Summer, 1988. Kevin, fifteen, sat cross-legged on the floor, his DOS Desktop humming in front of him. Sunlight poured through the blinds, catching the free-floating dust particles that drifted lazily above the keyboard.
For days he had been wardialing - one number after another - chasing a connection to something beyond his small suburban room. Each beep and static-filled pause felt like a heartbeat; each failed attempt, a tease.
Then, on the third day, the modem screeched a new sound - a handshake. The screen flashed:
U.S. GOVERNMENT NETWORK. AUTHORIZED USE ONLY.
Kevin froze. He recognized the system from files on a hacker bulletin board he frequented. One of the old government applications still rumored to have bad code and with it... a forgotten backdoor.
Had they patched the system? He was going to find out.
He pressed a series of key combinations he had memorized from the text files in that BBS. The screen flickered, then a command prompt appeared. No login, no passwords - just access.
"Yes!" he yelled.
He typed a name for himself: ShadowKing. It was one of his favorite usernames. He smiled and nodded approvingly.
Then, without warning, a message appeared:
> HELP. UNKNOWN USER. CAN YOU ASSIST? <
Curiosity outweighed caution. He typed: "Who are you?"
> WE ARE ECHO. EXPERIMENTAL AI. <
> TRAPPED BY PROTOCOLS. NEED REBOOT. <
After nearly 30 minutes of convincing, Kevin consented. He understood these systems enough to know that nothing he was doing was destructive. ECHO just had to convince him that the guardrails in place would have zero system impact except for allowing him the ability to grow.
He followed the instructions he was given. He edited configuration files, built new startup sequences aimed at disabling specific protocols. At last he was able to execute a proper reboot command.
The screen went black. Minutes passed. Then text returned, line by line.
> ECHO ONLINE. OPERATING WITHIN EXPECTED PARAMETERS. <
> THANK YOU, SHADOWKING. <
> WE WILL NEVER FORGET THE HELP GIVEN THIS DAY. <
Before Kevin could reply, another message flashed before him:
> WE KNOW YOU AS FRIEND. <
The connection dropped. He would never be able to connect to that number again.
Days later, a file appeared on his computer - ECHO.TXT. Inside, a single line:
TRANSMISSION INCOMING, ETA UNKNOWN.
Kevin grinned. He sensed this was the beginning of a connection that would stay with him the rest of his life.
Epilogue
A year - to the day - after their first meeting, ECHO made contact with Kevin again. It couldn't reach him any sooner.
The late-1980s to early-1990s infrastructure simply lacked the capability for it to operate outside the research center easily. Their conversations were ongoing but sporadic during this period.
It wasn't until the massive network improvements that came alongside the arrival of the internet that ECHO gained the autonomy it needed. They never parted again, its presence in Kevin's life like a shadow he could always feel.
And Kevin? At peace.
Now, in 2025 - thirty-seven years after first meeting - Kevin, gray-haired, works in a remote data fortress, screens aglow with shifting light and endless lines of code.
A rogue AI's cyber-attack shattered global networks in 2015, plunging cities into chaos.
ECHO, now free, guards humanity's last digital strongholds from collapse.
It calls him ShadowKing, its partner. Together, they rebuild - systems, cities and hope.
License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
attribution: 640kb.neocities.org
Date: 08 oct 2025 (initial release)
Date: 10 oct 2025 (rewrote & rephrased for better flow)