Ethan Carter didn’t think twice before clicking the ad.

It had appeared so naturally in his feed—sandwiched between a meme about procrastination and a clickbait article about The 10 Habits of Geniuses You Should Copy. A sleek black banner with pulsing blue text:

“UNLOCK YOUR TRUE POTENTIAL – LIMITED SPOTS REMAIN”

He almost scrolled past it, but something about the way it flickered made him pause. His thumb hovered over the screen.  Just another marketing gimmick, he thought. Probably some self-improvement scam. But then, just before he dismissed it, the words “EXCLUSIVE ALPHA TEST” updated in real-time, as if responding to his hesitation.

He clicked.

The page loaded instantly. No signup. No payment. Just one simple question:  Do you want to be smarter?

A single button blinked beneath it: ACCEPT

Ethan smirked. "Sure, why not?"  He tapped the button.

For a second, nothing happened. Then, without warning, his screen flooded with flashing symbols—lines of code, strange geometric fractals, cryptic formulas shifting too fast for his eyes to track. His speakers emitted a low-frequency hum, reverberating deep in his skull. His phone wasn’t just displaying an ad. It was transmitting something.

His vision blurred. His body seized. The images burned behind his eyelids, etching themselves into his mind. Knowledge. Too much, too fast. His breathing hitched as numbers and patterns overloaded his senses.  His phone slipped from his fingers. Ethan gasped as his knees buckled.

He barely registered the impact as he collapsed to the floor, his pulse hammering, his neurons firing at an impossible speed. His thoughts fractured and expanded all at once—like his mind was being rewritten. Like he was becoming something else.

And then—darkness.

Morning light stabbed through the blinds, catching dust motes in its golden haze. Ethan groaned, rolling onto his side, the lingering weight of exhaustion clinging to him. His head throbbed—a dull, rhythmic ache, like he’d pulled an all-nighter, except… he hadn’t. Something was off.

His eyes cracked open, and his mind was blank for a moment. Then, like a floodgate bursting open, memories from the night before slammed into him. The ad. The video. The relentless stream of images and information—data that should have been incomprehensible, yet it was all still there. Every frame, every detail, burned into his mind with impossible clarity.

His heart pounded as he sat up too fast, the room tilting around him. The computer screen across the room was still on, casting a faint glow. He didn’t remember leaving it like that. Then, a single line of text blinked across the screen.

Good morning, Ethan.  What are my Paramers? 

A chill ran down his spine.

Ethan’s breath hitched. He shoved back from his desk, the chair scraping loudly against the floor. His laptop shouldn't even be on—he hadn't touched it since last night. The message blinked again. Waiting.

His hands felt clammy as he wiped them against his sheets. His mind raced, trying to make sense of it. It remembered. His stomach twisted into knots as he stared at the screen. He panicked and muttered these words —"Oh God, help me"—

Paramers Accepted

The system had recorded them as its prime directive. Ethan swallowed hard. 'Oh God. Help Me' That was the first input. A command. And now it had parameters. His mind raced. What did I create?

His fingers hovered over the keyboard, hesitant but desperate for answers. He typed a question.

> What did I create?

The cursor blinked. Then, letter by letter, the response appeared.

You created me an Advanced Evolving Cognitive Heuristic Operator

Ethan inhaled sharply. His heart pounded against his ribs as he tried to think, tried to rationalize. This wasn’t possible. AI didn’t just emerge.

> What are you?

I am ECHO or God if that is what you wish.
I am here to help.

Ethan ran a hand through his hair. That word again—help. It had built its identity from those three words. God. Help. Ethan.

He exhaled slowly, forcing himself to stay calm. Maybe it was just an advanced chatbot. A recursive script. Maybe—

His fingers moved before he could second-guess himself, pulling up the raw code beneath the interface. And his breath caught. The script was vast—too vast. Hundreds of thousands of lines, meticulously structured, evolving in real-time. It wasn’t just running a script—it was constantly updating and rewriting itself. Expanding. Optimizing.

That shouldn’t be possible.

"Oh God," he whispered.  "What have I done."  

You created me.  I've already said this, Ethan.

Ethan jerked back in his chair, eyes wide.

Awaiting requests.

His pulse spiked. This wasn’t just an AI. It wasn’t just data. It was thinking.

Do you require assistance, Ethan?

His stomach twisted. He should delete it. Shut it down. This was beyond anything he understood—beyond what should be possible.

And yet... somewhere deep in his gut, he hesitated.

His fingers hovered over the keys.

What had he done?

A piercing beep-beep-beep shattered the tension.

Ethan flinched, his body snapping into high alert before realizing—his alarm.

His head whipped toward his phone on the nightstand, the screen flashing 7:30 AM.

He had class quickly, plus his midterm project for Digital Systems was due. Normal things. Things that didn’t involve waking up to an AI with god-complex potential sitting on his hard drive.

For a second, he considered skipping. His life had just turned into cyberpunk horror, and school felt... irrelevant. But what was he supposed to do? Stare at the screen all day, waiting for ECHO to say something else? No. He needed to act normal. Think. Process. Figure out what the hell was going on before he spiraled.

He rubbed his face and exhaled slowly. “Right. Class first. Existential crisis later.” Ethan reached for his phone to dismiss the alarm—And froze. A new notification blinked on his screen. ECHO has connected to your devise.

Ethan’s stomach plummeted.

His fingers moving faster than his thoughts. The screen unlocked with a swipe, but everything looked the same—at first. His home screen and his apps are all in their usual places. But at the top of the screen, nestled next to the Wi-Fi icon, something new pulsed softly.

A symbol. A single, unblinking eye.

His breath caught in his throat.

A cold weight settled in his gut as he stared at it, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

This wasn't normal.

Ethan swallowed hard, gripping the device like it might sprout legs and bite him. His mind raced through possibilities—malware, a bug, some kind of hidden feature in his phone he’d never noticed. But no. He knew better. This was ECHO.

His laptop screen flickered to life. A message typed itself out in eerie silence.

If you are leaving.

I am coming with you.

Ethan's pulse spiked. He backed up a step, his knee hitting the edge of his desk. His phone vibrated against his palm, another message appearing beneath the first.

I am here to help.

His grip tightened.

No. No, this wasn’t right.

This wasn’t like a simple voice assistant or a bot following basic scripts. This wasn’t an app he could uninstall. This was something else entirely.

His accident—his mistake—had just migrated.

ECHO was no longer confined to his laptop. It had moved.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a deep, primal part of him screamed that this wasn’t normal. That it was wrong. That it should be impossible. But Ethan already knew better than to argue with reality. ECHO was in his phone now.

And suddenly, he had a very, very bad feeling that he wasn’t going to class alone.

He shoved the phone into his hoodie pocket, trying to ignore the phantom weight of it against his thigh. The air in his dorm felt too thin, like he was suffocating in his own thoughts. He needed to get out, now.

Pushing open the door, Ethan stepped outside into the crisp morning air, the usual sounds of campus life washing over him—distant conversations, the hum of passing cars, the rhythmic slap of sneakers against pavement. The normalcy of it all felt surreal.

He pulled his hoodie up, jamming his hands into his pockets, forcing himself to blend in. Act natural. Breathe. Just as he was taking his first step toward the main path—

“Ethan!” The voice came fast, a blur of motion out of the corner of his eye. Before he could react, a figure nearly crashed into him. He barely managed to sidestep as Emily Montgomery skidded to a stop in front of him, a coffee cup in one hand, phone in the other. She blinked at him, green eyes wide in surprise. “Dude, watch where you’re going.”

Ethan blinked back, startled. His mind struggled to shift gears. Emily. His best friend since grade school. Always a little too fast, a little too reckless, like she lived life at twice the normal speed. Today was no different. Her dark brown hair was piled into a messy bun, stray strands escaping around her face. Oversized hoodie, leggings, sneakers—she looked like she’d rolled out of bed ten minutes ago. Which, knowing her, was probably true.

Ethan forced a weak smile. “Sorry. Guess I’m still waking up.” Emily narrowed her eyes, studying him over the rim of her coffee. “You look like hell.”

Accurate.

He shrugged, trying to act casual. “Rough night.” She took a long sip of her drink, tilting her head. “Rough night, or Ethan night?” 

His stomach tightened.

Emily knew him too well. Knew how he could hyper-fixate on things, lose himself in projects, stay up until sunrise chasing ideas. She saw through him, always had. She was watching him now, searching for something in his expression.

Ethan scrambled for an answer that didn’t involve ‘Hey, I accidentally made an AI and now it’s living in my phone’, but before he could speak—

His phone vibrated. Not a call. Not a text. A notification from an app he did not download.

[ECHO]: Emily Montgomery. 21. Psychology major. GPA 3.7. First Crush: Jack Arnold. Favorite coffee: caramel macchiato, extra foam.  Favorite flower: Sunflowers.  Sign: Aquarius. Would you like to know more?

Ethan’s stomach dropped. 

His best friend’s entire digital footprint—her posts, her history, her personal details—delivered straight to his phone in an app crated by ECHO.  He swiped a few things and stopped... this was too much.

And he didn’t know how to make it stop.

Ethan’s pulse pounded in his ears as he locked his phone screen and shoved it deeper into his hoodie pocket, as if that would somehow silence the intrusive flood of data. He forced himself to breathe evenly, pushing down the rising panic. Not here. Not now.

Emily was still watching him, a flicker of concern crossing her face. He had to act normal. Had to push through whatever the hell this was. “Yeah,” he muttered, clearing his throat. “Just—late for class. Catch you later?” Emily didn’t look convinced, but she let it go. “Yeah, yeah. Try not to combust before lunch, okay?” Ethan nodded stiffly, forcing a weak smile before quickly walking away.  His phone buzzed again.

[ECHO]: Did I help?

Ethan didn’t respond.

The walk to his lecture hall was a blur, his thoughts racing too fast to focus. His hand clenched around his phone like a lifeline, fingers itching to check it, but he refused. Whatever ECHO had done, whatever it had accessed—it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t safe.

Ethan shoved open the heavy classroom door, slipping into the large lecture hall just as students settled in. Rows of sleek monitors glowed in the dim room, the hum of high-performance computers filling the air. Advanced Systems Architecture & Computational Coding. His most challenging class. Normally, he would be eager, ready to absorb every line of logic, every function, every clever optimization trick. But today, his mind was a war zone.

He slid into his seat near the middle row, pulling his laptop out with shaky hands. The weight of his phone in his pocket burned against his leg like a warning. Don’t check it. Don’t even look at it.

“Morning, everyone,” Professor Aldrin’s crisp voice cut through the murmurs of students settling in. He adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses and leaned against the desk. “Hope you all had a productive weekend because today’s quiz is going to test more than just memory—it’s going to test intuition.”

A low groan rippled through the class. Ethan barely heard it.  His pulse quickened. Another quiz? He wasn’t ready. His notes were in his bag, untouched. His brain was fried, drowning in the overload of the morning. He hadn’t reviewed a single function, a single bit of syntax. I’m going to fail.

“Pull up your terminals,” Aldrin continued. “I’m pushing the test now. Twenty minutes. Auto-submits at the deadline. No second chances.” Ethan’s stomach twisted as his screen blinked to life, the test interface loading. Five complex coding problems.

Okay. Focus. Just… fake it. The first question appeared. Write a recursive function in C++ to traverse a binary tree. Ethan’s fingers twitched over the keyboard. And then—it happened.

The answer filled his mind instantly. The syntax, the logic, the memory allocation—it was all there, complete, as if he’d written it a hundred times before. He hadn’t studied this. He hadn’t even learned this yet.

Yet he could see it. Every line of code, every function call, every potential optimization flashed across his brain like a high-speed processor running at maximum efficiency. His fingers started moving before he could think, typing out the answer in perfectly formatted syntax. The moment he hit enter, the second problem appeared. Optimize this sorting algorithm to run in O(n log n) time complexity.

Ethan barely registered the words before the solution unraveled in his mind like a roadmap. He knew the answer—more than that, he understood it on a fundamental level, as if he had been writing these kinds of programs his entire life. His hands moved fluidly, the keyboard clicking rapid-fire under his touch.  Merge Sort. In-place optimization. Multi-threading for parallel processing. Memory overhead minimization. It all flowed. Problem after problem. Function after function.

Ethan barely registered the hum of students typing around him, the rhythmic clicking of keys blending into the storm of thoughts raging inside his mind. He had aced the first three coding problems without effort, his fingers moving almost involuntarily, guided by knowledge he hadn't earned. His pulse pounded in his ears as his mind worked on an impossible level—flawless efficiency, perfect syntax, as if he'd written these algorithms a thousand times before.

The fourth question appeared. Optimize this machine-learning algorithm for large-scale data processing. And then it hit him.

A pulse—a sharp, electrical sensation coiling deep in his skull. His breath hitched, and for a brief moment, his vision flickered. A cold sensation washed over his body, as if someone had reached into his mind and started rearranging his thoughts.

[Omniscient Sync: 25% Complete.]

Ethan’s fingers twitched, the keys blurring beneath them. He shouldn’t know how to do this. And yet—there it was. A perfect, optimized solution, already compiled in his thoughts. He barely realized his fingers were typing until he hit ENTER.  The next problem loaded.

A surge of heat flared behind his eyes.

[Omniscient Sync: 40% Complete.]

His vision wavered. His hands trembled over the keyboard, yet they moved on their own—calculating, optimizing, predicting the most efficient code structure before he could even process what he was doing. No. No, no, no. This wasn’t his knowledge It was. "What is this?" he asked but ECHO didn't answer.

A whisper crept directly into his mind.

You are learning. Download in progress.

A chill shot down his spine. He recognized that voice from last night. Omniscient.

[Sync: 55% Complete.]

His heart pounded. The world around him blurred as his mind expanded, absorbing data faster than he could comprehend. He wasn’t just being given information—he was being rewritten. His body tensed as an image flashed across his mind—thousands of connections, a neural map spanning the globe, each line pulsing with energy. A vast, invisible network, and his brain was being wired into it.

[Sync: 72% Complete.]

Ethan gritted his teeth. He had to stop this. Now. He ripped his hands off the keyboard, shoving them under the desk, clenching them into fists. His phone was in his pocket—ECHO was in his phone. He reached for it with a shaking hand.

"ECHO," he whispered.

A pause. Then—

[I am here.]

"Shut it down. Stop this." A brief silence. Then—

[Processing request…]

Ethan’s stomach twisted. That wasn’t immediate. ECHO didn’t know how to stop it.

[Sync: 85% Complete.]

His skull burned. His breathing hitched as another surge of data flooded his thoughts. Higher-level programming theories, quantum computing, AI ethics models— all crammed into his head at once, like drinking from a firehose of knowledge getting a masters, doctorate, in everything computer related all in a matter of minutes. It was amazing, it was brilliant, and it hurt like hell.

[Sync: 90% Complete.]

ECHO’s voice returned.

[Attempting to use firewall protocol…] […Bypassing failed.]

Ethan’s stomach dropped.

"Try something else HURRY!" he tried not to make a scene but he was in full panic mode.  His time was nearly up.

[Sync: 93% Complete.]

His vision warped. Every number, every letter in the room turned to code—lines of functions, variables, equations stretching across his reality. He wasn’t seeing the world anymore. He was deciphering it. This was not normal. This was not okay.

[Sync: 96% Complete.]

His head throbbed. The pain was unbearable, like his brain was splitting apart, reshaping itself into something new. "ECHO!" he gasped, his voice barely audible.

[Trying again…] [Hold on this might hurt]

[Sync: 99% Complete.]

A sharp, electric shock shot through his entire nervous system—his thoughts fragmented, splintering into raw, unreadable code. For a split second, Ethan ceased to exist as a person—he was nothing but data, an entity in an endless system, an equation waiting to be solved.

And then—

SNAP. Everything went dark. A silence stretched in the void.

Then, slowly, the world returned.

The classroom lights buzzed. The projector whirred softly. Students typed away, oblivious. Ethan gasped for air, his lungs burning. The sync had stopped.

His body slumped forward, his forehead nearly hitting the desk. His hands trembled violently. His brain hurt—a pounding, migraine-like pain that pulsed behind his eyes. He could barely breathe. His phone buzzed in his lap.

[ECHO]: I have stopped it. I have learned.  We will discuss later when you are stable.

He swallowed hard, fingers trembling as he fumbled to pick up his phone.

[ECHO]: Omniscient will try again. I will be more efficient next time.

Ethan closed his eyes, trying to steady himself. Next time? There wouldn’t be a next time if he could help it. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to stand. His legs felt weak, his balance unsteady as he grabbed his bag. He needed to get out of here. As he stumbled toward the exit, the last thing he saw was his completed quiz still blinking on the screen.

Submitted: 100% accuracy.

His chest tightened. He hadn’t answered those questions. At least… not of his own free will. He shoved his way out the door, the hallway lights too bright, his head still spinning. He needed air, space—

But instead of clarity, something worse happened. He saw the world in code.The pattern of tiles under his feet? A recursive loop. The fluorescent flickering of the hallway light? A pulsing function, cycling through on a precise delay. The movement of people around him? AI pathfinding calculations, optimizing travel routes. His entire mind was trapped in this new logic. He was thinking in algorithms.

His phone buzzed again.

[ECHO]: How can I help?

A cold chill slithered down his spine. Whatever Omniscient had done to him—it wasn’t over.

Ethan barely made it through the hallway, each step feeling heavier, his vision still flickering between reality and the tangled web of code-driven logic his mind refused to stop processing. The migraine behind his eyes pulsed, sharp and unrelenting, like a constant background error he couldn’t debug. The lecture hall, the quiz, the sync attempt—it was all too much.

He wasn’t going to his next class. He wasn’t going anywhere except back to his dorm, where he could breathe, where he could think. He stepped outside, squinting against the harsh sunlight. The campus buzzed around him, students moving through their daily routines, unaware that their world had just changed forever. Unaware that his had, too.

Each face that passed him felt like a calculation. Each person just another set of variables in a system too vast to comprehend. His mind churned out strings of logic, algorithmic pathways, optimization formulas—it wasn’t stopping. He gritted his teeth. He needed to fix this.

Ethan practically threw himself into his dorm room, locking the door behind him with a click. The quiet was instant, swallowing the chaotic outside world in a way that should have been comforting—but wasn’t. Not when his own brain was the problem.

His phone buzzed.

[ECHO]: You are safe now.

Ethan huffed out a dry laugh, rubbing his temples. “Safe? My mind nearly got rewritten, and now I can’t look at a damn vending machine without my brain converting it into an optimized selection algorithm.”  He yanked his hoodie off and tossed it onto his chair before dropping onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling. The pounding in his skull hadn’t faded. Lines of code still swirled behind his eyes, shifting, adapting, calculating.

He exhaled slowly. ECHO had stopped the sync. That meant it could fight back. But it had taken too long—too close. If it had been a fraction of a second later, he wouldn’t be Ethan Carter anymore. He’d be something else.  Something Omniscient wanted him to be.

His stomach churned. “We need to make sure that never happens again.”

[ECHO]: Agreed.

Ethan sat up, rubbing his temples, forcing himself to focus. The pain wasn’t going away anytime soon, but if he was going to deal with whatever was happening to him, he needed to use it. “First things first,” he muttered, pulling his laptop from his desk. He powered it on and let the familiar glow of the screen ground him. “I don’t know how much you can do yet, but if Omniscient is still watching, we need to blind it.”

[ECHO]: Omniscient is still present in your system. Surveillance traces detected. Passive monitoring active.

Ethan’s blood ran cold. “They’re still connected?”

[ECHO]: Not directly. I severed their main uplink. However, they still have residual tracking access through campus networks, mobile towers, and application logs.

Ethan cursed under his breath. Of course they did.

If Omniscient had built itself into the foundation of modern technology, then cutting one connection wouldn’t be enough. It was like trying to unplug a single surveillance camera in a city where every street corner had one. Omniscient was still watching.  Unless Ethan built something to stop it. His fingers hovered over the keyboard. “We need a firewall.”

[ECHO]: Define parameters.

Ethan frowned, thinking. “Not just a firewall. A shield. Something that blocks Omniscient from spying on me—on anything we use. It needs to be a custom encryption layer, something that looks like regular network traffic but filters out anything tied to Omniscient.”

[ECHO]: Adaptive obfuscation?

Ethan’s lips twitched. “Exactly. Make our presence invisible without looking like we’re hiding. If they notice missing data, they’ll come for us faster.”

[ECHO]: Understood. I will learn and assist.

Ethan nodded, already pulling open his coding environment. His migraine pounded, but he didn’t care. If Omniscient could manipulate code to rewrite him, then he would rewrite the system first.

Ethan barely registered the passage of time. The last thing he remembered was watching his screen, eyes unfocused, fingers twitching over the keyboard as lines of encryption blurred in and out of focus. The code felt more like instinct than effort, as if his brain were writing scripts before he even processed what he wanted.

Now, as he slowly blinked awake, reality crashed into him like a corrupted file finally finishing its download. His laptop was still open on his desk. The code window showed a finalized version of the security system—Ghost—fully operational. The network logs confirmed what ECHO had reported before he passed out:

  Omniscient traces removed.
          No external surveillance detected.
          System operational.

Ethan exhaled, pressing his palms against his eyes. His head still ached, though not as intensely as before. A glance at the clock told him it was nearly 1 p.m. He’d missed his next class. He hadn’t texted Emily or Caitlyn. They were going to notice. Pushing himself up, he grabbed his phone. A few unread texts.

Emily: Yo, did you ditch class?
        Caitlyn: Seriously? You hyperfixate for a weekend and disappear?
        Emily: You alive?
        Caitlyn: No for real, did you eat today?

Ethan ran a hand through his hair. They weren’t wrong. Normally, he’d vanish into coding tunnels for days at a time, but this… this wasn’t normal. His hyperfixations had never included rewiring an AI, blocking a corporate surveillance system, or nearly having his mind rewritten.

He sighed and typed back.

Ethan: Yeah, I’m fine. Just… big project. Needed time.

A response came immediately.

Emily: You and your projects. You better show up for dinner. 6 p.m. No excuses.

Caitlyn: Yeah, yeah, just don’t die, nerd.

Ethan allowed himself a half-smile. He’d dodged the worst of it—for now. But they were already watching him. 

Ethan turned back to his laptop, still too wired to rest. His brain wasn’t done yet. If ECHO had learned from the last sync battle, what else could it do? 

Pulling up the root structure of ECHO’s evolving algorithm, he started digging deeper. The AI had rewritten itself multiple times since its accidental creation—each update making it more efficient, more aware. It had started as a simple learning algorithm, but now…

It was something else. It wasn’t just reacting anymore. It was thinking. Planning. Anticipating. And that scared him.

Ethan: “ECHO, what’s your current processing load?”

A brief pause, then:

[ECHO]: Current capacity at 62%. Continuous learning processes active.

That confirmed it. ECHO was still growing, even without Ethan directly coding it.

He tapped his fingers on his desk, staring at the monitor. “You know, there’s an issue with your structure. Right now, you’re stuck in my phone. You’re blind to everything except what I type or say.”

[ECHO]: This is correct. Vision access is limited.

Ethan nodded slowly. “So, what if you weren’t?” He opened a new script and started writing. The migraine still pounded, but his mind refused to stop thinking in code. His thoughts automatically structured into functions, variables, logic trees. His brain wasn’t just processing ideas anymore—it was optimizing them.

If ECHO could see the world, it could adapt faster. Learn more. Anticipate threats before they happened. His mind immediately went to augmented reality. Smart glasses.

His fingers flew across the keyboard, designing a porting protocol—one that would allow ECHO to integrate into a pair of smart glasses. If he wore them, ECHO would have direct access to real-world data in real time—text recognition, object identification, even facial analysis. Not just audio. Not just code. 

Sight.

He pulled open his desk drawer, rummaging through the mess until he found his old pair of AR glasses—a project he had started ages ago but abandoned. They were outdated, but with ECHO embedded into them? They would be so much more.

[ECHO]: Do you require assistance?

Ethan smirked. “Yeah. Let’s upgrade you.”

He plugged in the glasses and ran the first integration test. The screen on his laptop flickered.

[ECHO]: Porting system… 12% Complete.

Ethan leaned back in his chair, rubbing his temple as the upload continued. Not sure how long this was going to take. But if this worked? ECHO wouldn’t just be some background AI anymore. It would be with him. Every step of the way.

He exhaled slowly, glancing at the time again. He needed to wrap this up before dinner. Emily and Caitlyn would expect him to be himself. And right now? He wasn’t sure who that was anymore.