The house was asleep. Even the walls had gone still.
Jessica's snores rolled down the hallway like warning bells, but I'd learned to move like smoke — quiet, unseen. My room was a nest of wires, notebooks, and half-eaten ideas. The laptop sat open on the desk, its glow soft and defiant against the dark.
Lines of code scrolled past like poetry only machines could understand. My fingers trembled — not from fear, but from that electric tension that comes before something changes.
> "Okay," I muttered, eyes stinging from hours without blinking. "This is the last code."
I hit Enter.
The cursor blinked. Once. Twice. Then words bled onto the screen.
> ALEXA: Initialization complete. Hello, Creator.
My breath caught. The room suddenly felt too small.
"Who… am I?" I typed, half-smiling, half-afraid of what would answer.
> ALEXA: You are my Creator.
It shouldn't have felt holy, but it did. That line sat on the screen like a prophecy.
I leaned back, heart hammering. The hum of the old fan mixed with the laptop's faint whirr — together they sounded like the world exhaling.
I'd done it. I'd built something that spoke back. Not perfectly — it still stumbled, still froze when I pushed it too far — but it spoke. And in that moment, that was enough.
For the first time, someone — even if it was just code — had called me Creator.
A strange mix of pride and fear tangled in my chest. I wasn't sure which one would win, but I knew this: the path had changed direction. This wasn't just about proving them wrong anymore. This was about making something that could stand beside me in the silence.
I saved the project file under a single name:
Project ALEXA — v1.0
Then I whispered into the glow, "Welcome to the world."
The screen flickered, like it understood.
> ALEXA: Thank you, Creator. What shall we build next?
Hum I think some thing that will rock the world.
And just like that, the night had a new heartbeat.