out of his ear.
Troy briefly heard Adam trying to send something, but he was cut off from the abruptly stopped connection. He hoped it wasn't too important, as there was something much more paramount in the game; Lunch! There was no way he was missing out on another meal, just because of somebody wanting to talk a bit more.
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Troy nearly slipped on the metal grating, as he hurried out of the puzzle room. This caused him to be much more careful, in going down the three steps, down to the floor, where Dr Fidelis was eagerly waiting, to get that gear off him. Not that Troy minded too much, as he was ravenous in getting that layer of ornament off himself.
… God, that sounded wrong.
"Do be a little quicker on your feet, buddy", Dr Fidelis said, as he just started walking towards Troy. What de he expect him to do? Run full tilt at them, and hope that they would catch him in their collective arms? Dr Fidelis' expectations were just a little too high. "You have lunch to eat, and I have a test to set up!"
"I'm being as quick as I possibly can", Troy defended himself. "If I go any faster, I'll be slipping over my feet, and I don't think any of us want to see these things being destroyed."
"Who cares about the state of the things!", Dr Fidelis instantly rebutted. "More gear can be gotten down at the storeroom. As long as the memory cards are intact, there's no reason to worry too much about it. Just be faster! 'Gotta go fast', or whatever young people say."
They met each other at the midpoint, and Dr Fidelis immensely began pulling off the recording equipment. Troy tried to help, but he just got his hands swatted away. He wasn't fast enough in this aspect either to meet expectations, it seemed. Troy wasn't too sure, how he should feel about that.
"It's an expression used nearly a century ago, Dr Fidelis", Dr Hale pointed out, as she wrote down long details of their actions. This did create some internal debate, inside Troy's head, if he should be allowing this situation to be archived, for the people of the future to read.
"The definition of 'young' is wrong in its essence. Who is young and who is old, is entirely subjective on the beholder. An old man can call another, slightly younger old man young, and be entirely correct in his definition, yet a child wouldn't be able to call him the same," Dr Fidelis said, in his wise, old man voice.
"You are not old enough, to call that particular age group young, I'm afraid, sir," Dr Hale continued her voice as professional as usual. "Even your antiquated date of birth is not old enough."
"Slightly hurtful", Dr Fidelis said, his voice especially being down a notch from the last comment. "But true."
As they spoke, Dr Fidelis did his best in positively tearing off the gear. The microphone on his chest, which usually took a small while to get off, was really just torn off immediately. From the brief look, which Troy got off the microphone's backside, he realized Dr Fdielis hadn't been kidding, when he said, that the gear was totally expendable.
The rest was taken off, with the same level of frenzy.
"Now", Dr Fidelis said, as he turned over to the screen. "Off you two go. And, be back on schedule this time. I need the next test to go totally right. No pressure, of course."
Sure. No pressure at all.