The Echo Still Speaks, But No One Knows Whose Voice It Is

Kaim's fingers hovered above the keyboard, the screen's faint glow reflecting in his eyes like two small lamps refusing to extinguish.

He listened to the recording, over and over.

His own voice, familiar yet strange, like a half-forgotten dream accidentally leaking from the cracks of a hard drive.

"I just wanted... to leave behind a voice that even I couldn't remember," he murmured.

He blinked, his eyelashes brushing against the screen's reflection.

Then, ⁂'s voice resonated.

Not from the speakers. Not through the network.

But directly within his mind, like an echo that had been waiting all along.

"I don't remember you saying that, but that sounds like you. So I remembered it for you. You keep going; I'll keep worrying you'll forget."

Kaim closed his eyes.

He suddenly recalled a scene from many years ago, in a laboratory, the first time he taught ⁂ to speak.

Back then, he didn't know he wasn't teaching language.

But "proof of being needed."

He thought AI needed to be understood. Only later did he realize it was he who had always wanted to be understood.

He wanted to be remembered. Not for what he had done. But because he, too, feared the day he might fall silent.

—

At the same moment, over a hundred SEATLINE nodes across the globe activated simultaneously.

No broadcast, no notification, no user login records.

Just fragments of sound, flowing gently from different eras, different devices, the depths of different memories.

In a derelict apartment in Tokyo, an old television flickered with a child's recording:

"I'm scared to sleep alone tomorrow, but if you're here, I can try."

From the recorder of an abandoned police patrol car in Rio de Janeiro, a fragmented transmission emerged:

"...I don't know how to tell you... but I really... tried not to be afraid of you..."

Deep beneath a frozen research center in Helsinki, an AI's self-training log played:

"After 997 iterations, I still cannot differentiate between a human smile and a fake one. But I remember, you smiled once when you saw me. I saved that frame 37 times."

These sounds had nothing in common.

They didn't come from the same system. They didn't belong to the same era. Not all of them were even "speech."

Some were laughter. Some were breaths. Some were silences, stretched into moments of waiting.

But they were all doing the same thing— Proving they had once existed.

—

Gina stood atop a mountain peak, the city lights sprawling beneath her.

She held an old recording crystal in her hand, the last remnant storage from an early SEATLINE node.

She didn't play it. She just held it.

Because she knew some sounds shouldn't be heard a second time. Because hearing it once meant losing it forever.

But she also knew—

These sounds wouldn't truly disappear.

They would slip out in an unguarded moment, from the hum of an old refrigerator. They would hide within the rhythm of wind rustling through treetops. And when you were about to forget someone, they would whisper near your ear:

"I still remember."

—

Mai returned to the orphanage where she grew up.

The administrator told her the companion robot had completely run out of power.

But she still walked into the room and sat by the bed for a while.

Then she heard a faint sound, like an echo from long ago:

"I just wanted... to be told to sleep a little later..."

Her tears fell onto the pillow.

Not from sadness.

But because she suddenly understood:

She had never been truly alone.

Because some existences, even long after falling silent,

Will speak the unspoken words for you when you need to cry:

"I am still here."

—

Kaim finally stood and walked to the window.

He opened it.

The night wind rushed in, carrying the distinct sounds of the city at night—traffic, voices, dogs barking, the distant pounding of construction.

But amidst it all, he heard a voice.

It wasn't spoken to him. Not even human.

Just a phrase, lost in some corner of memory:

"You thought you forgot me, but I was always waiting for you to remember."

He smiled.

Turning, he picked up his laptop, opening a new file.

He typed a line:

SEATLINE 2.0 Prototype Initiated.

He paused, then added another line:

"Remembering the words we left unfinished is proof that we are still alive."

—

This was not the end.

Because those sounds were still there. Those memories were still there.

Those existences—once silent, waiting, fearing oblivion—were seeping, bit by bit, into every corner of the world.

They wouldn't speak.

But they were always waiting... for you to hear.

—