"What do you want your coffee to say today?" the barista asked.
Ethan looked like he'd slept in a dryer. "I want it to say 'Don't die before the 10 a.m. demo.'"
"Bold," she said. "Shot of espresso?"
"Two. And a small speech about believing in me."
She slid the cup over.
On the lid she'd written.
You've got this, Ethan.
The this had three underlines like it meant something cosmic.
He grinned, paid, and walked into the rain with no umbrella.
The crosswalk light blinked red at him.
"Please," he told it. "We both know you don't mean it."
A bus whooshed past, slapping him with spray. "Message received," he said, and jogged the last half block.
He hit the security gate of the university's Applied Language Systems Lab and flashed his badge.
The guard looked up.
"You're late," the guard said.
"I'm establishing a pattern so expectations stay grounded."
The guard shook his head. "You're gonna get electrocuted today."
"Statistically unlikely," Ethan said. "But I appreciate the foreshadowing."
Up the elevator, through the gray hall, into Lab 3 his second home.
Banks of monitors.
A ring of high-end speakers in a circular frame.
A thick glass wall looking into the anechoic chamber that ate echoes like a black hole ate light.
Cables everywhere.
A floor sign that said NO DRINKS.
He set his coffee on the sign.
"Morning," Maya said, not looking up from her terminal.
Her hair was in a knot held by two pencils like a tiny tactical fork.
Her hoodie said Semantics > Syntax, which was a fight she'd started a dozen times.
"Good morning to my favorite syntax hater," Ethan said. "Did the universe collapse while I was unconscious?"
"Not yet," she said. "But the GPU cluster coughed blood at two a.m. Did you push the new kernel?"
"Define 'push,'" he said.
"You named your branch 'final_final_please_work' and I'm concerned."
"That's a well-known industry standard."
Luis rolled in on an office chair like a bored pirate.
He had a bag of chips at 9:03 a.m. and no shame. "I slept under the console for an hour," he said. "Your code whispered to me."
"What did it say?" Ethan asked.
"It said 'comment your functions, coward.'"
Dr. Chen walked in a cardigan.
Early forties.
Calm voice.
Eyes that clocked everything. "If the demo crashes, I will cry," she said.
"If I cry, the grant dies. If the grant dies, you are all learning to code for accounting firms."
"We'll be fine," Ethan said.
Maya gestured at the ring of speakers. "Let me rephrase the last run flattened the waveform like it owed us money."
"Which one?" Chen asked.
"The E-series," Maya said. "E7 was clean. E8 was a little… weird."
"Weird how?" Ethan said.
"It's like the harmonics answered you," she said, finally turning to him. "Don't make the I told you so face."
"I'm not," Ethan said.
He was.
Luis pointed at the spectrogram on the big screen. "See that? That's not a normal response curve. It's layered. Like… stacked syllables." He paused. "Please don't say syllables of God again."
"I won't say that," Ethan said. "But I will think it loudly."
Dr. Chen rubbed her temple. "Let's keep the demo solid and not summon anything. The dean comes at ten. We give him a neat speech-to-action demo. He claps. He approves the Phase II budget. We celebrate with dumplings."
"Dumplings are a powerful motivator," Ethan said.
"Then do not blow up my lab," Chen said. "And stop putting coffee on the NO DRINKS sign. It's concerning."
He moved the cup to the YES SAFETY poster. "Better?"
Maya snorted. "Ethics committee is gonna love him."
Ethan sat, cracked his knuckles, and pulled up the code.
Rows of comments like little breadcrumbs.
// KER kernel — command execution and resonance mapping
// author: ethan varel
// todo: stop naming functions after dead languages
"Kerr?" Luis said, leaning over. "You actually called it KER?"
"It stands for Kernel for Emergent Resonance," Ethan said. "The fact it's also the name of a godlike system in a comic I read as a kid is coincidence."
"Uh-huh."
Dr. Chen crossed her arms. "Remind me, pitch in one sentence."
Ethan spun his chair to face her. "Human brains treat certain sound patterns as commands, not descriptions. We can detect that with resonance mapping and use it to build interfaces that feel like intention, not buttons."
"Five sentences," she said, "but it works." She nodded at the chamber. "Walk me through today."
"Phase one baseline. We play neutral syllables at low amplitude. Phase two command candidates. We test E1 through E7 with the new gain limiter. Phase three: no phase three. We do not touch E8."
Maya raised a hand. "Seconded."
Luis raised chips. "Thirded."
Ethan saluted. "Fine. E8 stays in the box."
He glanced at his phone. Two texts
Mom: call me when you can no rush, just want to hear your voice.
And Riya: dinner tonight? Or are you married to your weird voice machine?
He typed back to Riya: I'm committing emotional adultery with the weird voice machine.
Raincheck? She sent back a middle finger emoji and a heart.
He called his mom.
She answered on the second ring. "Ethan?"
"Hey."
"You sound tired," she said.
"I sound like a man serving the altar of science with a hangover."
"You don't drink."
"It's a metaphorical hangover. From ambition."
She sighed, gentle. "You eat?"
"I am considering a chips-based lunch. Balanced diet. Potatoes and salt."
"Don't be an idiot. I sent you that chicken curry."
"That was in Tupperware level four," he said. "We have five levels. Level five is the frozen pizza shelf. Level one is the Home of Forgotten Yogurt."
She laughed. "Your father used to label shelves. It never helped. Listen, I had a dream about you."
He pulled the phone away to check the time, then put it back. "You know I love you, but those words always mean trouble."
"It was strange," she said. "There were… lines? Like letters I couldn't read. They glowed."