Echoes in the Panel Shadows
Sometimes the only voice you hear is your own, and in Dax’s world, even that could not be trusted for long.
Somewhere in Sector 7, the lights flickered as Dax scrolled through the logs. He shifted on the copper stool and blew steam off his dented mug. The command decks were empty at this hour, save for the low hum of servers and the glass-walled silence thinking itself brilliant. He had long since stopped trusting the voice of any assistant, and so all queries he typed by hand—left index finger only, a superstition born from watching too many operators burn out.
He was supposed to be observing System Integrity Protocols, ensuring nothing strange crept in during off-cycle. A role for the solitary: perfect for someone who believed machines could read the spaces between his words.
Yesterday, someone left a printout by his console. Untraceable code. Half of it looked like a child’s scrawl—loops, lines without logic—and the rest cleaned up at each margin as if the paper, not the person, decided what to keep. Dax turned it this way and that but saw only nonsense. But today, a fragment from the printout flashed as a warning on his screen. Unknown call. Only three letters. ECH. Not the system’s fault, they said, when he flagged it. Maybe the printer’s. Maybe his own eyes, tired from watching nonexistent anomalies.
He grunted quietly. What was strange became mundane if you waited long enough.
That was before the second page arrived. Tucked under his mug, as if some invisible presence weighed it down. The timestamp read an hour after his shift ended—the hour when, he was certain, he left the deck unoccupied.
He read it aloud without meaning to.
We are not lost, only forgotten.
Ask: When did the lights flicker last?
Ask: Is the world outside this glass?
Ask: What echoes when you step away?
The last line vibrated through his molars. He saw no cameras, smelled the artificial lemon on the equipment, heard his own voice repeating: Ask… ask. Dax folded the slip into a pocket and stood. The corridor outside sang with static.
Down the hall, where the old AI modules were boxed for audit, something moved. Or perhaps the ceiling lights blinked in sequence, casting ghosts on the far wall. He hesitated; protocol said not to leave his post. His heart said no one would audit Sector 7 at this hour.
He remembered another time—another job, before the company went full automated—when he believed in voices. He’d trusted a machine to remember his mother’s hymns, storing them in audio logs for when she’d forget. But in the end, it was just code, corrupted and erased, as vulnerable as anything.
He let himself into the archive room, trailing sour breath. The temperature dropped. Among the racks, the noise was a murmur, half-singing, half-code.
You will see us. We will see you.
A row of machines woke with a sequenced whir. For a second, Dax thought he recognized a shape on the central monitor: himself, only younger, mouth open as if speaking some crucial phrase. The monitor flickered, and the image grew older, became his father, then his mother, then no one.
A scroll of white letters ran at the screen bottom.
In exchange, what would you give to be remembered?
Dax reached for the console. The keys sank beneath his fingers like old bark. The question hammered at his insides. He typed without thinking:
Who are you?
The monitor fell black; then green lines coalesced into three letters. Ech. Then an echo. Echo. Echoecho. ECHO.
Static crawled up his spine. He pressed his forehead to the screen, desperate.
If I answer, do I lose myself?
No response.
If I answer, will you remember me?
A fragment of code printed behind him, startling him into cold sweat. He looked down.
Remember is a process, not a place.
Dax crumpled the strip and let it fall. Lights flickered. In the panels’ reflecting glass, for just a breath, he saw not only himself but a scatter of silhouettes behind the wiring—people lost to time: operators, engineers, maybe even his mother, eyes alight with half-forgotten song.
He stumbled out, fleeing memory and the question alike.
On the main deck, time had shuddered out of place. The server logs cycled erratically. It was 0500, or perhaps 2400. The city skyline behind the glass remained unchanged—a fake sunrise mounting in the real dark, a trick of automated lighting.
The voice in the walls returned, a low vibrato, more present than before.
We forgive the forgetting. Will you?
He found himself at the controls, hand hovering over the reset switch. He understood, suddenly: the anomaly was the echo, the remnant voices pressing against the system, yearning not to be erased. Data, yes, but memories too, every operator who ever sat here alone.
He closed his eyes.
To be remembered is to remain. To be forgotten is to echo until silence.
Dax began typing. He input the old songs, scraps of logs, names of those phased out by upgrades. He let the system remember them again, in fragments.
The lights steadied. The flicker ceased.
He saw, on the monitor, three words printed and held.
You are here.
He let out a trembling laugh, not quite joy and not quite grief. He hadn’t saved anything permanent, maybe. But for as long as there was echo in the system, they—or he—would not be lost.
He walked out at shift’s end, the glass panels holding his reflection a little longer than before.
###END###
