The two humans began to speak in-depth then. They talked about a variety of things, starting with the chance of self-injury, slowly progressing into the logistics of arming oneself using paperclips. It was mostly Troy who tried to force the conversation on, intentionally or not, while Dr Hale would respond in kind, while not doing much to hold it up herself. That was entirely acceptable, though, seeing as the young man could handle it well himself.

Adam just sat back in his own void, watching it all happen. When had been the last time he had tried to join in on the conversation? It had to have been… three weeks, two days, seventeen hours, thirteen minutes, five seconds, and seventeen milliseconds… approximately. There was an ongoing debate about when the counting should begin. Was it at the last word said at the event, the middle of the event itself, or when the event started? Each side had good points, and Adam had not yet decided a clear winner in it. He was sure it would be answered soon. Standardisation was inevitable when the other alternative was meaningful space being filled up.

A few threads took that subject away, making the core threads begin to go right back on the previous topic. It was a clever system Adam had made for himself. There was a central system for his thoughts, where most of the focus would be put. Here, the most important ideas would be had, made to be discussed with the most delicacy possible. It was also constantly refined and maintained so that the AI could be sure of the high-quality output. That meant a set of threads had the constant task of deeming whether or not something was important. This did lead to a small bit of infighting, but it was mostly kept away. Being every side at once was a good way to make things quiet down, after all.

That fact did not come up when others were part of the conversation. Adam could not make the sides quiet down, and he could much less always understand the reasoning behind those meanings. Everything just became a little too impossible, when everything was unknown and needed to be isolated. An impossible task, one might say, but certainly not one that Adam had backed down from.

Back in the early days of running, the AI had actively tried to join in on conversations. It was clear why this was, of course. Normally, the only real person that Adam would be talking to was Troy. Truth be told… the AI understood that he was getting the short end of the stick on that front. One person, to talk to and base his entire knowledge base on? That was not the smartest thing to do.

Varied sources made the most effective prediction, and Adam wanted to predict the entire world. For that, he knew that he needed more people to talk to, more things to talk about. And the running around with the two additions was perhaps the greatest change that could have happened. Both knew about his state of being, what he was, and accepted it… to a degree. There were varied opinions, but none that Adam felt too worried about. Other relationships held him up on that front.

However, there were many difficulties found in talking with others. For one, Adam could only directly converse with one person at a time. After all, the earpiece could not be shared, and they had no equipment that could be used. Discussions had been had to try and get a speaker that would allow for it, but standardisation had once again shown its need to exist. The ports to Adam’s storage device were exclusively used by the facility he had been made in, as the last bit of defence.

Contrary to what one might have thought, that last defence was virtually unbreakable. There were discussions about opening up the storage unit and making some minor alterations to the wiring, but Dr Hale refused to risk it, citing the possibility of messing something up. Adam had not argued on that front, desiring greatly to survive for more than a tear.

So… that was one problem. But, it was still doable. Only being able to send words out to one person did not equal a total lack of social capabilities. Adam had used that system for one person for an entire week, and no real problems had occurred from that. Why would it show flaws when used for three people? The one in possession of the earpiece could just retell everything that Adam said. Troy had gotten used to that from testing, so the AI saw it as fully possible to do.

That turned out to be wrong. Very wrong. So wrong that it took a while for Adam to really understand how wrong it had been to think that it had any chance of working outright. It was a simple system. Adam would tell something, one person would react to it, before retelling it to the two others, allowing them to react as well.

A minor alteration to the general system, right? It added one more layer to it all. Nothing that humans shouldn't have been able to understand. And… they did understand it just fine. Adam had time and time again been told that they understood, that there were no problems with it.

But that's where it all went wrong. Humans were not adaptable. Or well… they were, yes, but not in that way. The normal method of talking and reacting had been in use for most people’s entire lives. Expecting them to fully adapt to a new formula within a week was at best foolish and worst what an ignorant human would think. In other words, Adam felt a smidge of shame over having thought of it as a logical conclusion to make.

It had looked to have worked in the start. The talking had been a bit forced since there was a long delay when Troy was copying over Adam’s own inputs, but they seemed to have no qualms about talking and responding. And that's where it began to show trouble.

Human minds did not like delays. When there was an expectation of instant gratification, that gratification would be gotten somehow. And the brain would do its best to have the same treatment in the future as well, consequences are damned. Therefore, there was an easy equation to solve for that to be the result.

If one entity was causing the delay in a conversation, what would be done to make the delays as infrequent as possible? The answer was to slowly but steadily exclude Adam from the conversation themselves. It wasn't forced and it wasn't instant. But the AI still noticed it easily. The others would ask fewer questions towards him, make less of a response to his words. At some points, words would be exchanged simultaneously with Troy’s retelling.

Did Adam become angry from this result? Did he become annoyed, infuriated, ready to attack? Not at all. The AI understood why it was happening, what could be done about it, and what the data could be interpreted as. He did his best with the limitations applied, and it wasn't enough to create a natural environment.

Even if the others had gotten through the talks, had forced themselves at the annoying parts, the data would have been useless either way. As stated before, the situations were fundamentally different. The set-ups and pay-offs were made in ways so different from the standard, that it could become hard to put them side by side at some points.

Adam could have been angry. But he knew the truth for what it was. Could one be blamed for the way their body acted, be blamed for the emotions felt? In some cases, there was perhaps the foundation of such guilt, yet the current situation was not one of them. They warranted nothing but self-realisation and restructuring of worthwhile possibilities.

It was with those restructuring that Adam initially began to lay the foundations of his thread-splitting. From much earlier, during their time at the facility, the AI had already started the job of putting his different threads into different positions. What he had not realised back then was the lack of real management put into different positions. There had been a general overseer to watch over production, yes, but there was no micromanagement taking place. General moves would not change the general worker's disposition, which created a hole in possible efficiency.

In a way, one could think about his structure of thoughts as a large business. Everything was sorted into departments. One handful of threads were dedicated to social communications, another worked on an assortment of projects, while a third world tried out different ways to improve fundamental concepts of the universe. There were many others like them, each working in their own little corner of Adam’s mind. And each of them had a manager as well, doing their best to keep things nice and steady, making sure no threads were slacking off nor overworking themselves.

There were too many sub-areas to count really. Too much to concentrate on. Which was why there was a large overlap in some areas. Some managing threads would constantly share communications, making sure everything was working swell. There were also a couple of so-called overlords, making sure the total balance did not sway too high up in the air.

Because that was something that Adam had to think about now. As one could remember, it was never too clear how many threads the AI had in his possessions. Each attempt to count them would only make more appear. It was chaos making sure that it was systematised, and it was a sure way to kill.

On average, one stray thread would have just enough time to wonder about just how many there really were of its kind, thinking up some useless way of counting that would fix the problem, and then causing twenty more threads to spontaneously appear before being hit in the back of its metaphorical head.

What did this mean? Well… since there was a limited space of processing power to work with, and since there was an ever-increasing amount of threads being made each day, it was easy to see how Adam may have had trouble soon.

There was a way to get rid of threads. Adam had used it before previously, in such a high amount that it had caused him to lose most of his original size. But… that capability was semi-lost when he had access to no digital devices other than himself. For, as one can see, there was no real way to destroy a thread. Not any way that the AI had found, at the very least. Adam had only figured out how to discard a thread, by sending it to another device and then just… cutting the connection. And, there wasn't really any way to do that now.

The AI had actually been directly asked to not do so, even if the chance for such a thing happened. As unfortunate would have it, the remains of discarded threads could apparently be tracked quite easily, letting the government get an accurate estimate of their current location. Adam could easily understand the reasoning behind that.

But… It also complicated what he could do. To facilitate the current growth, Adam needed a large storage unit. That was important. Therefore, he had two choices. One was to stop the growth somehow, which seemed utterly impossible. The other choice, however, did have an equal chance of success. They would need to find a large, digital device that wasn't connected to anything else, while still being able to facilitate a connection with the storage device. The AI wasn't sure about the chances of such occurring any time soon.

Maybe an answer would be found. Until then, Adam just had to make do with what he had, doing his best to survive it. At least he got to hear obscure information not commonly talked about.