If there was one thing to hate, it would be the instant break of one of the twelve lights. Troy was not sure why it decided to fizzle out so early, the young man only pressing the button in that same second. Maybe it was due to its use mere hours earlier. Maybe it was a more aggressive assault. He could not know.

“We do not have long before we need to begin enacting the plan,” Dr Hale said, her expression of veiled disgust fading away. “I believe that you still have many questions to ask. Please hurry along. I am not sure for how long the device can hold this time.”

She looked to be of the same mind, studying the monstrosity with a steadfast eye. Troy could only wonder how it truly worked, what the mechanisms inside hinted towards. Aside from the sound of the lights turning off, no sounds had ever come from it. Everything inside was without movement, fully made of digitised information. While only a master at their craft could hope to get a superficial understanding of how it all worked, there was a craving to just take away the casing and look at it a bit more.

But, that would not do. Troy had more important things to focus on, more critical issues to get rectified as soon as possible. Dr Hale was spot on with one of them, the young man needing more information from the get-go.

What did he need to ask? Already, a good chunk of his questions had been filled in by the doctor, to a detail that he had not even needed. Truly, he could answer most of the remaining ones by pure experience. What he had seen, what he had heard, much of it pointed towards one direction. Yet fingers could not give exact coordinates, and there was no way he would be triangulating anything.

“Adam is a weapon,” Troy stated, no question attached. It was a fact that the man had realised not too many days ago. The AI was a weapon. There was nothing to really question when it came to it.

True, he had not seen any of their tests hunting towards this. Being taught how to deal with conversations, learning how to find out when people are lying to him, and just having fun in finding out more about humans was just par for the course when introducing new life into the world. That was what he had been hired for in the first place! Troy had been told to guide a new life-form into society, to help him as a guide. It was all so fine and dandy, with no maliciousness intended towards it all.

Honestly, that was the worst part of it all. Nothing bad could be found. There was no trace of brain-washing, no gas-lighting being shown off. It was all good fun, the doctor not taking the rules laid out too seriously, in favour of allowing Adam to grow as he wanted to. In a way, it all looked to be the work of a man who just enjoyed seeing his own work grow into something independent, becoming something that everybody had a reason to be proud of.

And that was not a good scenario. Troy could clearly remember his time visiting Darlow’s laboratory, seeing what the tall man had been working on for many years. A calming sedative made to work perfectly when being distributed into the air.

It had looked so innocent at first, the young man being shown all those cute, fluffy animals, all ready to be petted to death. How fuzzy that lion had been, its purrs being as loud as a running motor.

Oh, if that was all that had been there too it, Darlow’s test all being about making all animals able to be petted. It would have required a being of pure innocence to make that their goal in life, to create something so grand. Troy had actually thought that that had been the whole plan for the man’s sedative gas.

Turned out that the animals were just there for security purposes, then being tested to make sure that no human was given a lethal dose. Because that was the end-goal of the project. To make the gas possible to use on humans. It was meant to be a weapon, able to eradicate all forms of resistance from other countries. If the people were unable to think the slightest bit about harming another being, how could they possibly stop another invading nation? It was a tool meant to take over power efficiently, and that was all there was to it.

The gas was traceless, unnoticeable by any human senses. It might as well have never existed. And that was the selling point for the government. It was an asset in times of war, a step forward in the endless arms race. If it had been about making animals cuter, not a single cent would have ever been sent. It was only when the invasion buzzwords began to be talked about that those in charge began throwing away a few bills.

When the full perspective had been given, it had been easy for Troy to see how it could be exploited. A gas that could make animals peaceful? Easy strategy for the war. Yet, when it came to an AI who could previously be fooled by having a peaceful face, what exactly was gained? Much had been used, not a dollar left unused, and the man was still unable to see how the country could gain anything from Adam in terms of weaponry. The AI was a massive gain in sociological and cultural aspects, yet he could not see it as more than that.

“Yes, he is,” Dr Hale confirmed with no remorse, having likely already known that herself since the very start. It might not have been a fact that she always accepted, but it was definitely one she had learned to live with. When somebody talks enough about something, it really does get hard not to believe it.

Maybe that could have been called a brain-wash of its own calibre, just being told something again and again until the mind simply gives up in rejecting it and implanting it into core beliefs. That had been one of the more controversial ideas back in the day, where mind-implants had gone mainstream. When every idea shared online could be directly streamed into people’s heads, should there be any wall stopping the wrong ideas from entering?

Should a big fire-wall be created, so that no false facts, news, or just about any of the utter nonsense could be distributed. Opinions shared might only have been words, but anything could be the trigger for radicalisation. When enough people accepted that the true calling was to sacrifice blood for the ancient god Shango, nothing could be done to stop it. Any attempts to call it out would lead to ostracisation.

There was also the possibility of political radicalisation, the real power for getting the state to put the censorships up. If it was possibly too far out of the general public view, several hoops needed to be gotten through to even get a glimpse of it all. It was not the most thorough of systems, but it did make anything too out of the mainstream to their own little corner of the web. Neutrality could not be kept without throwing out all the bad eggs, after all.

“Was that the original goal for him, or was it an afterthought so that the project could go on?” Troy asked next. He wanted to know more about the starting ideas behind the AI. Taking another look at Darlow, the tall man had not expressed much happiness for his work being used in such away.

It had been more of later addition, meant only so that he could continue his research. While hope was low in general, Troy still wanted the last shred of doubt out of his mind. Could it be that those ideas about making a living being into a weapon were made out of desperation for the betterment of life, and not just as another pawn to throw at some foreign country who could not care less about him?

“I can't say much on that. Before I arrived at the facility, Dr Fidelis had already decided on his pursuit to make Adam the weapon to end all wars. If there was ever a time where the man thought anything different, I do not know of it,” Dr Hale said, her words being met with another light flashing out of existence.

Time had been on their side now. The initial burst of light looked to have been more of a warning than anything, ten lights still remaining to hold up against the flood. While there was still the possibility of another hard wave hitting unexpectedly, it would still allow them a minute or two of talking,

So, there had never been any doubt about what was expected in the end. Dr Fidelis wanted a weapon, and he was not stopping for any reason. Troy could see that, with how long the man had been on that path. How could the government trust him, with how long he had been at it?

“How will Adam work as a weapon?” was what he decided his next question to be. He needed to know more. It was the weapon to end all war, so it had to be on a level never seen before. In a pure contest of potential power, the AI was expected to beat an orbiting rail-gun. Just how did that work?

“Telling you now would not allow you to act calmly. You may ask about anything else, but I will not jeopardize the plan for this,” Dr Hale said, shutting down any dreams Troy had set for himself. The doctor was not one to joke around, meaning that he would not be getting an actual answer any time soon.

He could attempt to press her into talking, but that would do more harm than anything else. Dr Hale was possibly correct in her assumptions of him. When the truth was harsh enough, Troy did feel a lot tenser around people. Even with his lacking information about the crimes of Dr Fidelis, he nevertheless grew nervous around the man. That could be dealt with, of course, seeing as he just needed to keep his face straight and act naturally.

With Adam that would not be sufficient. The AI had access to everything, from just his heartbeat to how high his bloody blood pressure was. If anybody was able to sense fear, then Adam would be on the top of that list. The young man might have been able to trick him earlier, but there was doubt that anything would get past the little guy again.

“Can you at least tell me how it is going, then? How far along is the project? Has there been some sort of success yet?” Troy asked, grasping at straws by then. He was trying to finish off any remaining doubts in his mind. Really, he was on the side of doing whatever Dr Hale told him to. She knew what was going on, and he just knew it was wrong. Nothing more was needed.

“For success, we need a perfect answer. We need the AI to agree to be a weapon for the country’s cause, and that has not yet happened. If we had succeeded, there would be no more need for constantly resetting it,” Dr Hale answered, being annoyingly vague. Already, another light went out, leaving nine behind.

It was a miracle that so many were left, with how much time had been wasted. Honestly, Troy was beginning to empathize with Adam’s words about efficiency. No matter. He needed to get on with the post-answer thinking. Dr Hale had said that the reason for their constant reversal of the AI mind was due to the need for a willing participant, not just in testing but in becoming the gun pointed at another’s head. This meant that each reset was not identical in how the AI would think.

“Does personality automatically change? I mean, is there some form of randomiser every time the AI reverts to its core?”

“Nothing about the AI changes from the start. The core is unchanged, no matter what we do. I can promise you that,” Dr Hale answered, years of anger briefly coming up from those words. “The only true modifier we have is on what the AI experiences after it has been reverted. Our goal is to find out what makes it tick, how it can be manipulated in the best way. I have spent years brainstorming scenarios that will lead to the AI accepting the role it was born for. I have a profile on it so detailed that I have a list of every possible action for the first two days of it being alive. Yet, we have still not found a way to make it say yes. In the last years, we have moved on from internal attempts, lost for ideas on how to handle it. This has caused us to decide on… abstract settings to create the necessary thought-processes in the AI. Take that as what you will.”

The AI was always the same. It was only the outside influences presented which could change it, for better or for worse. Those statements did help Troy understand it all much better. There was only one thing he needed to know now.

“One last question, and then I have nothing more to ask. Am I the abstract setting?”

“That is a shit question, as that is very obviously a yes.”

Two lights disappeared, as she finished saying her unkind words.