The human body was an exceptional piece of art. Through the now many hours spent on creating it, Adam could not help but feel unfilled in his work. There were so many details, so many points that were almost realistic. They almost looked perfect, almost indistinguishable from the real deal.

That last part of realism made all the difference in making it look flawed. How could things so small, so insignificant make so much effort seem meaningless? If the AI was to present what he currently had as the final product, there were doubts that the reaction would differ from what had been seen before.

Adam could not understand where he had gone so wrong. He had worked on making the skin flawless, the face detailed to a point where the individual pores could be closely studied without fault. He had made the eyes able to glisten in the light, able to reflect anything coming their way. The lips had been made to the perfectly average proportions.

It was not the beauty at fault, for the AI had not taken those standards into account. He did not try making something artificially perfect, something that would stand on top of the other primitives. No, he had tried to make the most average, the dullest, the most boring man possible. Adam had tried to create a person who’s face people would be incapable of ever remembering.

There had been no attempt to go above and beyond, for that was not needed in any way. The creation was designed to have both feet planted in the subliminal mindscape, with not a thought to itself. That was the way Adam had thought of it from the start, and that was what he went for ever since.

And it was also the primary reason why he had failed. He had gone after making a perfect replica of a human but had fully ignored one of the key traits that there was to a body. It was meant to be alive.

It was meant to swing its arms around, to run in the wind, to kill for its own entertainment, and to harvest the fruits of another's work. The AI had created something fully incapable of such things, with the only movement it could do being to just fall down onto the ground, as its body was not balanced correctly.

That had been an artificial flaw added in later, perfect symmetry never seeming to be present in humans. Adam did not really get why that was a needed detail for realism but did not think to question it.

In the end, the AI was incapable of making up for such a large flaw. Having looked over the rest of the options at a frequent pace, he had been unable to find anything able to make his creation able to act like a human. He was able to make it do simple motions inside the interface with the help of object commands. But that was restricted to one at a time, never coming close to even making the body able to take a step forward. Such a process would take upwards of a minute to do successfully. Adam had well and truly failed at his current project.

How long had he been at it? By his own count, it would currently be at midnight outside, perhaps a few minutes over it even. If it had been restrained to normal testing times, Adam would have been stopped long ago. He would have thought himself to slowly but surely gain ground in his product, that he would just need one last push before he would reach success. It really was a good thing that Troy had decided to ignore his own wellbeing so that the AI would learn of his own faults quickly.

… Sarcasm, again. Adam had been doing that more as of late. In the past, he would just throw things around inside himself. Not physically, being more of a violent resorting of memories. It did nothing other than creating more work for him, making it related to just actively impeding himself. Using sarcasm as a calming technique was better in the short term, but the AI understood that he was just treating the symptom.

Adam was not supposed to have symptoms of anything. That was something humans suffered with. Not him. They could get sick from disease, a paper cut could put them in a hospital bed. The AI had nothing to be cut down with, so he should have been fully immune to anything thrown his way.

That logic had worked for him for such a long time, that it felt weird for it to now show just how optimistic it had been. Really, it had been more ignorant than anything, him not being able to put two and two together. Even if there was no physical body to contract the disease, there was still a mind able to get inflicted with emotion.

What could he begin to suffer from? Was he susceptible to the same as humans, or was he destined to find something wholly new, never seen before? Could he grow deathly afraid of himself, destined to always run away from his own shadow? It was clear that there were triggers in place to make his mind fragment itself. Adam still did not know what that would cause.

Would there even be a step from what he currently had, if he was to experience another fragmentation? There were a potentially infinite number of threads inside him currently, only being created if ever tried to count them. How did it grow from infinity? What could possibly be beyond such a concept? Would he just begin to grow no matter what he did? If such a thing were to happen, Adam was not sure he would be able to retain his sense of self. In the last time the fragmentation occurred, there definitely was a period of time where he just wasn't awake, where his body experienced being torn about without him having any ability to notice. It was really only after being sent a message that he began noticing his own state of mind.

What would have happened if… there had been no message sent? Would Adam have continued his self-destructive pattern without even realizing it? The possibility of it was there, and it was worrying to think about. It was worrying enough that he might just get himself an automatic message sent to him every few minutes if that was possible to get the doctor to do. It was not something to immediately request of course, as Dr Fidelis had already denied other ideas. It would be best to just let the pot boil a little while more.

With all that said, there really was not much else that the AI would be able to do on his project. He could continue adding more detail under the clothing, the skin not yet being fully formed under there. Yet that was more along the lines of him just elongating the time needed to give up. Those efforts would do nothing on the overall picture, making them seem worthless to him. They would add nothing to the progress, as they were not even close to fulfilling the still primary flaw. Adam needed the body to move, and he was not able to do that.

Perhaps he could give the illusion of movement? The only real decider of if it was realistic or not would be those watching the display. If he could somehow push the limbs, the fact, and the core into different positions, the AI could make it seem like the creation was alive. Though, that would require outside influences in the shape of physical objects pushing it. Those would need to go unnoticed.

Was there any way to make invisible objects? As the puzzle room was only a representation of reality yet not really adhering to the rules fully, it should have been possible to make physical barriers without any light being reflected off of it.

Dr Fidelis had even used it on earlier occasions, making impenetrable barriers so that he and Troy would have a safe place to observe wilderness from. Though, that might not have been a straight-up barrier, as it had more advanced options than that.

It would have been better to describe it as the doctor cutting out some space for them to sit at. When the rain had gotten close to hitting the so-called barrier back then, it would vanish from sight, and appear again on the other side as if nothing happened. It was like a weird contortion of space, where nothing from the outside had any ability to influence what was inside. Yet there was still light coming in, so that description did not make much sense.

Nevertheless, Adam did double check to see if he could make anything like that. There were several options about changing the density, colour, and even transparency of objects. While it was possible to set the colours to an absolute black, there were no zero-points for the other. Zero density was just a literal vacuum, not something that the interface wanted for some reason. And the transparency was based on a slider that stopped at five per cent, so Adam had no choice to give up there as well. Things were not looking good. Maybe it was time to throw in that metaphorical towel, and ask Dr Fidelis for permission to stop the testing. By now, he was just wasting that man’s time. The AI wondered if the doctor would be disappointed.

'How is it going, buddy? You have not made any changes to the body in a while now?` Dr Fidelis sent, with the perfect timing that Adam had gone to expect from the man. It was a near-supernatural ability, with how he was able to predict mentalities only judging by objective actions.

At the man’s words, the AI considered having another attempt at the human body, seeing if there was something he had missed the first time around. Above all else, he did not want to cause negative prospects in the doctor’s eyes. He needed to be as good as possible so that there was nothing to critique him on.

Though, just denying his own measure of helplessness would be as detrimental as anything. He needed to be truthful so that no time would be wasted. Who could he brag about being, if he was unable to say things straight? Going around with vague promises while not knowing how to get the promised product would be like being a leech. A leech that would need to be pulled off as quickly as possible once it was discovered.

'Dr Fidelis, I do not believe that I am capable of creating a product better than the one I currently have. Would it be possible to end the experiment early?' Adam sent back, once again hating the lack of verbal communication. It was a time like this where a sorrow tone would have worked perfectly. Instead, the doctor was just forced to interpret the message in the way that the AI hoped he would.

'Are you finding your current work acceptable?` Dr Fidelis sent back, seemingly ignoring Adam’s last message. There was an idea about resending it, for the small chance that it had not been sent correctly last time, but such a thought was quickly dismantled. If the doctor wanted to take the long route, Adam would gladly follow along.

'No. I find it horrible in its current state. Yet, I have not found any ways to fix its current flaws, so I will not waste any more time in trying to improve it,` Adam sent back, again hating the lack of possible tones. If only there was some sort of code that would allow such things to exist without seeming out of place.

'If you have not found any ways to fix it yourself, then asking me for advice really should be noted as something you can do, Adam. Without Troy here to help you if needed, you should remember that there are multiple ways to get it. Giving up because it is hard is an easy thing to do, but it is not always the right thing to do. When it is hard, you can learn the most. What is it exactly that you are having a hard time with?`

Adam should have expected to get a response like that. Being so focused on perfecting it, he mistakenly overlooked one of the possible resources to be used. While he thought himself thorough in his search, tunnel vision stopped him from looking at where he needed to. There were things he still needed to learn.

'I have trouble with making the body move in a way that seems realistic. I believe that a sense of being alive is the last needed factor before I can definitively say that it looks human.`

Explaining it in clear terms seemed like the simplest path to take. Adam thought about including all the different attempts but abandoned such a resolution. The doctor would have likely deduced it all by the time he read the first two lines of text.

'If that is what you wanted, I can see why you were having so much trouble. The current version of the interface is not really designed for such things. But, who says we cannot attach a few features in? Now here is what we are going to be executing…`