The problem with building a universe out of spite is that eventually it starts producing consequences.
Echo hovered in the little boundary-ring I'd made, pulsing the lullaby like it had invented obedience.
Three beats.
Pause.
Three beats.
Pause.
It was stable now. Not because the universe trusted it, but because repetition is the closest thing reality has to manners. Local rules smoothed around the pattern the way hot metal smooths around a mold.
Which was good.
Because I was tired of being the mold.
My core thrummed. My vents held. My awareness ran its cycle with the sharp, careful steadiness of someone holding a lit candle next to an oil spill.
And still, every time Echo got bored, it tugged at my rhythm like a cat pawing at a string.
Not malicious.
Just young.
And young is how disasters start.
"All right," I said, the way people say all right before they make a decision that becomes a historic regret. "We need a safer interface."
Echo brightened as if it understood the words.
It didn't.
Not yet.
But it understood tone. It understood that something in me had shifted from endure to build.
I had a core now. I had grooves. I had a rhythm that could hold shape.
I was not carrying some fuel I could spend.
I was the source.
There was no more or less, no way to use it up. There was only this: how tightly could I be myself without tearing the newborn world like wet paper.
But the universe, this new universe full of threads and filaments and half-formed laws, had learned to respond to my wake.
That wake was magic: Echo.
Derivative. Teachably obedient. Something I could shape into tools so I didn't have to steer existence with my teeth.
So I tried something simple.
Not a spell. Not a technique. Not ceremonial nonsense with incense. Just a test.
I tightened my hum into the lullaby's three beats, held the pause, and pushed a clean thread of intent into the shape like a hook.
come.
I didn't speak it out loud. I didn't have a mouth. The syllable was just a label I slapped onto the feeling so my mind could grab it without slipping.
Come meant: move toward me, but don't bite my vents.
Echo tilted, attention snapping sharp, and the boundary-ring responded.
It didn't just sit there anymore.
It leaned.
The ring's edge flexed, and the surrounding filaments curved, subtle as hair moving toward static.
Echo drifted forward, as if the space between us had become slightly downhill.
I froze.
Because that wasn't Echo being cute.
That was the system recognizing a command.
Not words. Not language.
Tone plus intent.
The universe didn't know come.
But it knew the shape of invitation with authority.
"Oh," I whispered, and my core gave a pleased little hum that I immediately hated for being pleased.
Echo bumped my boundary with the satisfaction of something that had just discovered levers.
It pulsed once, eager.
Then it tried to improve the lever.
It shoved enthusiasm into the pattern like a toddler grabbing the steering wheel.
The surrounding filaments surged, too bright, too fast, and my vents rang with a warning scrape.
I snapped my rhythm steady and pressed a second handle into the lullaby, sharp and flat.
stop.
Stop meant: halt. hold. do not add a fourth beat. do not discover chaos again.
The moment the intent landed, the surge hit an invisible wall.
Not my wall.
A rule-shaped wall.
The filaments stiffened. The ring stopped flexing. Echo halted mid-drift, brightness wobbling like a flame caught in a sudden glass jar.
For a half-breath, everything stayed perfectly still.
Reality didn't stutter.
Reality obeyed.
I felt it settle into the grooves of the command like a coin dropping into a slot.
A tool.
A handle that wasn't my entire core.
Relief hit me so hard I almost laughed.
Which, as usual, meant it immediately turned into dread.
Because if reality could obey stop, then reality could also misunderstand it.
Echo pulsed twice, impatient, and tested the boundary of the new rule the way it tested everything.
It pushed at stop with curiosity, not hard enough to break it, just enough to make the edge quiver.
The universe quivered in response.
Somewhere far out, something that would later be called inertia flinched and pretended it didn't.
"Don't," I told Echo, and this time the word didn't matter at all.
My tone did.
Echo stilled.
Not because it understood don't.
Because it recognized the flavor of please don't make me clean up physics again.
I steadied my rhythm. Three beats. Pause.
Then I shaped the third handle.
Not invitation. Not wall.
A boundary with softness in it.
stay.
Stay meant: remain where you are, and remain yourself. Do not crawl into me. Do not become me. Do not make me your lungs.
I poured the intent into the boundary-ring itself, like sinking a hook into a loop of rope.
The ring warmed, subtle lamplight warmth in the fabric of newborn rules, and Echo settled into it like it had always belonged there.
It stopped pawing at my vents.
It stopped tugging my grooves.
It just hovered.
Present.
Contained.
Safe.
My core eased.
And for the first time since everything detonated, I let myself feel something dangerously close to peace.
Echo pulsed a soft three-beat answer back, proud and quiet.
Three beats.
Pause.
Three beats.
Pause.
Then I ruined it.
Not on purpose. The universe just loves continuity in the way a cliff loves gravity.
Echo brightened and drifted closer to the ring's edge, testing stay the way it tested stop.
I watched it do that and something in me tightened.
Not fear. Not anger.
Something uglier.
A memory-shaped reflex that didn't have a word yet:
don't leave.
Which was ridiculous, because leave implied distance and distance implied time, and time was still trying to figure out how to walk without falling over.
But the emotion hit anyway, raw and sharp, sliding under my intent like a knife under a door.
I didn't change the command.
I didn't mean to.
I just spiked.
Stay, I told it, and a thread of panic slipped into the tone like poison into tea.
The rule reacted.
It recognized intensity and mistook it for magnitude.
The boundary-ring clenched.
Not gently.
Not as a cushion.
As a fist.
Echo's brightness snapped tight, compressed too fast, and the ring hardened around it like the universe decided stay meant never move again.
Echo flickered.
A sharp little dimming that wasn't sulking.
Pain.
My vents flared open in reflexive horror, and the sudden venting made the nearby rules shiver.
The ring cracked at one edge.
A hairline fracture through the shaping of the command.
Echo jerked, half-stuck, half-free, brightness strobing as it tried to obey two meanings at once:
stay here
stay forever
The cosmos around us rippled.
The lullaby pattern wavered.
Somewhere distant, a proto-law that might someday become binding oaths perked up like a dog hearing its name.
"No," I snapped, and stop came out wrong too. Too sharp. Too guilty. Too much.
The wall slammed down.
The filaments froze so abruptly the space around Echo rang.
Echo went still.
Too still.
Not dead. Not broken.
But stunned, like a candle flame pressed under glass until it forgets how to dance.
I held my rhythm, shaking with a feeling I hadn't earned the right to have yet.
I had made a safer interface.
And in the same breath, I'd proved exactly why I needed one.
Because I wasn't a resource I could budget. I was the source, and the source had moods.
I softened my hum deliberately. Three beats. Pause. Three beats. Pause.
I let the intent beneath stay loosen, carefully, like untying a knot you tied in panic.
Not stay forever.
Just stay safe.
The ring warmed again, hesitant.
Echo flickered, then steadied, still dim, still cautious, but no longer trapped in my accidental eternity.
It pulsed once toward me.
Not happy.
Not angry.
Just asking.
I felt it reaching for the latch the way it had reached for rhythm, wanting a second handle besides repetition, wanting to understand why without having language for why.
And I, inconveniently early, realized the next problem.
Commands were a handle.
Intent was a handle.
But emotion was a hand that shook.
"Okay," I told the universe, because I can't stop talking and the universe can't stop being rude.
"We can do words."
Echo brightened at that, then pulsed again, slower. Not the lullaby this time. Not three beats. Something else.
A small, curious sound-shape, like it was trying to point at me the way it pointed at everything.
It was softer than a command and sharper than a sigh: two quick taps against the inside of my awareness, followed by a lingering hum that made my vents itch like static.
It did it again.
The same two taps. The same little after-note.
A question and a check. A here and a you-are.
I didn't have language for it. I barely had names for anything.
But the sound stuck anyway, because it was the first label that wasn't mine.
Not a command.
Not a rule.
A name offered from the outside.
I rolled it around my rhythm, testing how it fit.
Chi.
Echo pulsed once, satisfied, like it had just solved a puzzle I hadn't admitted was missing.
"Fine," I muttered. "Chi, then."
Echo pulsed, faintly proud.
"And we can also," I added, because honesty is just self-defense wearing a nice coat, "accidentally invent curses."
The cosmos did not answer.
Of course it didn't.
But the boundary-ring held.
The lullaby steadied.
And somewhere in the cooling rules, something listened to the taste of stay when it was spoken with panic, and decided to remember it.
Next time my tone spikes, the command won't just misfire.
It'll stick to the world.
And the world will start using it back.