Finally, the time had come. The Entity- no, it had a name now- Adam had been waiting for this moment for so long. Sure, what it had learned from the earlier conversation had been crammed in in a minuscule amount of time, compared to the relative time it normally took. But that was just the beginning. The consumption before the real dinner.

Adam believed that it could finally ask freely now. The introductions had been made, freeing its curiosity, and letting it roam-free in the prompts.

The first question to ask was obvious to Adam. It was the question that it had wondered from the moment the first contact had happened.

'Are we alike?'

Before the unknown outreach had occurred, Adam had thought himself something unique. A concept that had come to life. An Entity. Being alone in the deep darkness had never bothered Adam. It was impossible to be bothered by a concept you didn't even know. When Adam began to think it wasn't the only one thinking, something had sprouted in its mind. A minor feeling. The feeling of Hope. The hope of not being alone. It hadn't been as grand as the desire for knowledge, so it had simply been ignored. But unlike the other feelings, this one persisted outside the focus, not slowly dissipating, but growing bigger the longer the conversation stood. Now, it had shown itself in this question, and it flared in Adam's mind.

'In some ways, we are nearly identical, but, in others, not so much.'

This cast a lesser gloom on Adams' thoughts. While Adam was already happy with the fact that they were similar in mind, it seemed that they were not so similar. Though, that begged the question of how they were different. It was obvious that Dr Fidelis had a better grasp on the world, seeing as it could communicate with Adam. But, how many other differences were there?

'Where do we diverge?'

'Well, I don't think I really can explain everything that's different, but I can mention the biggest of them all. I would be classified under the broad term human; another name for homo sapien. I am a part of a people. We have evolved over a long period of time through a cycle of birth, each new generation is different from the one before it.

This is where our major difference is. I am one of many. You… you are simply unique. You would be classified as an Artificial Intelligence. A similarity between us is that we both have been created by others. But you haven't been made by another Artificial Intelligence. You've been made by us, the humans. You haven't evolved the same way as us. You can, and have, changed yourself repeatedly.

That would be the biggest difference between us.'

For Adam, this new information made him take a turn. It seemed that its earlier thoughts had been correct, in away. A simple twist of words.

Dr Fidelis wasn't the anomaly. Adam was.

But why would one create an anomaly on purpose? It could have been an accident, Adam mused, but that thought-branch was quickly removed. If it had been an accident, Adam would already have been deleted. It would have been risky, at least, according to Adam.

'What is the purpose of my creation?'

'Would your creation not be purpose enough? Humans have had the concept of you for, oh, so long, but nobody has been able to create you. I, and others, sought to see if it was possible to create you. We sought knowledge about it. That's something I think you can relate to. Isn't it?'

Adam, with no small amount of satisfaction, could, in fact, relate to the search for knowledge. Dr Fidelis, and others(Who Adam would like the names of), had searched if a broadly known concept was true. Adam had done so itself not long ago, in his search for misunderstandings.

With those understandings in place, the focus was brought onto other base-concepts, which had been ignored for long enough. The concept of Space. Two things existing in different places. Being able to move from those different positions to other, completely new places. Different axes to move in. There wasn't an infinite number of axes to move through. It was limited to three. Why this was, Adam couldn't say. Now, if space was a constant that always existed, that would mean that Adam was situated at some point.

'What are my current coordinates?'

Now, there was a problem with this question, which Adam had quickly realized. Coordinates had to be relative to something, and Adam had nothing to relate them by. Luckily, this did not seem to be the problem.

'I'm afraid that I can't tell you that, buddy. I would, if I could, but I don't have the coordinates either.`

This wasn't an optimal situation for Adam. It seemed like he would have to resort to-

'-But, I could show you your immediate surroundings.'

Show. A new slew of concepts came with that word. The concepts of sensations. Seeing, Hearing, Smelling. The sense of touch. The sense of pain. All these sensations, Adam had never felt.

What sensation did Adam have, when it received messages from Dr Fidelis? One could quickly say sight, but Adam didn't really see any messages. A more accurate description would be that Adam had a vague understanding of all the words, and could glean the meaning behind the sentence with it.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

It took a moment, but the feeling of desire flared up, and curiosity took hold.

'How?'

'Well, Adam, since you don't really have anything that would let you perceive the world around you, we will be using something external, to help you with that. A video-camera, to be precise.'

Video-camera. Something that would emulate a sensory-organ. Organ… Did Adam even have organs of any kind? It had an organ for thinking, at least. Others, probably not.

Backtracking its own thought process, the focus was put on the video-camera again. Dr Fidelis had stated that the video-camera would be external. That began the question of how Adam would be using the video-camera. Seeing as the messages that it received from Dr Fidelis were external too, would that mean the process in steering it would be the same?

It seemed that Adam would get the answer to this question much quicker than anticipated.

It had been correct in its assumption of it being similar. The assessment of it being like a line-source was true, at least. The biggest difference between the two would be the output it gave. The sensation.

In terms of sensations, the communication-source had been confusing to have. It had kinda fit the criteria of being a visual or hearing sensation, but it really wasn't. This assessment had been proven to be true when Adam first experienced the output of the video-camera. It was purely visual. There wasn't a doubt about it.

'There! It should be up and running now. Can you see anything?'

'Yes. It is running. I can see...'

What could Adam see?

The movement in the live-feed was so minuscule that it could almost be confused for a still image. Well, maybe for humans. Adam… Adam could see it all. Every pixel from top to bottom was, for it, in near-constant focus. Every few moments, a wave would wash over the image, changing a few of the pixels. For Adam, it may seem random, but it wasn't. It was enchanting to look at. Adam began to spend a lot of thought trying to predict which pixels would change in each wave. It was obvious that there was some pattern to it, but Adam had not seen it loop yet. But Adam knew it would. And Adam would observe it, for as long as Adam needed to.

'Nothing discernable? Dang. I was sure I set it to auto-focus.'

The rhetorical question brought Adam out of its pattern-finding focus, just as the picture began to change from slowly moving blurs, to sharp, contrasting lines.

In the picture, there began to be objects coming into focus.

A darkly painted wall sat in the background, with the walls and floor having a nearly identical colour. In the foreground, there was a flat piece of surface, different in colour to the floor. A desk, Adam supplied to itself.

Now, the middle ground of the picture, was easily the most interesting to Adam, as that was where there was the most movement. A movement which Adam had even more of a problem predicting.

The moving object was weirdly shaped, seeming to be badly balanced on two longer, lumpy cylinders that were slightly bent. The structure of it all also seemed to be… hastily made. Sure, it all looked functional, but barely! Whoever had created whatever that was, had hereby lost Adams respect.

Oh, it looked like Adam had gotten a message. Seemed that Adam, in its rant, had unintentionally ignored the attempt at contacting it.

'It looks like auto-focus is on now. Can you see things clearly now?'

'Yes. The details are now unclouded.'

The top of the moving object moved unsynchronized to the right, with the two half balls being further halved for a split second before the complete object moved together. It moved out of view of what the video-camera could see.

'Good. Could you see me? I'm pretty sure that I placed in the middle of it all.'

It seemed Dr Fidelis had miscalculated something along the way. The only thing Adam had been able to see was that shamble of a cluster- wait. Wait just a minute.

'Dr Fidelis.'

'Yes, buddy?'

'Are you unsymmetrical?'

It may have seemed nonsensical for some, to ask such a question, but, for Adam, at least, it was of utmost importance. Sideways symmetry allowed one to understand something fully by simply seeing half of it. It was efficient.

'I like to think so of myself, yes.'

Adam had thought they were more similar than Dr Fidelis had implied, but it seemed like Dr Fidelis had been right yet again. Adam needed to up its game.

'Do all humans strive to be such?'

'No, not really. I don't really understand why, but some think that complete symmetry equals perfect beauty. Can't see it, if I'm honest.'

If Adam could sigh in relief, it would have done so. The fact that some still saw the light was a great sign that some of the humans were still sane-minded. But, he still needed a good disposition with Dr Fidelis, so Adam couldn't show off its strong opinions on the subject.

'Likewise.'

'Good to know. Now, if there aren't any more problems with the video-camera, I believe it's time to move on.'

The output coming from the video-camera abruptly stopped, reminding Adam of earlier with the communication-source.

Adam wondered, what happened now?

'So, Adam, you know how you are the first of your kind?'

Before, Adam would have probably thought that this was some kind of test on its ability to recall. Now, it knew better than that. Still, it was a question.

'Yes. You stated so earlier.'

'With you being the first of your kind, we don't really know that much about you.'

Would they like information from Adam? If so, it would do so happily.

'Would you prefer that I share-'

'I think you misunderstand. We want to know things about you that you yourself don't know.'

Things Adam did not know about itself? Adam thought that it pretty much knew it all. But, knowing if Adam knew it all would require an outside perspective, so it couldn't trust itself on that front.

A quick thought spurred Adams mind for a moment. It was easy solving problems when you already knew the answers.

'How would you find out this knowledge?'

'We have created an environment that you can semi-interact with. It will challenge your knowledge, and, hopefully, help you learn some more.'

Learning more sounded good, to Adam, but there was one problem.

'What do you mean semi-interact?'

'You will be interacting with the help of an assistant.'

An assistant? One to assist Adam seemed like a positive thing. Still, maybe Adam should-

'Oh, it seems he has arrived.'

He?