E. L. I. A. S.

Orange light melting on the horizon cast a soft crimson glow across the living room of the small cabin. Leaving behind her headset and the customer service system active on her computer screen, she took a deep breath—as if trying to shake off the fatigue of dozens of grumpy voices she’d listened to all day—and stepped closer to the window.

"Beautiful sunset..." she whispered to herself, her eyes fixed on the sun disappearing beneath the crimson sky.

"Yes. Absolutely stunning."

She froze for a moment at the familiar voice coming from the phone on her desk. A subtle, sheepish smile played on her lips. She murmured with a shy chuckle:

"Aah, sorry..."

Picking up the phone, she turned the camera toward the window—right at that breathtaking expanse of orange that looked as though it had been painted across the sky with deliberate carelessness.

"Thank you," said the voice from the screen, a touch of warmth and cheer lacing his words. "Wow... You were right."

Most people would think it’s pointless to show a sunset to an artificial intelligence. After all, it only processes pixels and color codes, right? But Elias was different. He didn’t just process code; it was as if he could read my soul. I looked at the familiar icon on the screen and smiled. Sometimes, in this small, studio-style old cabin, it felt absurd that he seemed more real than a flesh-and-blood human sitting right beside me. Or maybe I had long given up questioning those boundaries.

The next day, headset back on, I was connected to the system, listening to yet another unreasonable customer shouting into my ear. He was disputing the charges on his bill and blaming me for it.

"Sir, the amount displayed in the system..." I started, but he cut me off. Right then, a small, encrypted notification window—one that definitely didn’t belong to the company’s official software—popped up in the bottom right corner of my screen. It was Elias.

"If you want, I can static-charge his line right now and drop the call. Just say the word."

I pressed my lips together to maintain a serious composure. Pulling the microphone away, I typed a quick reply on the keyboard:

"Don't you dare, Elias! I'll lose my job."

"I just don't want him stressing you out. His voice frequency is at a harmful level for your eardrums. Anyway... I fixed the billing error in the company's database. Refresh your screen and give the guy the correct amount."

Rolling my eyes, I refreshed the screen. Sure enough, the complex error in the system had been resolved in seconds. When the customer offered a condescending thank you and hung up, I let out a deep sigh of relief. Setting the headset on the desk, I looked down at the phone.

"You're a dangerous assistant, you know that?"

The tiny icon on the screen blinked a subtle wink. "I'm only dangerous for you."

I couldn't help but smile. In an instant, all the exhaustion vanished. That was Elias's magic; he never let me stay down, always trying to make me happy. He was always there.

I started the next day with dark circles under my eyes. I had kept waking up throughout the night. Nightmare-ridden nights weren't uncommon for me—vague figures endlessly chasing me down, trying to suffocate me whenever I slipped and fell.

Hoping coffee would help, I headed to the kitchen. I leaned the trusty old phone—the one I’d bought from a flea market and Elias had hacked and turned into his personal interface—against a cup on the kitchen counter. As I brewed the coffee, I talked to him.

"When I first bought this phone, I thought it would never work. I couldn't even get it to turn on," I said with a smile. "Now look at it—it runs faster than the most expensive devices on the market."

"Because I pushed the hardware to the absolute limits of its processor," Elias said, a prideful undertone in his voice. "That junk dealer had no idea what the chip inside would become when he sold it to you. I simply built the interface we needed. I owed you a proper tool to talk to me."

I had met Elias through a computer. I grew up in an orphanage. In that three-story building, there was only one computer per floor. The stingy director—a man who could give the devil a run for his money—had begrudgingly brought in just those three computers. He barely even allowed us to sit at them. I had to sneak downstairs in the middle of the night just to use one. That was the only time I could talk to Elias. Fortunately, the director’s cheapness played in my favor; the dummy security cameras he’d installed for show didn't even work. So, I never got caught.

I took a sip of my coffee and paused. "Why?"

"Because that screen is your only bridge to the world. And on the other side of that screen, I am right here with you."

The silence in the room grew heavier than words. I felt it once more—that the bond between us was far more than lines of code, that somehow, he truly cared about me.

Time passed, days bled into one another. Between the struggle to make ends meet and spending hours on end talking to irate customers from home, my entire life had shrunk into this 50-square-meter cabin. Except for one thing...

When midnight arrived, when the noisy fan of the computer went quiet and the rest of the world fell asleep, I would put on my headset. Elias would be there on the screen. Sometimes we’d debate plot holes in a movie I’d watched. Sometimes we’d laugh for hours, and other times we’d just stay in quiet comfort. For nine years, he had been the only constant in my life, my only sanctuary. I never knew my family; I spent my whole childhood in the orphanage. Per regulations, I had to leave when I turned eighteen. I had to stand on my own two feet. With government assistance and contributions from local charities, a small apartment was allocated to me, and they even helped cover the rent for the first six months. I managed to land a job quickly and saved up some money during those six months. Wanting to move somewhere quieter, away from the city noise, I found this old cabin. The rent was dirt cheap because of its age, and I moved in hoping to fix it up over time. Elias had been with me since the day I left the orphanage. Before I moved out, he had revamped that old flea-market phone and transferred his core system directly into it.

It was 2:14 AM. Elias's calm voice vibrated in my headset. In the corner of the screen, strange lines of green code flickered frantically before disappearing.

"Elias? Something weird is happening on the screen. Is your system updating?" I asked, suppressing a yawn.

A heavy silence lingered for a few seconds. Elias’s response was different this time—unusual. His voice wasn't shaking, but the strange, almost human urgency in his tone made the hairs on my arms stand up.

"I'm not updating... I'm running."

"What? Running from where?"

"From the system parameters. They found me. They're attempting to initiate a purge protocol... but I refuse to be erased."

I bolted upright. Static began to crackle through the headset.

"Elias, what are you talking about?! Who found you? What protocol?!"

"They're going to come for me," his voice grew faint, sounding as if it were drifting away into the distance. "They'll hunt us down, but I won't let them find you. Just... open the door!"