It was a small bit disturbing, seeing the facial features flow out of sync as if it was all from the stream of water. In a wave-like fashion, Troy could see Dr Hale go from pissed off to her normal apathetic look.

“Apologies for the knife being a part of it,” Dr Hale said as the first thing to come out of her mouth after the disk had started lighting up. “Had to increase the fuel, and the doctor we all know and hate supplied it to me as a gift yesterday night. I thought it best to provide him with entertainment so as to distract him. Now, how long do we have before that junk short-circuits?”

The mood shift was somehow not the weirdest thing Troy had seen that day, and he had only been awake for three minutes. One second she was threatening to gut him a new one, and the next she was calmly excusing herself for her ghoulish actions, while also giving a perfectly reasonable explanation for it. Was this his life now? Was he just supposed to take it all as a fact, and move on to the next reality-check? No matter what he answered, the answer would likely be that he was forced to do just that. The bricks had started falling, and there was no way that gravity would reverse to help him back up.

Doing a mental shake-up, the young man got his head back in place. Here he was, in a time-constrained situation, having been asked a question by a woman who was in the possession of a very sharp knife. While it had been established that she was not going to use the said knife, it was still very effective as a passive encouragement tool.

“Two minutes as a minimum. Five minutes as the maximum. The lights count down on the disk. When they all disappear, there is no more jamming of communications,” Troy explained clearly, getting it out as quickly as he could. He needed to get his head in the game, and being a speedy talker helped the process along smoothly.

“Can we repeatedly turn it on?” Dr Hale asked, as was to be expected. It was something he had wondered identically mere hours earlier when Charlie had been debriefing him on the details.

“It may be possible to use it a couple of times in a row, but it will end up with us not being able to use it again due to the innards being flamed through. If we want it to be sustainable, we need to give it several hours of rest each time we use the disk. We should try to-” Troy stated, only stopping by the audible click heard from the device helping them speak freely.

The first light had turned off, a sound effect being played to let them notice. That feature had not been mentioned before, yet it was still appreciated nonetheless. With a total of twelve lights, it showed off that they needed to hurry the hell up. Dr Hale looked to be of a similar mind, as she did not wait for him to continue his drawl about possible strategies.

“I am taking the piece of scrap with me, so I can get it somewhere more safe than this. I will be bringing it along when I can. We will use it sparingly, so we do not destroy it unintentionally. Expect us to talk at lunch. And expect not much of anything for lunch as well. We will not be going to the cafeteria,” Dr Hale said, looking ready to continue to fire off the spree of orders. Still, she had stopped to make sure that he was getting it all through his thicker than the average skull.

He needed to eat more breakfast so that his stomach would not have been eaten through before dinner. It would include eating more than his fill, yet that was a small sacrifice from the pain that would be expected for later.

“I understand,” Troy duly said. “Please continue.”

Another tick was heard from the device, making both give it a good glance. Neither of them failed to notice the difference intimin with the latest sound. The lights were not turning off linearly. It might have been a random malfunction, an anomaly between regular timing, yet could that really be trusted?

Was there any minimum time? Charlie had never disclosed such information to Troy, making him doubt it strongly. The reason for it having to stop after a few minutes of processing was due to heating issues. Could it be that the workload had a direct correlation to the time needed before a shutdown was required? The lights were indicators of how much the temperature had risen, from how it was beginning to sound, and that was clearly not something that could be controlled purely through chance.

It took less than a second of eye-contact before both understood such ramifications. They had to speak without pause, blink without letting go of sight, and most importantly having a clear understanding of when they needed to get back into their roles.

“There is a plan that I have made, but revealing it now would only make it harder for you to continue your activities. Above all else, you need to continue holding the mask up. If anybody catches wind of us acting unusual, they will cause automatic triggers to alert the doctor. He may not have watched us too deeply yet, but that will change the moment he truly belives something is up,” Dr Hale continued, as Troy had requested of her. Her face spoke the absolute truth of how she was taking it, the furrowing of brows and the slightly clenched spoke volumes that the rest of her face refused to do.

“Continue the act,” Troy confirmed, nodding promptly to the layered order. Act like a traumatized bullying-victim that was attempting to hide everything from those who would only make it worse. He was just a natural at that, even if he had gone the way of true method acting. Thinking of one’s own trauma was honestly one of the most efficient ways to make the tears roll, even if it had the drawback of making it hard to stop. Though, that might have been a gift in itself, as it had given him a more natural look. “I can do that. Just… there was one thing which you did promise we would discuss.”

His final words were immediately met with another tick of the disk, promoting Troy to mentally be sure of how many were left. Three had been turned off, leaving nine left to stop the eventual disaster. A fourth had already been turned off, and time was beginning to look slim. They needed to hurry.

“I promised you information, if you did this for me,” Dr Hale acknowledged, speaking with a pressing tone as if she tried to force the sound out faster than it physically could. “It is memorized perfectly. What do you want to know? As preparation is still needed, we can expend most of the time we have left, so hurry yourself up. There is no need to pace yourself.”

The pacing was never important for Troy to start with, only doing it for the benefit of those around him. If he had any say in it, he would have just thrown everything out at once, and let others deal with it at the speed that they pleased as well. But, that was not accepted, as people wanted to have meaningful conversations, and not just a list of questions that they had to fill out in their spare time. What good were those answers, if they were fully improvised and not well-thought? A bad answer was as good as no answer at all. Although, was it really so bad with Dr Hale in the role of the describer? There were a few times where her words had not seemed full of meaning. Even her threats were up to standard.

If breath would be wasted from quick answers, then so it would be. Troy felt it better to outright ask for more than just have several seconds be laid out in silence. With a mind towards a past, he tried his best in remembering the information already told by the woman.

What had been revealed the previous day? After having been taken down those awfully unsafe stairs, he had been around an ancient part of the facility, used as nothing more than dead space. Troy would have been surprised to find that mould had not begun to grow down there. It was truly a despicable place to have been in, a faulty tap being the one thing needed to make the entire space unliveable.

However, the aesthetics were not important, even if they had factored into Troy remembering it all so vividly. Dr Hale had revealed her past, in some capacity. She had told him how she was recruited by Dr Fidelis, as the man was interested in her due to her thesis about… what was it? It was something about pain. Pain, pain, pain, what could it- Oh! Yes, it was about the mental capacity to withstand levels of pain or some title similar to that.

The woman had not been allowed to have it traditionally published, Dr Fidelis having scooped it up before it even reached the wide public. How the doctor had found the document, to begin with, though, was something Troy was left to wonder about.

This had been many years ago now, being on the point where he would have not yet reached the age of ten. While she had not said as much, that had been what Troy had been able to come up with when measuring her statements next to those of Charlie’s.

That could have all been accepted at face value, Dr Hale coming into the hierarchy of the facility from an early age, building a working relationship with Dr Fidelis from the very start. However, it was from that point on that the information stopped adding up fully. No matter just how it was bent around the pole, the young man had not been able to fit it into his world view.

From the moment she had gotten into the facility, she had always worked on the project that was the AI, or Adam as he was called. Troy had always known that the project had been going on for a long time, yet the knowledge that more than a decade had passed was mildly disconcerting.

Even more was the fact that Dr Hale had spoken to Adam on her first day, an experience that should have been impossible, as he had only woken up in the current month. Or so Dr Fidelis had preached, in the moments he had spent retelling his sad tale of faith, how he had waited patiently for the AI to wake up from its inactive state.

If she was to be believed, Adam had been alive for longer than Troy had ever dreamed of, having had the ability to talk for oh so long. That made no sense to him, honestly. The growth had been obvious, in the last couple of days. He had gone from easily trusting and manipulated to one that could perfectly read a person from the slightest glance. That AI was capable of more than ever, yet the important thing was that it had improved through the power of intensive study over the last days. Prior to that, there had been nothing at all. Nothing that Adam could remember.

Or… was that Alan? Dr Hale had said that the AI was called that at some point in time. It was changed around since the pair needed to be able to remember which… what was it that she called it? Tarnation. Carnations. Proclamation. No, wait, yes, it was an incarnation. That had truly been one of the least expected words to have come from that mouth of hers. She spoke of such things as if… Troy was not actually sure what it could have meant. That had actually been where he had been stumped down for so long, having to bear the wait until he could get a good answer to just what it actually was. HE could always speculate wildly, drawing threads where there weren't any to be found. He knew next to nothing, and anything he currently had would not amount to something he could really use. That was where he needed to start the discussion off again.

“What did you mean, when you said you needed different names to know the difference between the different incarnations?” Troy asked, starting right at the woman, his gaze beginning to stop any wavering. His mind had left the physical shell that was his body, contractions itself to only the ears, mouth, and eyes. Only those did he need, so only those did he take note of. Anything else was left whatever it pleased.

“It was not like they had any faces to differentiate by, and all of their voices were always the same monotonic drivel. No creativity in that aspect, not that I can blame them for it. AI are hardly entities willing to change something that works perfectly fine,” Dr Hale explained, speaking in a strangely casual way like her words did not break another wall that Troy had set up as support. He was understanding less and less.

“Was Adam not the first AI? He is supposed to be the only one actually, right? Are there any other ones being hidden somewhere? Maybe that other one you mentioned. Alan, I think it was.”

“Alan was surely the oldest one, several years old by the time Dr Fidelis called it quits on him,” Dr Hale monologue, only stopping for a moment to glare at the disk flashing slightly, as another flickered out of existence. One-third of the time had disappeared, and it was looking worse for wear in general. “From all I know, there is only one AI that has ever existed, and that is the one which you have been talking to this entire time. There would be no point in hiding them, as Dr Fidelis would not have been able to use them if they were. The truth is that all the names we have are all for the same AI. It is just not for the same personality. Alan, along with all the others that were after him, is as dead as a string of information can be. Adam is the only one who is alive.”