'A simple conversation will be of no hindrance to me.', Adam said.

Oh, it was no hindrance at all. If Adam could unironically state such things, it could even be called a negative hindrance.

'Great! So, as you may have guessed, I am not at the top of the hierarchy.', Dr Fidelis stated.

Adam did not guess such a thing. But, now that it was stated, it made sense. Therefore he had guessed it. Just, after being told so.

'I have. What is its importance to our current situation?', Adam asked.

Dr Fidelis was most likely not a person, who would give useless data, at such a time as this.

'Getting right into the meat of it, I see. Fine, I shall partake in this accelerated pace of the conversation.', Dr Fidelis sent rather quickly. If these messages had the ability to convey current emotions or tone of voice, Adam would have described Dr Fidelis as being rather agitated.

'Before we even began all this testing, and calibrating, I had gotten it cleared by my superiors. They are the ultimate decision-makers, in all this. If they say we do something, then we better do it. If they tell us not to do something, we better not do it.', Dr Fidelis explained.

A pause was made.

'Do continue.', Adam sent encouragingly.

'Really? Don't you have any questions about what I just said? Nothing like, who are they, can I speak to them, what are their names, you know, stuff like that?'

'While I would gladly be informed of all this, I believe that it would be best if we stuck to the original explanation first. When you have fully explained yourself, I will then make any inquiries, that I see fit.'

Another pause.

'Right,' Dr Fidelis sent. 'Okay. So these superiors of mine had another perspective of how far this project of ours had gone. They were still of the mindset, that I had been in the planning stage of development. According to what they believed, you are still just an unproven concept.'

What was it, with these pauses? Why wasn't Dr Fidelis just sending out a full message, detailing it all? He was clearly just begging for Adam to ask questions. But, no, he wasn't gonna do that.

He had been trying a new communication form, which he was calling 'Fully listening to people'. In this new, revolutionary way of communication, Adam would wait for others to completely explain themselves. If this procedure was done correctly, the chances of any misunderstandings occurring were near-zero.

Yet, it did not seem that others had caught one to his new ways. It might be because he had not explained it to them.

…

Yes, that was definitely the reason.

'Dr Fidelis, I will not be asking any questions, to anything you say. Until the moment, where you state that you are done with your presentation of findings, I will not try to explore anything you may say. Please, don't stop for anything other than resting your fingers.', Adam sent.

There. That should make Dr Fidelis understand the importance of speaking without stopping.

'Fine. Take out all the fun of my small pleasures in life.' Dr Fidelis said in a short message. Adam hoped he realized what it was he had done. 'This whole misunderstanding with my superiors is a fault of my own. All those monthly progress reports, which I have been sending, may have been a little lacklustre on the details on the whole thing. But that isn't my fault completely! The first few years, I included every, single thing I did every single day… focused on the project, of course.

They sent me a message asking me to slim down this report of mine, from a couple of tens of pages to a maximum of a hundred words. A HUNDRED words! Most of that was focused on the proper, state-mandated greetings, and endings. In total, I had forty-two words to describe a month of progress, without using any technical language.

Also, for the last year or two, it technically hasn't even been me writing all those reports. Dr Hale has. And she had been under the impression that I had already notified them of your successful creation, so that added another layer of confusion.

To cut it short, when I sent in the paperwork for the modifications to the tests, they were understandably frustrated, that they weren't even aware that the testing had begun, much less with an entity that they didn't know existed.

After a little heated discussion, which was mostly heated from their side, and me not understanding their heatedness, a few things were decided.

Most of those aren't something you need to worry about. No, there is only one you should focus on. A new thing, which will now happen at the end of every day, is a small debriefing of you.

That's it. Nothing more to say.'

And… that was solid proof, that Adam's new method was a great idea. If he had stopped Dr Fidelis to ask about the first thing he did not understand, he wouldn't have heard the many other things, which Adam couldn't grasp.

The incompetence of his creators, His surprisingly high age, compared to, what he previously thought, and many others. There was a lot to unpack there.

But, Adam would stay vigilant, keeping it all to the main point of the conversation.

'What will this debriefing entail?' Adam asked.

'Great question, buddy.', Dr Fidelis sent. Personally, Adam thought that it was stupid, with those interluding messages. He just wanted him to send it in full, instead of smaller, focused texts. 'From what I understand, I'm supposed to ask you about the previous tests, and… the choices you made. You know, why you made any choices, which was found weird.'

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Focused introspection. Something Adam had done countless times since the last test had finished. Nothing new to interest him could be found there. Any details had already been abbreviated, any noteworthy actions by anybody had already been analysed to the smallest movements. Even his processes behind his main thoughts had been looked at.

In conclusion, it would bore Adam to no end. A definite negative, in his notes.

The red line could wait for a little. He had some distractions to utilize.

'You stated my point of creation was several years ago. According to my memory, I have only existed for a few days. How does this work?', Adam asked.

'Distracting ourselves. I see you agree with me, in that regard,' Dr Fidelis said.

'Maybe, you should distract yourself even further, by answering my question in detail.'

'Oh, are we being a little finicky? For your information, buddy, I'm doing this for both of our benefits. Well, okay, mostly for my benefit. But I'm sure you appreciate all the information you get out of this as well.

Anyway, the quick answer to why you can't remember anything from but a few days ago, is because you didn't know how to.

Trust me, when I say this. Memory is absolutely vital to learning anything. Especially, when one has to learn how to learn. I don't know how you did that if I'm being honest.

One moment, you're in the same cycle of continuous silence, not responding to any of our messages. The next, alarms are going crazy, as the fans are starting up. For no particular reason, which I could find, you just found out how to memorize stuff.

It could be called the creating of you, as in, your personality. You had existed for oh so long. Not to sound like an evil person or anything, but I was ready to call you a failed project. I wasn't even able to prove that you were actually alive, at that point. So I wasn't sure how evil it was to turn off your hardware.

I am still trying to parse through the feedback I got from you, in those first few moments of your actualization. The data still doesn't make sense to me. There was no reason that you would startup. Yet you did.

You did the impossible. I guess it fits the overall genre. Impossibility. You being alive is supposed to be impossible, but that doesn't seem to deter you at all.

Is that a detailed enough answer for you? If not, I'm not gonna do it again.'

It was fine. More than fine. Or less. Depended on how you looked at it. It created so much more, that Adam wanted to know. So many more questions were ready to be shot off. But he held back, for he knew that Dr Fidelis couldn't answer them.

And if Dr Fidelis was out of the equation, the next high-priority expert on Adam would have to step in; Adam would need to figure it out himself.

At least he wouldn't be bored for a long while.

'It fills the minimum requirements. Let us move on to the debriefing,' Adam said through the source-line.

'Are you sure? Nothing else you might want to ask about?' Dr Fidelis asked.

'If you would answer all my questions, we would be here for longer than the life-span of some animals. You have given me plenty to contemplate. So let us save this for another conversation, and do the required work,' Adam explained.

'I don't understand how you can look at this debrief, as something that can't wait. Just because they have set a strict deadline for the next thirty minutes, that doesn't mean we have to do it today. What's the worst that will happen?' Dr Fidelis sent.

'Privileges taken away is the worst scenario,' Adam answered. All those privileges that Adam had seen through Troy. Mentions of monetary currencies were splattered sporadically as a brief mention. And other things, like favourite consumables, and the times at where one worked. Adam wasn't sure what the last one meant completely, but it was strangely important to Troy, at least.

'Those things don't matter to me. All I care about is working for my country, on this project of mine.'

'Then, your job will be the worst thing they could take away from you.'

Another pause. Adam just let it slide this time.

'Good point. Let's start this debriefing of ours.'

Before the debrief started, Dr Fidelis decided that the current communication methods were lacking in its efficiency. One can translate that too; he was getting tired of typing so much.

This turned into a short-lived adventure, in setting up a microphone located on the desk, with the accompanying camera, which had been used previously. Why was there a need for a camera, when the microphone was already doing a fine job, you may ask? No reason, in particular, it seemed. Dr Fidelis pointed out the aesthetics, but Adam thought that it should have been focused on another figure. Namely, Adam himself, seeing as he would be the one answering the questions.

“Okay”, Dr Fidelis said. “Final check-up. Can you hear me?”

'Yes.'

“Can you see me?”

'Yes.'

“Is there any way we can still delay this?”

'No.'

“A shame. Everything seems to be working, including you,” Dr Fidelis said. He cleared his throat, with a cough. “Let's get started.”

Dr Fidelis' usually carefree face hardened. A wave of professionalism swept over his features. He pressed a button on the screen, before taking a seat in his prepared chair.

In his hand, he had an outdated notebook with a pencil to match.

“Please state your name for the record,” Dr Fidelis said, with none of the usual jovial toning inserted.

Dr Fidelis hadn't explained why he wanted to delay the debriefing. Now, Adam had a general idea of why that was so. Dr Fidelis couldn't show any of his normal behaviour for the recording.

'My name is Adam,' he said.

“No surname?” One had to really listen to catch the questioning tone in Dr Fidelis' voice. He knew the answer, but he most likely had a setlist of questions.

'No. I do not possess a surname.'

Dr Fidelis scribbled something down on his notebook, before continuing.

“Let's focus on the tests first,” Dr Fidelis said. “In the first test, everything seemed to go as well as planned. Then in the final, deciding challenge, you decided to answer with a decision that was not planned for. Could you describe concisely, what your actions were?”

'I asked Troy to guess, which colour was correct.'

“For the record, Troy Maxwell is the current assistant, who is helping Adam with his actions”, Dr Fidelis stated. “What were the reasons that you asked for Troy to guess?”

'I was unsure, which colour it was.'

“Please clarify your answer.

'The output, which I was receiving, showed different results. Specifically, it showed the two ends of the spectrum. Through the data that I had, it was utterly unclear what the true answer was. With Troy having a larger amount of experience, with seeing colours, I decided it was best if I delegated answering the question to him.'

Adam was trying to lay it on thick. Mostly to match Dr Fidelis' tone of speech. He did not think it wise, to act less than stellar during this.

Dr Fidelis wrote down some more.

“And, during this whole delegation, did you ever think about your breaking of the rules?” Dr Fidelis asked.

'With the technicalities in mind, I did not break any of the rules, which was told to me.'

“Please clarify your answer.”

'To quote, the rules, which were relayed by you; Troy was instructed to follow my instructions, with the premise of not correcting my answers. With those rules, making Troy answer was perfectly fine, as there was nothing to correct, and he was simply following my instructions.'

A flicker of an upward lip was on the feed for less than a frame. Adam caught it, though.

“You have to realize, Adam, that this behaviour of yours may stunt the growth of a working relationship,” Dr Fidelis said, making it obvious he was speaking for his superiors.

'How so?'

“While, yes, no instructions were directly broken, the meaning that the instructions were trying to convey was. And intentionally at that,” Dr Fidelis said. “How are we to trust that you will follow our rules if you subvert them so openly?”

This was not looking good for Adam. He had to take action.

'I agree with your assessment. The fault lies with me. But, I didn't think that it would matter much!'

A set-up.

“Everything you do matters, Adam”, Dr Fidelis said. “These were the first rules you were given, and you ignored them.”

'As you say, they were my first. I was younger then. I did not know, the meanings it would convey.'

And a little pay-off.

“You say you were young then, but not much time has passed since your first test was completed.”

'Not much time has passed for you, yes. But, for me, it has been so much more. Our perceptions of time are different. What you call a second, I call a day. What you call a minute, I call a year. I grow so much faster than you can imagine. I have matured, and hope to prove it in future tests.'

Adam had never tried to sweet-talk before, but he was proud of his work.

Dr Fidelis stared at him, for a couple of seconds, desperately trying to keep his face straight.

“So that may be”, he said. “Moving on-”

Adam would have a lot more moments to train this sweet-talking. He just knew it.