His voice was cutting, yet also squeaky in just the wrong way. Specifically, in the way, where you didn't want to punch him, but instead just punch yourself because it was faster.

 

Troy knew it was because of the radio being messed up, but, really, who could have lived with themselves, if they knew that such sound would ever be produced from their inventions?

 

“Yeah, I'm ready, Dr Fidelis”, Troy said with a grimace. “Before we start the explanation of the test and all, though, would it be possible for you to readjust the frequency on the communicator a bit? Your voice sounds a bit… stiff, to say it properly.”

 

*What? That shouldn't be happening. The frequency is supposed to adjust automatically, with distance as the modifier. The only way it could sound stiff is if the earpiece is supposed to be…*, Dr Fidelis said, but cut himself off, without explaining it to completion.

 

What was he thinking?

 

*... Troy.*, Dr Fidelis stated.

 

“Yes, Dr Fidelis?” Troy asked. He didn't like that tone of his.

 

*You, really need to go to bed sooner, buddy*, Dr Fidelis began. *I have the excuse of needing to plan tests. You, as the resident test subject, is supposed to be in optimal condition. This means that you need to not still be up at two in the morning.*

 

Troy was starting to see the whole picture, with that statement. The whatever-it-was-called had picked up Troy's personal earpiece being used during the night, and adjusted to it. This sounded like it demanded it to be worn through. Wouldn't that mean that Dr Fidelis could look at when Troy had been using the earpiece?

 

It did not sound like anything Troy should be asking into. He wouldn't be wanting to give Dr Fidelis any bad ideas now.

 

“Message received,” Troy confirmed. “I'll try to get a good sleep schedule going. Starting tonight, of course.”

 

Troy could hear Dr Fidelis sigh through the earpiece.

 

*I expect nothing less of you, buddy. Now, is my voice sounding right? Can't have it changing the results, now, can we?*, Dr Fidelis said, with a little humour at the end, to sprite up the mood a bit.

 

Getting over to his question, the voice sounded fine. There was a bit of throat scratching still within hearing range, but asking for perfect sound quality was an ideal world´s dream. Not something one should be expecting.

 

“It's fine”, Troy confirmed. “Shall we move on with the test?”

 

*Hold on a moment. I just quickly need Adam too- and, there we go! We are officially ready to start this whole thing up.

 

First off, the explanation with this test will be absurdly easy. This can be attributed to the simple fact, which is that you´ve heard it all before. Starting today, we will be redoing one of yesterday's tests. Namely, the one, where Troy lies or tells the truth, and Adam is supposed to guess which it is.

 

I personally thought that that particular chapter of testing was done for, but the people higher up certainly did not think so. In fact, they hated the results that they required for me to complete this whole thing over again.

 

And, through the power of personal failure, I have accidentally turned off the recording of my own voice, just now, making it possible for me to say whatever I please about the stupidity of their actions.

 

Troy, can you guess why they didn't like the results? They didn't like your statements, calling them all too easy. They wanted Adam to fail much more, than what was seen yesterday. I feel pity for those people. That they need clear cut results, to understand their meaning, is something that we might never be able to cure.

 

Pure theatrics away, I do need to go over the points, with a more serious overlay. 

 

First off; Troy, your questions need to be dynamic in their difficulty. When Adam gets an answer right, make the next statement harder to parse. When he gets it wrong, make it easier. Try to find a middle ground, where Adam´s reasoning makes sense but is still sometimes wrong. Makes it easier for me to improve the quality in the end.

 

Adam… you're doing fine. Just keep doing it like you did yesterday.

 

So, that's everything you need to know. Any questions?*

 

Troy didn't bring anything up, and, from the lack of Dr Fidelis readily explaining the fabric of reality like it was a yellow horn, he was guessed that Adam didn't have any either.

 

*No? Great! You can just get started, when I finish talking then*, Dr Fidelis said through the earpiece, before it made the customary sound of somebody cutting off the connection. Troy wondered briefly if it was a design feature to do so.

 

Before him, two two-dimensional squares appeared, one blue and the other red. Identical setup to last time they did this.

 

So, just to recap to himself, Troy needed to press the blue square, if Adam´s prediction was true, and didn't sound like too much of a guess. If his prediction was false, or if he didn't make a good enough reason for his choice, Troy would press the red square.

 

Simple.

 

So, the new addition today, would be making it harder for Adam to guess correctly? That seemed easy enough. Mostly, due to his ability to make simple sentences at the start. What was hard to guess lies, really? Like, was it over-complicated and overlong sentences, where the true meaning was so obscured, that you had no sensible idea of why it even was that length, to begin with, other than the sheer purpose of making it seem intangible?

 

… Could be, Troy mused to himself.

 

Anyway, they needed to start it all up soon. Dr Fidelis had cut himself off about twenty seconds ago.

 

“Should we get started, Adam?” Troy asked not really focusing on any spot in the room in particular. It was a little exercise he had been trying to maintain, not symbolising the objects with Adam´s persona. Later in the day, he had even realized that he had been looking at the ceiling mostly when communicating with him outside of the testing facilities. It wasn't something he wanted to maintain doing.

 

´Neither. A question, in this specific context, cannot be a lie or a truth. It can only be a lead up to either.´, Adam sent out, completely missing the point of Troy's question.

 

It seemed like he was of the mindset, that they had already begun. Nothing too bad to misunderstand. Troy wasn't sure, he could say anything to let him know of that, though. Wouldn't anything he said, just be seen as Troy trying to mislead Adam?

 

In the conclusion of that, it would probably just be best, if he just saw it, as an unintended start of the whole thing.

 

Also, Adams' answer was technically correct, so he got himself a blue square tap for that.

 

This also meant that Troy needed to put the difficulty up. Or, the difficulty could already be debated, so deciding what to say, purely from that, would be hard.

 

… Better to have the scale of difficulty in the background, for reference only, but not use it as a standard for everything. As long as the statements were around the needed hardness, it would be fine. Should be fine, would be more accurate.

 

With those few details decided, it was time for a new sentence. Troy decided to just act like this one was the first. The previous one was easy, anyway.

 

“I do believe in flying rabbits,” Troy said, as evenly as possible. That one should give him a few seconds to figure out.

------------------

Was Troy misunderstanding the scale of difficulty, which he was supposed to be following? Or, was he purposely messing with him, so he would think more about the reasons behind the statements, and not the overall truthfulness of them?

 

These overcomplicating thoughts ran through Adam´s mind space, leaving nearly no space between them. The logic loops spinning off of them was getting incredibly annoying to keep in check, so he just shut down that branch of thoughts entirely.

 

There was a time to analyse the reasoning behind the meaning statements, and this was not it.

 

So, back on the topic, which Adam should have been focusing on from the start. Was Troy being truthful, or was he lying?

 

First off, Adam began to take a look at Troy's physical body. As was obvious in this line of thinking, he began looking at the movements first. Twitchy muscles in the core area, when not doing a higher level of fitness, regularly indicated a higher amount of stress. Stress, which could have been gaining finding plausible lies, and steeling oneself to tell them without showing much emotion on one's face.

 

In Troy's case, he was either training his abs´ static muscle during a highly unusual time, or he was trying to keep his face without any damning indications. Adam personally predicted for the latter.

 

And Troy's back wasn't doing so well either. Usually, in day to day activities, Adam had noticed a large amount of improper posturing, which he had been getting worried about. Troy would be giving himself kyphosis if he continued with such posture. But, that wasn't too important.

 

What was important, was the pure straightness of his back. And Adam wasn't referring to the passive flexion of the back muscles, but active thinking about keeping it straight. This amount of muscle activity required a semi-active focus. A good indicator, that Troy was keeping his face still with great effort.

 

And those two were just the two most obvious signs of static muscles showing his true meanings. The tongue pressing upward, the toes bearing the main weight, the shoulders tense, his legs ready to make the body spin at a moments notice, and his left hand in a fist all showed the true thoughts of Troy.

 

In conclusion, from simply looking at the body, nearly everything, which Adam was relatively sure about, indicated that Troy was not speaking the truth, and was, in fact, lying when he said he believed in flying rabbits.

 

With that part of the analysis done, it was time for a brief look over at contextual analysis.

 

This one could be thrown away, in situations requiring more quick reactions, but, if Adam had the time, there was no good, logical explanation for, why he should spend it, with more analysis. 

 

So, in full, the statement was ´I do believe in flying rabbits´. The easiest starting point in analysing this sentence would be looking at the word of focus. Rabbit.

 

Now, Adam had never heard of this word before, due to a lack of it being used doing day-to-day conversation, which he had been able to observe. This, to his own lack of feasible alternatives, meant that he had to use his own, pre-known information to dig into its roots.

 

Rabbit: A land-faring animal. Most related to the idiom; Breed like rabbits.

 

To his surprise, the information had one more sentence, than average. Granted, the last sentence did not fully help Adam, in his current endeavour, but he was sure that it would assist him someday.

 

Now, to focus on the first, and only currently useful sentence. It represented rabbits, as animals, who focused on the land, instead of the sky. With the extremely low chance of the information being outright wrong, Adam decided that rabbits were seen as land-based animals to the general populace.

 

This would further hint, at Troy lying, with rabbits not being stated as being able to fly, in any capacity.

 

But, he also only stated that he believed it to be so. This would imply that while it wasn't proven to be factual to be so, he believed that people just had not gone around to do it yet.

 

That… did not make sense, in Adam´s opinion. If the animal had been studied enough to determine that it was landbased, the same people would have noticed, if the rabbit had any abilities focused on sprouting wings, and flying away.

 

Yet, if one aspired to be even more sceptical of common facts, this rabbit could also be a rather rare creature, making most information about it come from pure theory, by looking at it from afar.

 

… 

 

No, that wouldn't make sense, either. If that theory was true, the showcased idiom would be without any meaningful context attached! ´Breed like rabbits´, it stated. If the people studying it knew that particular part of its biology, they must have known about other parts of its anatomy beforehand.

 

Finally, without any more counter-arguments, to Adam´s own, near-definite answer, he decided to send his predictions to Troy.

 

´Your statement is false. Your movements indicate a readiness to tell falsehoods, and your words make no sense to the showcased reality.´, Adam sent to Troy.

 

As a response, he just shrugged with his shoulders, before pressing down on the blue square.

 

Another success, just like Adam had expected of himself. Though… the whole processing took nearly five centiseconds more than the expected timeframe. He needed to be more efficient with his thoughts. It was nearly embarrassing. Troy would be ashamed of Adam if he had any capacity to notice the too high time difference from the usual.

 

After having pressed the square, Troy looked to be getting into his regular, talking position. Adam still wondered why he had one for that. Originally he thought it was to make the posture synergize with the lungs, to make the most optimal blood flow, and subsequent higher ability to speak. After a brief study into it, it simply turned out to be a position gained through sheer classical conditioning. What those conditions were, though, were still debatable. A mix of instincts, and taller than average height was the current presumed cause.

 

“I feel like, I'm currently in a good position when it comes to my personal world-view,” Troy said, with such sarcasm, that Adam had an initial problem understanding it.

 

… And, what a curious thing to say. Adam wasn't sure what Troy meant. Also, he wasn't sure that Troy knew either. An unthought-of meta. How... out of the figurative box.

 

Wasn't Troy supposed to leave the harder statements for later?