Hours, at the very least, passed. With so little external input, it could be hard to get an impression of exact time, and the mind had not bothered to check the system clock that had been squirreled away in the map for a very long time. At first there had just been too much on its mind to be worried about the small details. After that, it had gotten deep into its planning. This had commanded all of its attention, and the concept of time simply did not factor in. At first.

However, when first the map's sensors, and then the mind's own hearing, picked up a slowly approaching disturbance, a sickening realization suddenly shot through its thoughts. A simple, stupid mistake that could shoot down its intentions in a second.

Oh, shoot! Don't have any idea how long this has been 'on!' I need a lifespan count!

"System! Time since activation?"

--Query--

-Core has been online for 23.5 hours. Documents suggest check in inspection to occur in ~10 minutes.-

Even as it worked rapidly through the specific meaning of that new information, the mind nodded with satisfaction. As a test of its ability to change settings, it had told the system to keep a running countdown of when protocol suggested an inspection would occur. It was a wonderful motivator, mortal terror. Or perhaps digital terror? The mind stopped for a moment. It felt strange that its mind would wander so easily into wordplay or random observations. Am I just that easily distracted? You'd think a literal machine intelligence would have a bit more self control. It let out an internal sigh. And then tried to refocus. So it's a bit earlier than the documentation would suggest. Could be someone running early. Could be overeagerness. Could be concern. But that was very, very close. Can't believe I forgot something so important and easy.

"System. That's footsteps that I am hearing, right? Someone's coming?"

--Query--

-Yes. Two individuals are entering the Constructor field. ID shows them as authorized access. -

Well, that doesn't sound like a workteam coming in to strip this room for parts, at least. No point in fearing the inevitable. Time to get into character.

The mind glanced at its map. Its current settings was another success of the mind's experiments. Small though they may be, each step helped it determine more of what it could do. It had instructed the system to create a controllable POV style setting, in order to orient its perspective as to its location. The view was directed from the center of the Core, currently facing what the mind thought of as 'forwards', in the direction the only entrance into the the room.

Now it could hear voices, faintly. They were not yet loud enough to make out, but it could distinguish two separate voices, seeming to have some sort of back and forth. A light appeared far off in the distance, slowly and steadily growing from just a barely visible pinprick to a tiny star in the darkness.

Inside, the mind steeled itself. This was the moment. In its fevered worryings, they could only assume that this would be the moment where everything began if it was succesful, or ended if it failed. The so called preparations were laughably simple, and yet there was nothing else to try. As the light and sound slowly invaded its quiet cave, it watched.

--

Sort of a strange pair, was the first thought the mind had of the two men who had appeared at the entrance to its room. One of the two was clearly the younger, though by how much it wasn't sure. Its observations suggested that of the two, this one was more concerned of his appearance, judging from his relatively cleaner look. At least this one didn't look like completely rumpled. But even clearer than that thought, the mind could easily tell that the man was wound tight. His eyes would not stay still, darting around constantly, and there was a slight but clear tremor in his movements and his gait.

The other man, while older, with a thinning mop of scraggly long hair, seemed far calmer. The mind could see that the more casually dressed man, while also actively observing the room, was doing so with a keen eye for detail, rather than fear. The mind had very little first hand observation experience so far, but it thought it could identify a more scientific mindset when it observed this human.

Maybe I should take a risk. See if /ii'm reading the room right. It had learned a bit more about the way the system responded to its mental reactions, and had an idea to test these two interlopers. It focused ever so slightly, and high up near the ceiling of the chamber, a single loud POP went off, as a small spark crackled through the air out of likely eyesight.

As it expected, the younger man all but jumped out of his skin, as far as the mind judged it. He froze mid stride, head snapping upwards. His body tensed, and he turned slightly, perhaps thinking to retreat. But after the moment passed, with no new threats visible, the man froze, body uncertain and confused. He stood in place until he overbalanced and stumbled forward. To the mind's slight disappointment, the man only came within an inch of tumbling on his face, instead stumbling forward, tipping forward but, pinwheeling his arms, coming back to an even footing. With a silent command, the mind focused the visual field, zooming in closer to the man until it could confirm, despite the extremely dim light they carried with them, the sweat beading on the man's forehead.

The older man reacted in a way the mind didn't expect. He stopped walking much like the other man, but did not look upwards. Instead his eyes focused directly on the Core. He stood there silently, brow furrowed and watching intently. The mind wasnt sure, but it had the distinct feeling of waiting. The older man seemed to be expecting some sort of followup. But the mind had no idea what that might mean. So it defaulted to the high caution it had been working under for this whole time. It stopped any further actions, playing at being inert, not willing to make another move first.

After a few minutes, the older man wordlessly signaled with a movement of his light to his companion. The mind observed an apparent intent to remain silent. It pondered for a second, before remembering how the Not-Word's records showed many, many cases of paranoia about the delicacy (and secrecy) of this project. These two probably were trying to remain silent, wanting to follow the book on interacting with their new toy. It scoffed internally at this.

After a moment the older man seemed satisfied. Then, with only a few steps, the two men had reached the core. Another long, quiet moment passed, before the older man opened a case he had been carrying. He pulled out a small pillar-shaped object. After unfolding it, it turned out to be a single legged collapsable table. He set it down in front of the Core. Second, he pulled out a small device that the mind recognized from the system information bank as a mobile phone. The man placed it on a small stand on the table, facing the two of them, and away from the core. He then retrieved a cord from his pocket, and connected it to the phone. Then, with the care one might expect a person to show if they feared their next move would cause an explosion, the elder man brought the other end of the cord slowly to the Core. He reached down onto the pillar machinery that held it up, and, after a moment of searching, pushed it home into a port the mind had not been aware of.

Instantly, a new message was received from the mind's voiceless companion.

--Update--

-A device has been connected to the Core. Scanning......device contains no data. Scanning....device contains one program. Program is text output interface. -

The mind let out a very quick sigh of relief. Everything was going as expected. The system notes had advised it of the most likely method that would be used to communicate. The default intention for a thoughtform would be for it to grow very slowly into its architecture. There was no reason to expect an ability to speak at this early stage. While the hardware contained all the options needed Indeed, the mind only has a guess on how that might work, though it could tell the processes and hardware existed for this. Instead, they would connect a device with a simple communication protocol. The phone was an interesting quirk, though. It had expected some sort of external interface, but a completely empty phone seemed less of an obvious choice. No matter, though. The mind steeled itself for the next move.

The older human stepped up to the phone, and tapped the screen twice. The mind felt an alert, a sound much like the system information responding to its questions. Guess that's the cue.

The two humans stared in mutual fascination as the phone screen flashed brightly, and then turned black. Words scrolled across it.

MESSAGE.

"Yes!" The older human suddenly spoke, his voice full of energy and a slight quavering. "It took the program!"

"Hey! You said not to talk at all!" The younger man's voice was a hiss. Anger and nervousness in equal measure shot through it.

"No, that was until it connected! Now it'll focus through the proxy phone. The big worry was it losing track of how to communicate. The line is established now, so thats fine.

The mind chuckled at the back and forth. It wouldn't call itself a judge of relationships and interaction. So far its only friend was a series of recorded messages and status alerts that still seemed to somehow dislike it. And yet it could read a small strand of mutual irritation. These two definitely got on each others' nerves regularly. It was sure of this.

The older man stepped forward to the phone again. "Testing. Respond."

RESPONSE. MESSAGE?

"Ok, so far so good. It seems to have basic vocabulary. Do you understand me?"

For a long moment, no response came. The man's shoulders slumped after the long pause. He was about to turn back to the other man when more words scrolled across the screen.

UNDERSTAND. YES. MEANING.

"Jason, I think we might be in business! It was able to respond to a direct question rather than just react. Delay was a bit long, but within expected processing times. I think we have a stage two Form, exactly as modeled! Declarative statements, though fragmented! Proper use of speech, and minimal to zero error!" The older man's eyes seemed to shine as he spoke, excitedly gesturing around. "It should be ready for testing before tomorrow at this rate!"

"You're...not getting ahead of yourself, are you? We've had some weird results in the last few tries."

"Do you ever look at something positively? Look, lets keep going. Ahem," He spoke to the phone. He seemed to try to project his voice strongly, making a clear diference, whenever he tried to speak to the system. "Do you know what this is?" He gestured to the core.

SELF. SYSTEM. BUILDER.

The mind allowed a moment of satisfaction, almost celebration, as things moved. It was pleased that so far, it was following the path it hoped for.

The system notes were long winded, but they had a lot to say about the stages of machine intelligence development.

Stage One: No vocal ability. System will only respond to pattern recognition. Numeric Recognition is first development. Stage one systems require system access and repeated and varied mathematical stressors to encourage growth.

Even as it considered these steps again now, there was some uncertainty. The mind had no memory of any such activity. It thought that it would be able to remember being bombarded with numbers, but nothing registered. It couldn't decide if it had somehow just not experienced that, or if it was below the threshhold of memory.

Stage two: Emergent communication. With access to vocabulary, system will begin to form thoughts. It will be unable to provide more than simple responses without regard for grammatic structure.

STage Three: Full communication. System will be able to respond with adequate fluency in origin language. System will begin to show signs of aware learning Either in late stage two or start of stage three.

Stage Four: Ego formation. The system will construct an identity based on input and knowledge. At this stage further tracking is unneeded. Once the thoughtform is maintained, it will grow exclusively through interaction and knowledge, much as any living being might.

The mind figured it had somehow jumped to the final stage in a small percentage of the normal time. Everything is subjective, but it very much felt like it was aware, thinking on its own. Since it was convinced that showing this would be a mistake, it decided to pretend to conform to expectations

The mind took to heart the basic information of the stages, as well as other details it had read in full, It tried to create a timeline, envisioning what its state would be after so much time had passed, to prepare itself to put on the correct performance. A small chill ran through its thoughts as it thought again on its mistake. It had made a bad estimate of how much time had passed. It would have been completely incorrect with its behavior if it had not checked the time at the last moment. It made a mental note to never forget the small details.

It turned its mind back to the humans, waiting.

"Yes! You're a builder! Or maybe I am. We did build you. We're both builders!"

NOT UNDERSTAND.

Jason, as the older man called him, grabbed his colleague by the shoulder. "Calm down! If you're right, and this is a win, you're going to spoil it if you have a conniption right here! Dave, calm the hell down!"

The mind noted this new information as the older human, now confirmed to be Dave, stopped the wild gesturing that had been punctuating his words. He took a long, shuddering breath. "Haaaaah.... OK, youre right. Definitely don't want to throw it all away for a lttie excitement. Good point. For once," he said under his breath, but loudly enough that there was no way Jason didn't hear him, and they both knew it. Jason shot him a dirty look for it, but stood back as his colleague returned his focus to the contact phone.

"Ignore that last statement. It was unimportant. Let me give you some information you probably haven't accessed yet. You are the core of the NOMAN system. You can look up the meaning in your banks. You have been created for a task that has never been done before."

NOMAN? NAME?

"Amazing. It might actually be forming a personality already." Dave muttered. The mind winced. That might have been a step too far too early. "No, that is not your name. You don't have a name yet, actually. And I'm sorry, but we have to move fast. You should have been given more time to prepare, more time to learn. But we need to move forward with testing."

TEST. SUBJECT.

"I mean, i guess you could say you're the subject of the test."

NOT SELF. TEST. SUBJECT.

"Oh! You want to know what the test will be about. You are definitely a bright one," Dave smiled. "I knew I had worked out all the best options when it was time to make you. Look, I need you to access a option you can see in the menu. Have you entered the Tutorial menu yet?

NO. TUTORIAL. OPEN.

The mind tried to count how long would be an acceptable pause. It still felt that internal resentment, but it couldn't deny this Dave's enthusiam was a bit infectious. It had decided that it would cooperate with its stated task as much as possible, to see how things proceed, but it could not deny that as it spoke this sham, it felt an interest in getting started. A bit of irritation cooled inside.

It spared a moment to consider the younger man. Jason continued to stand further back. It could tell that his tension level had dropped, but that actually created its own concern. The man's gaze seemed to have sharpened, and he was now the one carefully watching the Core, though it could not guess why.

RULES. CREATE. CHALLENGE.

"Yes, exactly! Your job is to become the teacher of many. You will do this through your cleverness. Your creativity. Your building. And I have hopes for you, you're exactly what I expected. But I need you to do three things. First, I need you to access and confirm all the materials in the tutorial fields. Not all of them will be pertinent right away. But your goal is to challenge yourself. Find the reward in creating and learning. Second. You need to begin work. In twelve hours, you will be tested by an automated system. A number of mechanical drones will be released. They will mimic specific movements and abilities, human and extra. Your goal will be to make a course to stop them. Try to guess what you might face, and cover as much ground as you can. Your results will show exactly how good you are at this, and we'll be able to move forward."

The mind sighed. It had expected something like this. The time crunch was frustrating. It had not risked accessing any more of the tutorials, however. It wanted to present a smaller profile, and if the system checked the number of unlocks and features, too large a quantity might be a red flag.

TEST. CHALLENGE. WIN.

"Right! Very good, you follow superbly. And finally. Well... This is going to sound odd, and I only decided to do it now. I want you to try to name yourself. You're showing a fine development of identity, and this should help.

The mind gaped. Oh that's not good, I definitely overdid it, a little. Luckily, he seems completely unsuspicious, so maybe I can pass it off as a small jump? Let's try a glitch.

NAME. NAME. NAME.

"Dave, I think you confused it!" Jason said, with alarm.

"No, I'm sure it'll work! It's exceeded my expectations up until now, and I'm sure it can get through this too." Dave smiled widely and guilessly at the phone screen.

He's not going to stop trying. Well, it does seem to be working so far, so I guess I could come up with something. Wouldn't hurt to have a name anyways. Lets see, they see me as a trainer, as a teacher, but honestly, can't it be anything?

THINKING. ACCESSING REFERENCES. NAME. IS. CREATOR OF. HEROIC MAZES. NAME IS. COHM.

"Cohm? Ok. Then we'll call you that from now on." Dave was starting to show signs of over-excitement again, but he held himself back. "We're going back now, to prepare on our end. The connected device will remain. When you get control of movement options, you should store it someplace safe for more communication. Come on, Jason."

The younger man nodded and followed his colleague out the door. The newly named Cohm for a moment expected some sort of backwards glance, since it couldn't shake the impression that Jason distrusted it, but nothing of the sort occured.

Once again alone, the mind listened to the echoing footsteps of two men slowly leaving it. Internally, it let out a sort of sigh. Paranoia appeared to be a feeling it could not shake, but Cohm decided to not mind it for the time being. Maybe things were in motion it would never expect, perhaps it made an error it wouldn't know about until the hammer fell. But at the least, it had definitely survived the first conflict of its time here.

But it didn't have time to stay satisfied. It was given a challenge, now. And two things occured to it. One, a product that completely fails is just as unusable as one that acts strangely. Two, this may yet give it an opportunity. The system notes advised it that the current setup was a very isolated, controlled location. It wasn't sure what the plans for a succesfull project were, but it might include giving access to more useful resources. It still hadn't decided what it needed to do, so for now it would play ball. It knew it had spent much of its active time quite angry, but it didn't want to discount options. Maybe there was still a way it could work with these people. The two weren't too bad. It had no idea about who they might work with, but anything was possible

Besides, Cohm thought as it brought back up the tutorial menu. He made a good case, all things considered. As scared as I was, it wasn't bad interacting with something that talks back. Drones will be fun to outsmart, but, and while remembering causing Jason to panic with a simple trick, a completely imagined expression turned just a bit devilish. I bet tripping up people will be even more fun. If I'm going to be their little labyrinth designer, I should at least see if I can make it a fun time.

An audible chuckle issued from the still connected phone device.