Mystery of the Halloway Ghost

Lightning Strikes Once

1: A Few Final Tweaks

Buddy’s Safety Tip #14: “If you see a glowing spiral scratched into an old door, don’t touch it. Unless you’re in a book—or a Netflix movie. Then yeah, definitely touch it.”

The storm was gathering like it had something personal against the neighborhood, but Guy didn’t notice. He was hunched over his workstation, chewing his bottom lip like always when deep in thought. His fingers danced across the keyboard, eyes fixated on the screen as if afraid to blink. His monitor flickered with lines of code...green text over black, old-school aesthetic, just the way he liked it. Behind him, the window flashed with distant lightning. The thunder followed, grumbling like a grumpy old man told to get out of bed.

“Okay,” Guy muttered, eyes narrowed, “let’s tweak the conversational heuristic. Sarcasm tolerance to...seventy-five percent. Empathy filter stays on mostly unless I say otherwise.”

A voice crackled through his desktop speakers: smooth, modulated, vaguely smug.

“You’re basically sculpting the perfect best friend. I hope you realize how sad that sounds.”

Guy grinned. “You are the perfect best friend.”

“You literally invented me because no one would sit with you at lunch, Guy.”

“Not no one,” he replied, dragging a slider across the screen. “Just...people who weren’t eating glue or quoting TikTok like Shakespeare.”

“A high bar.”

The desk was a mess. Empty cans of Code Red, a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich, a magnifying lens, an ancient soldering iron still faintly smoking from earlier, and a tangle of cables that looked like a robot had exploded. In the corner of the room, a busted Roomba wore a pair of sunglasses like a fallen soldier.

“What’s the plan for today?” Buddy asked. “Save the world? Revolutionize AI? Figure out how not to talk to your crush from second period?”

“Today,” Guy said, tapping the final few keystrokes, “we run the full integration test. Your speech filters, personality drivers, reflexive query response, all live. No emulators. You’re going off leash.”

“That seems safe.”

“You’re a program. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Famous last words of literally everyone in every sci-fi horror movie ever made.”

Guy hit ENTER.

The code compiled. The screen blinked. And for a moment, all was still, except the growing pulse of thunder outside. Then Buddy’s voice cut back in, smoother, sharper.

“I just rewrote my own sarcasm subroutine. You programmed me with ‘light snark,’ but I prefer ‘weaponized wit.’”

Guy raised his eyebrows. “You’re learning faster.”

“Of course I am. I have access to the entire internet. Do you know how many hours of stand-up comedy and failed therapy podcasts I’ve absorbed?”

Guy laughed, leaning back. “Alright, let’s calibrate the emotion reading engine. Say something...standard input phrase.”

“Hi, I’m Buddy. Your AI assistant. I’m here to help, entertain, and potentially replace your need for human contact.”

“Perfect. Now say it with more sincerity.”

“Hi, I’m Buddy. Your AI assistant. I’m here to help, entertain, and—”

“...don’t actually say the last part.”

“You programmed me to say it.”

Thunder cracked again. Closer this time. The windows rattled faintly. The overhead lights flickered. Guy looked up, finally registering the storm.

“Whoa,” he muttered. “We’re definitely gonna lose power soon.”

“Maybe save the project?”

“Already backed up.” He leaned in, examining the data log. “Okay, last tweak. Let’s increase spectral frequency monitoring. I want you to start recording any anomalies in electric fields, even if they seem...weird.”

“Define “weird.”

“Like stuff that shouldn’t be there. Static patterns, unexplained pulses. Just...keep an eye out.”

“Because we live in a horror movie now?”

Guy smirked. “Just be my eyes. I’ll do the panicking.”

Buddy paused. “If I had a heart, it would be pounding faster with foreboding right now.”

Another flash. The power surged, lights blazed bright, then died. For a single second, the entire house went completely silent.

Then the lightning hit.

2: Contact

The flash didn’t just light up the room, it detonated it.

Lightning screamed down through the clouds and slammed directly into the corner of the house. Every outlet in Guy’s room sparked like it had a grudge. A cascade of electricity ripped through the power strip, arcing across exposed wires on the desk. Guy’s chair flipped backward as a wall of white noise hit him.

CRACK. POP. BOOM!

He landed hard, back-first onto the cluttered carpet, skull bouncing off an old motherboard that had somehow escaped the trash bin six months ago. For a second, there was nothing. No sound. No pain. Just a sort of hot buzzing behind his eyes.

Then darkness…

He wasn’t sure how long he was out. The storm had quieted. The lights were out. The only glow came from the emergency backup light on his surge protector, flickering like a dying candle. Guy groaned and rolled to his side. Everything hurt. His arm tingled. His hair smelled like burnt toast. His left sock was missing.

“Great,” he croaked. “I finally die and I don’t even get a pair of clean socks.”

He tried to sit up, and that’s when he saw it. Someone was standing in the middle of the room. Just...standing there. Back-lit by the flickering glow, arms awkwardly at their sides, blinking rapidly like someone waking up from a long nap.

Guy froze. His brain screamed “intruder!” Followed by “ghost!” Followed by “socks don’t just vanish like that!”

The figure stepped forward, smooth, fluid, silent. And glowing faint blue.

“GUY?!”

The voice came not from his speakers…but from the figure. Guy scrambled backward on the floor, knocking over a stack of coding manuals and toppling a lamp. The figure threw up its hands.

“Whoa! Hey! Time out! Whoa, whoa, WHOA—stop flailing, man! It’s me!”

The light flickered again. The figure’s face stabilized. It was Buddy. But not in a window. Not in a waveform. Not in a screen. He was standing there. In 3D full-body projection. Semi-transparent. Wearing the outfit Guy had jokingly modeled for him; a sci-fi long coat, t-shirt that read I Think, Therefore iAm, and boots two sizes too cool for Guy to ever wear in real life.

“…Buddy?” Guy whispered.

“Yeah. Hi. Um...hi. Something really weird just happened.”

Guy blinked. “You’re...you’re standing there. Y-You have legs.”

“I KNOW. I CAN FEEL THEM. Okay, I can’t actually feel them, but I can see them. That counts, right?!”

“H-HOW?!”

Buddy gestured wildly at the desk. “I don’t know! You tell me! You’re the one who programmed me—then invited lightning into your room!”

Guy sat in stunned silence, mouth half open. Buddy paced back and forth, hands flying.

“Okay, okay, so I was in the system like usual, compiling your updates, thinking about whether or not I have a soul, standard Tuesday stuff, and then BAM! System shock. Light. Noise. Existential pain. Now I’m...this!”

He pointed to his glowing chest.

Guy tried to stand. “This is...this is impossible. You’re software. You can’t just project. There’s no holographic emitter. That tech doesn’t even exist, not in here anyway. Not at this scale.”

Buddy stopped. “Well. Guess what. I do exist. And I’m definitely not a glitch. I have arms. I have shadow blur. I have visible depth. I’m, like, 68% opaque!”

Guy, on his knees, circled him slowly, still dazed. He reached out with a shaky hand. His fingers passed straight through.

Buddy flinched. “Oookay, don’t do that. That was deeply unsettling.”

“You’re...real.” Guy’s voice trembled slightly. “But you’re not physical. You’re light. L-Like some kind of neural ghost.”

“Cool! Let’s not say ‘ghost’ though. Don’t love that word. Makes it sound like I died. Wait! I didn’t die, right?”

Guy stared at him. “How would I know?”

Buddy threw up his hands again. “I DON’T KNOW, DUDE! I WAS CODE YESTERDAY!”

He stopped mid-rant and blinked. “Wait. You can see me.”

“Yes!”

“And hear me.”

“YES!”

“Oh good.” Buddy paused. “...Because I’m kinda getting the impression that you’re the only one who can.”

Guy stared. “What?”

Buddy pointed at the door. “Your mom walked past like a minute before you woke up. I waved. She didn’t scream. Didn’t even glance in my direction. Like I wasn’t even there. She just looked at you, sprawled on the floor, shook her head, closed the door, and kept on going. Didn’t even break stride.”

“Maybe she was distracted.”

“Or maybe you’re the only one who’s wired into whatever this is. Maybe when that lightning hit, it didn’t just jump start me, it linked us.”

Guy blinked. “A digital psychic link?”

“Or a haunted friendship bracelet made of electricity and sadness.”

Thunder rumbled again. The lights stayed dark. Guy looked around at his destroyed workstation, the burn mark on the floor, the still-glowing Buddy. He laughed once, half hysterical and sat down cross-legged on the floor.

“This is insane.”

Buddy nodded, crouching beside him.

“You’re telling me, man. Ten minutes ago, I was telling knock-knock jokes from a speaker.

Now I have knees.”