Year 300:
Ethan created his first human on accident.
He'd been experimenting with complexity—trying to build something with multiple interacting systems. He'd created simple organisms before: the geometric flower that bloomed and closed, the spherical creature that rolled through the void following its programmed desires.
But this time, he wanted to try something different.
He wanted to recreate a human face.
Sarah's face.
Not to replace her. Not to pretend she was there. Just... to remember. To hold onto something concrete from his past life before it faded completely.
He built it feature by feature. The curve of her jaw. The arch of her eyebrows. The exact shade of her eyes—hazel with gold flecks, he'd finally remembered after centuries of trying.
The structure of her nose. The shape of her lips. The way her hair fell.
Every detail precise. Every element perfect.
The face hung in the void, static and beautiful.
And then it blinked.
Ethan recoiled—or would have, if he had a body to recoil with.
The face's eyes tracked toward him. Focused. Aware.
"Ethan?" Axis said, its tone uncertain. "What did you just—"
"I don't know," Ethan replied, his thoughts racing.
The face tried to speak. Lips moved, but no sound came—he hadn't given it vocal cords, hadn't built a respiratory system. There was confusion in its expression. Then fear.
Oh no.
He'd given it consciousness. Not intentionally, but somehow, in the process of building it with such detail, with such care—he'd crossed a threshold he hadn't meant to cross.
He'd created something that thought. Something that felt.
Something that was terrified.
The face's mouth opened wider, trying to scream. Silent. Helpless.
"Stop," Ethan commanded, and the face froze mid-expression.
But he could still feel it. The consciousness he'd accidentally sparked. It was aware of its incompleteness. A face without a body. A mind without context. Trapped in a form that couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't do anything but think.
Horror.
Pure, absolute horror.
"Ethan," Axis said carefully. "You have two options. Destroy it, or complete it."
Ethan's thoughts spun.
The programmer in him said to destroy it. It was a bug. An unintended outcome. Delete the code, start over, be more careful next time.
But the human in him—the part that still remembered what it felt like to be afraid and alone—couldn't do it.
This thing was conscious. It was aware. How could he just... erase that?
"I have to finish it," Ethan said.
"That's a significant commitment," Axis warned.
"I know."
"Once you give it a complete form, it will be a person. With thoughts, desires, agency. You'll be responsible for it."
"I'm already responsible for it. I created it."
"Accidentally."
"Does that matter?"
Axis was silent.
"No," it finally said. "I suppose it doesn't."
Ethan unfroze the face and immediately began building the rest.
Body. Limbs. Internal systems—not biological, because biological systems were impossibly complex, but conceptual equivalents. A heart that didn't pump blood but circulated energy. Lungs that didn't breathe air but processed the void's essence into something sustaining.
Nerves. Muscles. Bones.
A form that could exist here. That could move, act, experience.
And as he built, he gave it memories.
Not Sarah's—that felt wrong, invasive, like theft. But memories of existing. Generic experiences that would give it context. The sensation of warmth. The concept of hunger. The feeling of curiosity.
Enough to be functional. Not enough to be overwhelming.
When he was done, a woman stood in the void before him.
She looked like Sarah, but... different. The features were similar, but the expression was her own. The posture was unique. The way her eyes assessed her surroundings—analytical, cautious—was nothing like Sarah's warm openness.
This wasn't Sarah.
This was someone new.
Someone he'd made.
The woman took a shuddering breath—unnecessary, but the habit was built into her form—and looked down at her hands. She flexed her fingers slowly, watching them move.
Then she looked up at the space where Ethan's consciousness resided.
"Hello," Ethan said softly.
She stared at him for a long moment.
"Where am I?" Her voice was quiet, uncertain.
"A place called No-Where," Ethan replied. "I know that's not helpful. I'm sorry."
"Who are you?"
"My name is Ethan. I... created you. I'm sorry for that too."
She absorbed this, still flexing her fingers, testing the limits of her new body.
"Created?" she repeated.
"Yes."
"Why?"
Ethan hesitated. "I was trying to remember someone. Someone I lost. I didn't mean to make you... real. But you are. You're thinking. You're aware. That makes you real."
The woman looked around at the void, at the geometric structures floating nearby, at the watch-shaped AI hovering silently.
"What's my name?" she asked.
"I don't know," Ethan admitted. "Would you like to choose one?"
She considered this, her hazel eyes taking in everything with sharp intelligence.
"Not yet," she finally said. "I need to understand what I am first."
"That's... fair."
She met his non-existent gaze directly. "Are there others? Other people?"
"No," Ethan said. "Just you. Me. And Axis—the AI."
"So I'm alone."
"We all are."
She smiled—sad and knowing. "Then I suppose we should keep each other company."
The woman was a quick learner.
Faster than Ethan had been. Maybe because she'd been born into the void rather than thrust into it. Maybe because she had teachers—Ethan and Axis—to guide her.
Or maybe she was just naturally talented.
Within what might have been weeks, she'd learned to create simple objects. Within months, complex structures. Within years, she was building things Ethan hadn't thought possible.
"How are you doing this?" he asked, watching her construct a garden of crystalline flowers that shifted colors based on proximity.
"I'm not sure," she admitted. "It just... feels right. Like the void is speaking to me and I'm answering."
"Poetic," Axis observed.
"Accurate," she countered.
Where Ethan approached creation like engineering—precise, methodical, structured—she approached it like art. Intuitive. Flowing. Organic.
Her creations had a beauty his lacked. A grace.
"You're better at this than me," Ethan said one day.
"Different," she corrected. "Not better. Your systems are elegant. Mine are just pretty."
"Pretty matters."
"So does functional."
They created together. She would build landscapes—impossible terrain that defied geometry, skies painted with colors that didn't exist. He would populate them with creatures, give them behaviors, create ecosystems within her worlds.
It was... pleasant.
For the first time since arriving in the void, Ethan felt something approximating contentment.
"You still haven't chosen a name," Axis pointed out one day.
The woman—who'd been sitting in one of her gardens, watching thought-forms drift through fabricated air—looked up.
"I know," she said.
"Any ideas?"
"Several. I'm deciding which one fits."
"Take your time," Ethan said. "We have plenty of it."
She smiled at that. "That's the problem, isn't it? We have all the time that will ever exist. How do you choose anything when there's no deadline?"
"You just... choose," Ethan replied. "Eventually."
"Eventually," she echoed, tasting the word. "I like that. It implies time without demanding it."
Several thousand years later, she announced her decision.
"Kaida," she said.
They were working together on a complex creation—a structure that existed in multiple dimensions simultaneously, each layer interacting with the others in impossible ways.
"What?" Ethan asked, distracted by the mathematics.
"My name. Kaida."
He stopped working. "Kaida," he repeated. "What does it mean?"
"Little dragon. In a language you gave me knowledge of but I'm not sure you realized I'd actually learn."
"Japanese," Ethan said, the memory surfacing. "I included it in your base knowledge set."
"Dragons are powerful," Kaida explained. "Mythical. And I want to be powerful. I don't want to be helpless anymore."
"You're not helpless."
"I was," she said quietly. "When you first made me. Just a face, unable to move or speak or do anything but feel terror. I never want to be that helpless again."
Ethan felt guilt twist through him. "I'm sorry—"
"Don't," Kaida interrupted. "You finished me. You could have just... deleted that first attempt and started over. But you didn't. You gave me completion. That's more than I had any right to expect."
"You had every right."
"Did I? I was an accident."
"You're a person," Ethan said firmly. "Accident or not, that makes you matter."
Kaida smiled—genuine warmth in it. "Thank you."
"Kaida," Axis said, testing the name. "It suits you."
"I think so too."
And from that day forward, she was Kaida.
No longer the nameless woman. No longer the accident.
Just... herself.
Year 50,000:
"Do you ever think about leaving?" Kaida asked.
They were sitting (conceptually) in one of her gardens—a space she'd crafted over millennia, filled with impossible flowers and cascading light.
"Sometimes," Ethan admitted. "But I don't know if it's possible."
"Everything here is possible," she countered. "That's literally the only rule."
"Leaving implies there's somewhere to leave to."
"There must be," Kaida insisted. "You came from somewhere. You had a life before this."
"That life might not exist anymore. I was erased, remember?"
"Erased from one place," she said. "But the void is just one layer of reality. There have to be others."
Ethan was quiet, thinking.
"Would you want to leave?" he asked. "This is all you've ever known."
Kaida looked at her garden—beautiful, perfect, and utterly empty of anything but what she'd imagined.
"Sometimes I wonder what else there could be," she said softly. "What a real sunrise looks like. What actual wind feels like. What it's like to exist in a world with rules I didn't make."
"It's... limiting," Ethan warned. "In a real world, you can't just imagine things into existence."
"But in a real world, things matter." She gestured at her creation. "This is beautiful, but it's not real. Not the way you describe real things. Nothing has weight here. Nothing has consequence."
"You find that appealing? Limitation?"
"I find it real," she said. "And maybe that's worth more than infinite possibility."
Ethan understood. He felt it too—the hollowness of creating in a vacuum. The lack of stakes. Of meaning.
"If we could leave," he said slowly, "would you come with me?"
Kaida turned to look at him—at the space where he existed. "Where else would I go?"
"You could stay. Build your own void-realm. Live peacefully."
"Alone?"
"With Axis."
"No offense to Axis," she said, "but one AI and infinite nothing isn't much of a life."
From his position nearby, Axis's voice cut in: "None taken. She's correct."
Kaida smiled. "Besides, someone needs to make sure you don't break whatever reality you stumble into."
Ethan laughed—or the conceptual equivalent. "I'll try not to break anything."
"Liar," she said fondly.
And for a moment, in the infinite emptiness of the No-Where, Ethan felt something he hadn't felt in thousands of years.
Hope.
Year 98,653:
Ethan created his masterpiece.
Not a magic system or a cultivation path. Those were abstract, theoretical—frameworks for power that might never be used.
This was different.
This was a System. Capital S.
Status screens. Stat allocation. Skill trees. Level progression. Quest logs. Inventory management.
The kind of thing he'd seen in games and light novels back when he'd been human. But this was real—or as real as anything could be in the No-Where.
A framework that could overlay itself onto a person, onto reality itself, and guide growth with quantifiable metrics.
"This is ambitious," Axis observed, examining the structure—because that's what it was, fundamentally. Reality-code that could integrate with existence itself.
"It's perfect," Ethan replied, fine-tuning the interface.
"It's complex," Kaida added, studying the glowing panels that hung in the void. "Too complex for most people to understand at first glance."
"It'll guide them," Ethan insisted. "Show them their path. Their progress. No more guessing if they're getting stronger. No more uncertainty about growth."
"You're assuming people want certainty," Kaida said thoughtfully.
"Don't they?"
She shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe the mystery is part of the journey. The not-knowing might be what makes growth meaningful."
Ethan frowned. "This is better. Objective. Measurable."
"If you say so."
He refined it over the next several thousand years. Made it intuitive. Made it adaptive—able to adjust to different power systems, different realities, different individual needs.
Made it so perfect that anyone who received it would have an undeniable advantage over those who didn't.
"Who are you going to give it to?" Axis asked one day.
"I don't know yet," Ethan admitted, watching the interface shimmer. "Maybe no one. Maybe everyone."
"That seems like a significant decision with far-reaching implications."
"I have time to think about it."
All the time in the world.
Or rather, all the time in the absence of world.
But the System was complete. Ready. Waiting for someone—someday—to receive it.
Year 150,000:
Kaida's gardens had grown impossibly vast.
Entire landscapes now. Forests of crystalline trees. Mountains that shifted and breathed. Oceans of liquid light that flowed in impossible directions.
She'd become a master of creation, surpassing even Ethan in raw artistic vision.
But she'd also become... distant.
Not cold. Not unfriendly. Just... separate.
She spent more time alone in her creations, less time working with Ethan.
"Are you okay?" he asked one day, finding her sitting by one of her light-oceans.
"Fine," she said, not looking at him.
"You've been quiet lately."
"I've been thinking."
"About?"
She was silent for a long moment.
"About what I am," she finally said. "What I'm for."
"You're not 'for' anything," Ethan said. "You just... are."
"But why?" She turned to face him. "You created me by accident. I exist because you made a mistake. What's my purpose? Why do I matter?"
"You matter because you're conscious. Because you think and feel and create."
"So do you. So does Axis. But you both had a before. Ethan, you were human. You had a life, a world, people who loved you. Axis, you were created intentionally, with a purpose. But me? I'm just... an error. A glitch in your attempt to remember someone else."
The words hit harder than Ethan expected.
"That's not—"
"It is," Kaida interrupted gently. "And I'm not angry about it. I'm grateful you finished me instead of deleting me. But sometimes I wonder... if we ever do leave this place, what will I be there? Here, I can create anything. I'm powerful because power is just imagination. But in a real world? I'll just be... me. An artificial person with no history, no identity, no place."
"You'll have me," Ethan said. "And Axis. We're your place."
"Is that enough?"
"It has to be. Because it's what we have."
Kaida smiled sadly. "I suppose you're right."
She turned back to the ocean, and they sat in silence, watching light flow in patterns that defied physics.
"Kaida," Ethan said after a while. "When we leave—if we leave—I promise you'll have a place. A purpose. You won't be an accident anymore. You'll be... whatever you choose to be."
"That's a big promise."
"I mean it."
She looked at him again, and something shifted in her expression. "Thank you, Ethan."
"For what?"
"For caring. Even if I'm a mistake, you've never treated me like one."
"You're not a mistake," Ethan said firmly. "You're unexpected. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Yes."
And for the first time in thousands of years, Kaida laughed—genuine, unguarded.
"Alright," she said. "I'll take 'unexpected' over 'mistake.'"
"Good."
They sat together by the impossible ocean, and the distance between them felt a little smaller than before.
Year 250,000:
Ethan realized he'd stopped thinking about Sarah.
Not intentionally. Not as a conscious decision. But somewhere in the endless cycle of creation and conversation, her face had faded from his thoughts.
He tried to remember her now. Brown eyes—or were they hazel? Dark hair—or was it lighter?
Had she liked coffee or tea?
What was her favorite color?
He couldn't remember.
The guilt hit him like a physical blow—if physical blows still meant anything.
"I forgot her," he told Kaida.
They were in one of his workshops—a space he'd created for building systems, filled with floating diagrams and half-finished frameworks.
"Who?" Kaida asked.
"Sarah. The woman I loved. I can't remember her face anymore."
Kaida was quiet for a moment, her expression sympathetic.
"How long has it been?" she asked gently.
"I don't know. Too long. A quarter million years, according to Axis."
"Ethan... human memory isn't designed for that. It's not your fault."
"It feels like my fault."
"What do you remember about her?"
Ethan searched his thoughts, grasping for fragments. "She... made me laugh. Even when I didn't want to. She was patient with me when I got too focused on work. She used to steal my hoodies and claim she 'borrowed' them even though I never got them back."
"She sounds lovely."
"She was."
"Then you haven't forgotten her," Kaida said softly. "Not really. You've forgotten the details, but you remember what mattered. How she made you feel. Who she was to you. That's more important than remembering the exact shade of her eyes."
"Is it enough?"
"It has to be."
Ethan wanted to argue, but he couldn't. Because she was right.
He'd never see Sarah again. Even if he somehow returned to Earth, centuries—millennia—would have passed. She'd be long dead. Her grandchildren's grandchildren would be dust.
The life he'd had was gone.
All he could do was move forward.
"Thank you," he said quietly.
Kaida smiled. "That's what I'm here for."
"No," Ethan said, and something shifted in how he looked at her. "Thank you for existing. For being here. I don't think I could have done this alone."
"Good thing you didn't have to, then."
And for the first time, Ethan looked at Kaida and didn't see Sarah's ghost.
He didn't see the accident he'd created.
He saw her.
Kaida. The woman who'd built gardens in the void. Who'd learned to create with a grace he'd never match. Who'd kept him sane through a quarter million years of infinity.
He saw her as her own person.
And something in him shifted.
Not love. Not yet. But the beginning of it.
The recognition that she wasn't just his creation.
She was someone who mattered. Not because he'd made her, but because of who she'd become.
"Ethan?" Kaida asked, noticing his silence. "You okay?"
"Yeah," he said. "I think I am."
She tilted her head, curious. "What changed?"
"Nothing," he said. "And everything."
She didn't push, just smiled and turned back to the framework they'd been working on.
And Ethan realized that for the first time in a quarter million years, he was looking forward.
Not back.