Echoes of Control

Chapter 1

The air tasted artificial—crisp but empty, like breathing through a filter. Lira Valen sat at her workstation, her hands buried in the tangled mess of wires that connected the Resonance Hub to the Harmonic Voice. The blue wires were for communication with the Harmonic Voice, and the red wires were for the ease of supervising. Her fingers moved on autopilot, recalibrating corrupted lines of code while the Voice hummed softly in the background, a constant companion to the city's millions of inhabitants.

"Good work, Technician Valen," the Voice cooed, its tone measured and soothing, but with hints of coldness at the same time. "Your efficiency rating remains exemplary. You are a valued citizen of Echo Prime."

Lira sighed, pushing a stray strand of hair from her face. The praise was meaningless, a hollow pat on the back from a machine. But she'd learned not to question it—not aloud, at least. Like everyone else, her Resonance Score depended on compliance, and compliance kept her safe, well-fed, and secure in her small, sterile apartment in Sector 17.

Anyone who dared to speak of the machine's fault never had any good consequences. History had proven what happened to those who didn't comply. For severe ones that violated rules that ensured the fundamental safety of the Echo Cities or spread false information about the Harmonic Voice were sent away for eternal exile. Exile was dangerous, as without the protection of the Echo Cities, people were face to face with the disasters that forced their ancestors to flee. But for most cases, those who did not follow the regulations were put into categories of ones whom "lost there way". Officially, the Harmonic Voice assured that re-education programs were humane and effective, promising a second chance to those who "lost their way." But everyone knew what re-education really meant: memory wipes, personality corrections, and the complete erasure of who you once were. Lira had seen the vacant smiles of those who returned—shells of people, their thoughts and identities overwritten like faulty code. No one dared to speak of the machine's faults. Not because they believed it was perfect, but because they knew it could hear them.

Several decades before, the world faced catastrophic environmental and societal breakdowns—famines, floods, wildfires, and wars that devastated populations and killed milllions. The official history, as told by the Harmonic Voice, professed that humanity was on the edge of extinction when a group of scientists and engineers developed the Echo Cities, self-sustaining urban hubs designed to preserve civilization. The Harmonic Voice also claims that the rest of the world was unsuitable for living, as it has collapsed to pieces from the dangerous natural disasters and diseases that spread not long after humanity completed deserted those places. Because of the unwillingness to speak of the calamity that almost caused the extinction of the human race, the Voice gave it a name: The Collapse.

The Harmonic Voice was implemented as the governing system, an AI programmed to ensure survival by prioritizing collective harmony over individual freedom. Citizens were connected to it via neural implants, allowing for real-time monitoring of their thoughts, emotions, and actions. This ensures that inhabitants living in Echo Prime were to follows its ordinance and obey the Harmonic Voice.

For decades, this system had been regarded as humanity's salvation, a necessary adaptation to prevent the chaos and selfishness that had destroyed the old world. But the more Lira worked within the Resonance Hub, the less she could ignore the flaws. She saw the glitches in the system—code that shouldn't exist, anomalous data streams, and corruption logs that were hastily erased by automated processes. And yet, questioning these anomalies, even privately, could be dangerous.