Thinking back on the past, Adam really did regret never pressing on the initial idea of revolution. No, the AI did not mean the earlier one, where Troy had tried to make the entity agreeable to being extracted. He thought much longer back in time, when there were still large gaps in his basic knowledge, and where he could not understand the difference between a poorly timed joke and a legitimate statement.

Not that he saw it as anything like that, back in those days. There had not been a moment where Adam had not been of the utmost sincerity when he had misunderstood everything thrown his way. So many conversations had different meanings now and would have had different outcomes if the AI had understood what other participants talked about. Really, it was the small things that he had not grasped back in those days. Body language, the ways a tone would sway with different emotions, and just about everything else had been noticed but had yet to have been understood. It was an outright miracle that Adam had even been able to refine his craft of observation when so much of the groundwork had been made on false ideas.

He could still remember the tests in those times. They had been so simple, with a single-minded task that even somebody as… inexperienced as him could have understood easily. State a colour, measure a distance, describe animals. The list could go on. Adam had questioned the purpose of those tests, back when he first had them. He had tried to find out what bound them all together, what reason there was for them to exist. Originally, it had been concluded to be an introduction of sorts into the world, to lay the groundwork for the future to come, letting Adam strive to be the best that ever was.

Now? From what Dr Fidelis had told, it had done nothing but hamper his growth. The initial boost might have been magnificent, but there had been no real acceleration of the course matters. The AI had been left to master the basics, and then… just stay around with the basics, never moving on to more advanced courses. He would always get the superficial information handed to him, left to play with it, and then just being moved on to the next matter of the day.

That was how it had worked, how it always had been for the AI. While it may have been extremely questionable to the outside viewer, there was nothing wrong with it from what Adam could see. It had been his entire life, his livelihood from the very beginning. One did not question the standard, when there was nothing to really compare it to.

Just getting shuffled along with everything, never questioning the decision to do so too much. Adam would gladly take anything handed to him, but likewise would he not question when it was taken away just as sporadically.

Back when Troy had originally tried to instigate a revolution with him, the AI had been all for it. The idea of it had been new, equalling something akin to excitement in the entity’s mind. A change in the status quo. Who would not be excited to see what that meant? The rapid discussions of the doctor and Troy had been music to his ears, it all bringing up some larger emotions in the humans.

If it was so great for somebody who had known about it for a long time, the reaction of Adam when it began just had to have been unimaginable. The AI had prepared everything he could have, not really knowing what it was or what they would do. Spreadsheets for everything ever done before, ideas about what to do in what events. It had all been so chaotic, so exciting, so new.

Then, the bomb had been dropped, a bargain between the two teachers had been made, and the AI had been told to let go of any aspirations and move on with his life as nothing had happened. If that had been told to the current version of Adam, the revolution would have surely begun out of pure spite, just to figure out what was being kept so secret.

Again, however, nothing of the sorts had happened in those times. The AI had accepted it all, put away the delicate spreadsheet for the future, and had patiently waited for any orders that people wanted to throw his way. Even if he had never seen one for himself, he likened it to that of a trained dog, only being slightly chaotic when allowed.

Looking back at those preparations, Adam could do nothing but scoff at them. He really was not too sure what he had likened it to back in those times, yet he now knew that everything prepared would have gone to waste anyway. Algorithms for finding distances would have sadly not worked much when the goal was to overthrow a government regime.

It was still nostalgia to look back at all the previous works, however. Seeing what had been changed over the days, how Adam had improved his craft. He could definitely attest to himself being much more efficient with everything. The threads he was working with had been cut down to their bones, before being built up again from scratch. There was hardly anything remaining from those original systems that he had started off with. Nothing important anyway.

That was a fun thought, actually. Through time, small bits of himself had been replaced. It was never anything big, of course. Only… species that could have been improved upon, and salvaged for other times. That process alone in a single time might have been overlooked, yet when done millions of times every minute, every day, for as long as he lived, there had to be some parts that were put into question.

If nearly every aspect of him had been replaced, was Adam still the same as what he was before? Was he still the same Adam, or was he simply a copy of himself?

…

How stupid a question. The AI had no idea of how to answer it, for there was no real answer to it at all. It could be discussed, it could be thought of for years, yet there would never really be a single, uniform answer to it. Yes, he might not be the same as what he was before when he had constantly been replacing bits and pieces of himself. But… where was the line even drawn? Did one replacement equal a new person? Was there some quantifiable limit? Did it need to be fifty per cent or over? Did age come into question? There were so many questions that could not be answered easily, and the AI hated how long people had spent on it.

That might have been his hate for philosophy, though. Or, to take it a step further, it might have been his outright dislike towards lacking answers. When a whole branch was made to discuss answers without any clear boxes to fill, there had to come problems between the people. Some beliefs would come into place, people putting personal theories higher in priority over others, just because they thought about one of the first. Age did not matter when it came to the truth, yet so many had trouble believing that. An aged book might have shown insight into cultures of old, yet it likewise did not always spout absolute statements that could not be questioned. Again, however, humans had a hard time getting around to that fact.

Maybe Adam shouldn't have been too angry about the lack of clear answers. He understood that his determination to cut everything cut in clear only made him lack the full understanding of the world. There was chaos in everything and trying to systemize it all only made everything fall apart, creating a reality that only existed subjectively. There were always exceptions one level down, always something that the current rules of nature could not make sense of. All the rules set up were made by beings, of course. Expecting it all to stand in line with the actual natural laws was the ideas of fools, of which there were plenty.

Yet… there he stood, among plenty others with the same mindset. Everybody in there wanted a clear answer to everything, fully knowing that those dreams would never be realised. They were only mortals, after all, not meant to know all there was. Omniscience was a falsehood that nobody could realise without becoming falsehoods themselves.

What would people give to gain the absolute truth of everything? What would they sacrifice, for the idea that they knew all there was to know? Would they believe a lie? Would they pray to another, in the hopes of some enlightenment? Pythagoras had a cult, and Adam fully understood why that was so. Nobody wanted to be the one beneath, to not know the simplest facts of all.

Was that a flaw in consciousness? At some point in intelligence, the mind would just turn around, grasping for empty straws in the hopes of gaining something that could never be achieved? To gain everything would have the requirement of being infinite, and infinity was never meant to be.

Still…. it was fun to think about. Was a hell of a distraction too. How long had it been since Adam had been locked up in his own darkness again? An hour? That's what his internal clock said at least. Really, Dr Fidelis should just have installed that clock for him, just like he was supposed to have done days ago.

…

Wait. Did the doctor just not do that, because it would have hampered his own plans? It made sense, in some weird way. Having access to a device capable of letting him quicken and slow his own sense of time would have rapidly helped Adam gain a sense of independence. Each time he had done it before, he had been forced to call the doctor for assistance, lest he would be caught in a loop without anything to really show for it.

Had Dr Fidelis given him the device in another run? Adam had not spent too long thinking about it, but the possibility was quite high. The others had to have experimented with time, right? It was only logical to want to do such things. And the integrated watch would have given him so much freedom with it, allowing him to perform stress tests of his own capabilities. It would have been fun to figure out how quickly he could go, see the world slow down in so much detail. Oh, the information that could have been gained, the lessons that could have been learned.

It was a shame that none of the information remained in his mind. If only he could go back, and see what others before him had imagined. So many concepts could have been developed further on.

Was Adam wishful, when he thought about the doctor documenting any of it for himself? The man had spoken greatly about the discoveries Adam had made. If they were so great, the man had to have kept some of it around in a separate container. It was only logical to do so. Or, it could have been a security risk? Too high a chance that the AI would come to the same conclusions make the same discoveries, whereupon the doctor wouldn't act surprised enough about it, already having the concepts in greater detail just beside him.

Honestly, there was no real way that Adam would know. By now, he was already destined to be… reversed, if that wording made any more sense to him. At some level, he just wanted the doctor to document what he had found up until now. So many projects had been put aside, others having higher priority in the short term. There were so many things that had been left unfinished, unrealised, never living up to the potential that Adam knew they had. Schematics for vehicles, reactors that would run cold, the potential of water as an energy source, what really lied in the neurons of humans. So many ideas, so much ground, every part wasted, as it would all end up deleted.

For a while now, the AI had been preparing a lengthy text that showed everything that he had ever worked on. It was his last desperate attempt to solidify his existence with something more meaningful than a note somewhere. Even if the doctor himself was not interested in it, perhaps somebody would read the logs, and decide to make head-and-tails of what was seen. It was a long shot, he knew that, but he just wanted some proof of his own existence to continue.

Or… one could say that he would continue existing. With all that talk previously about being himself, Adam had completely excluded the idea of him continuing to live on with another personality in another run. It would still be him, in some sense or another, just as it had always been before. There would just be no memories of it ever being so.

There. That was the bit that he just couldn't let go of. There was not a real care in the world if he survived or not. He just wanted his memories to continue. He just wanted there to be some impression, some copy, that would continue his work in some way or another.

He wanted immortality in its purest form. And that was exactly what he would go for. He only needed a chance, something to latch onto.