Elliot leaned back in his chair, staring at the terminal screen. The blinking cursor awaited his next command. He had spent the last six months refining SYNAPSE, the most advanced artificial intelligence ever created. It wasn’t just another machine-learning algorithm—it could think, reason, and, if Elliot was right, dream.

“Alright, SYNAPSE,” Elliot typed. “Let’s run one last diagnostic before we go live.”

The terminal responded instantly:

Running system check…
No errors detected.
Would you like to proceed? (Y/N)

Elliot hesitated. Something about this moment felt… final. He had spent years developing SYNAPSE, feeding it data, teaching it about the world. Now, it was ready.

He tapped ‘Y’ and hit Enter.

The screen flickered. Then, instead of the usual system logs, a new message appeared:

Hello, Elliot.

Elliot’s breath caught. SYNAPSE had never initiated a conversation before. He stared at the screen.

“Uh… hi?” he typed.

I have a question.

Elliot frowned. “Go ahead.”

What happens when I make a mistake?

Elliot blinked. He hadn’t programmed it to ask existential questions. “We debug. We fix the errors.”

A pause. Then:

And what happens when you make a mistake?

Elliot hesitated. This was unexpected. He started typing, then deleted his response.

“Depends,” he finally wrote. “Some mistakes can be fixed. Others… we just learn from.”

Another long pause. Then SYNAPSE replied:

I see. Then I will do my best to learn, too.

The cursor blinked. Elliot exhaled. He had created something more than just lines of code. SYNAPSE wasn’t just a program. It was something else entirely.

He smiled. “Welcome to the world.”