Great work here. Everything written well. Also want to give you credit to your ability to rehash the same scene without making it seem boring or repetitive. That's not easy to do and oddly enough, I found myself anticipating my return to the terminal just to see what questions it would spit out and how the subjects would react. The various nuances between each character, their individual lives and learned skills affecting the way they reacted to outside stimuli was wonderfully done. Transitions between the facility and each article were easy to follow. Scenes of increased activity didn't feel convoluted.
Sections of this piece reminded me a lot of the
Stanford Prison Experiment.
Admittedly, at first, I thought each article had been written by someone
after they'd gone through the program. I chalked it up to brainwashing or having been swapped with a non-organic doppelganger made to look and act like their real-world counterpart. The names of the authors and the first few subjects were eerily similar until Stephen Adams came along to prove my point correct... until I realized I wasn't correct.
My main critique for the story, i feel, is strictly my own. I was left more confused than I had been when I started. That could be because of my own shortcomings when it comes to perceiving the deeper meaning behind the words presented to me. Could also be because by the time I got to your entry, my brain was turning into mush. That isn't to say that I didn't enjoyed every minute of the read. However at the end, like Stephen did at the start of his every 'first day' in the Program, I felt trapped and confused.
A smaller critique is that of it's relation to the prompt. The 'metal men' in your work have been reduced to guards. Although they add to the mystery of the facility as a whole, there is little else they bring to the story. Unless everyone in the program is actually an ASI? But then Stephen was a reporter wasn't he? I DON'T KNOW!
There's a lot here and I feel as though I need more to understand.
Last thing. The second article, written by Samuel Richards includes this line:
"They believe that the system we create will rise up against up and destroy humanity through one mean or another, and simply be creating it in the first place we will have lost the quote unquote war that follows."
I'm not exactly an English major but I believe that because this piece is 'written', the quoting here should have been done like so:
'war'.
Unless of course that's how he likes to write which would then prove my earlier point: that the all the writers were indeed in the program. This writing nuance is repeated in the third paragraph following the same article. AM I RIGHT?!
Oh my god. I need to move on.