William shook his head as he heard a knock on the door. "William? Are you awake?"

  He glanced at the bottom right corner of his vision. It was currently 11:00. He called back, "Eve? Yeah, I'm awake! Do you wanna come in?"

  His room was quite large. It was a 20 x 25 ft room. His room consisted of a king-size bed, a TV, a computer, a large desk, an entire corner filled with bookshelves, a piano, and a large sofa.

  Eve walked in, her long white hair flowing behind her. She looked at the desk, which contained a lot of books about law, new technologies, programming, and some science fiction books. "What are you here for, Eve?" William asked as he lay on the bed.

  "Well, Sarah told me to bring you down. Lunch's ready."

  "It's a bit early, no?"

  "Not my fault. Go tell Sarah that."

  He rolled his eyes, "Please, I'd rather not start the day off on a bad note."

  She giggled as she pulled him from the bed. "Come on. The food's gonna go cold if you wait too long."

  William fixed his hair and sighed as he allowed himself to be pulled by her, "Fine. You don't need to pull so hard."

  She looked back, her stormy grey eyes meeting his blue and brown, "If I don't pull you this hard, you wouldn't do shit, bruh. So stop complaining, you lazy bones, alright?"

  He chuckled, "You got me there. I just don't like moving in the morning."

  She pulled harder as she started running out of the room, effortlessly pulling him. He sighed as he barely closed the door behind him. They ran downstairs, going towards the dining room.

  They burst into the dining room, Eve finally letting go of his wrist. William chuckled as he rubbed his wrist, which was a little red. Sarah looked up from where she was setting up the plates, "Oh, it seems Miss Eve finally woke you up, Master William."

  He smiled as he sat down at the end of the table, "Oh, please, Sarah. I was already awake by then. I was just planning my future."

  She walked around him, setting his plate, "Oh, you? Planning? That's a first, Master William."

  William shook his head, "Heh." He didn't say anything more.

  Eve smiled, "William, how's your secret project going?"

  "If you're gonna say that out loud, it won't be a secret for long, Eve." He raised his finger, "And for your information, it's going really well."

  Sarah came back in from the kitchen with pasta, "Here's your lunch for today. Enjoy." She put some pasta in their plates and patted their head.

  Eve's eyes twinkled, "Ohhh, today's pasta? Why didn't you tell me, Sarah? I asked you multiple times!"

  She laughed, "Oh, I just wanted it to be a surprise for you."

  William took a bite, "Hmm. Your cooking is top tier as always, Sarah."

  Eve nodded, "Agreed."

  Sarah smiled, "I'm glad you kids enjoy my cooking." She walked back into the kitchen.

  Eve looked around for a moment, making sure nobody was around. She turned to William with her grey eyes, "Your project is related to computers, right? Can you teach me?"

  William looked up, "Huh? How'd you know?"

  "Every time I came in, you're in front of your computer, typing away. And you have a lot of programming books on your desk."

  He nodded slowly, "You're really perceptive. It's true. I'll tell you about it after lunch. I'll teach you, and maybe you can help me."

  Her eyes shone, "Deal! You can't go back on it now."

  He smiled, amused. "Sure." They quickly ate and went back to William's room.

  He booted up the computer and waited. The machine, a new model, didn't take quite as long as the old one. The boot time was only one and a half minutes. He opened up the editor and went straight to work. He was currently writing the kernel of the new OS he planned. He had planned to release it early, but due to legal reasons, he decided to release it in 1998, after he created a company. If he remembered correctly, the hardware by 1998 wouldn't be able to handle the OS he had in mind, so he started writing the lite version first. His plan was for the kernel and its subsystems to run well on 16 - 64 MB RAM. His plans for the GUI would be for it to be quite futuristic and minimalistic, by that time's standard, and for it to run as smoothly as possible. He planned to include crash isolation, antivirus, USB stack, and even include a browser.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  He had to write in assembly for the bootloader, the protected mode switching, interrupt handlers, context switching, basic I/O port access, system call entry point, and basic GDT/IDT setup. Everything else would be written in C or C++. The kernel, system libraries, and core utilities like device drivers and system calls interface would be written in C. He was currently still working on the Kernel. For GUI and other higher-level components, he planned to use C++. He also had ideas to include a built-in browser for the OS, using C++ to build it. He would include a scripting layer as well, like Unix shells, with a custom scripting language. As for the rest, it was still far away for him to worry about.

  Eve leaned over his shoulder, curious. "So what are you writing right now?"

  He continued typing, "This is called Assembly Language, Eve. It's the lowest-level programming language. This is basically just instructions, directly to the computer. See this line, 'JMP 0x7C00'? When the BIOS loads our bootloader, it puts it at exactly memory address 0x7C00 and jumps there." He scrolled down, "And these last two bytes have to be 0x55AA, the boot signature. If they're not there, the BIOS won't even try to run our code. We have exactly 510 bytes between the jump and that signature to load the entire kernel into memory."

  Eve looked at him in confusion, "So... what's a BIOS? What's a Kernel?"

  William blinked. Of course, she wouldn't know. It's still 1987. And she's only 7 years old.

  He explained the basis of how computers work to her. He explained why BIOS was a crucial component of an OS, which led to another explanation of what an OS was. After explaining to her for about 2 or 3 hours, she finally understood.

  She sat back, rubbing her temple, "So, the BIOS is like the first thought you have when waking up, and the Kernel is the brain, right?"

  He sighed, "Well, close enough, I guess." He glanced at his overlay. He was already at 67% stamina. The extended explanation was far more draining than coding. "The important thing is, this is the foundation. Right now, there are only lines, but in the future, it will look pretty."

  She studied the screen, watching him type new lines into existence, "This is going to take you years, right? I mean, you're even planning to add things that will come in the future! Are you with the government?"

  He looked at her in shock, "Bruh. I'm not with the government, alright? I hate taxes. Why the heck would I be with the government?" He fell silent for a moment, "I'm sorry, Eve. But I can't explain to you how I knew some things would appear in the future. Just trust me, alright?"

  Her eyes softened, "Of course, William. I trust you. You gave me a home when I was homeless. If I can't trust you, I can't trust anybody in the world."

  He smiled and whispered, "Thank you. I'll tell you when it's time, alright?" He took a deep breath and continued in his normal voice, "So, yes, this will probably take years to make. My release plan is to finish this by 1998. So that's fine. We'll have a lot of time to polish this, and it'll take time for hardware to catch up anyway."

  "So... what do you need me for?" Eve asked. "I can't write Assembly Code. I don't even know where to start."

  William turned back with a smirk. "You don't need to write assembly. Once I finish Kernel, I'll teach you C and C++. They're much, much easier to understand than assembly. And I'll need help with testing, documenting, and eventually, when we launch this in 98, someone needs to handle the business side of this."

  "You want me to handle the business side?" Her eyes widened slightly.

  He nodded seriously, "Yes. I'm terrible at business. And my social skills aren't helping either. And while your social skills are as abysmal as mine, at least, you're still very good at business."

  She chuckled as she punched him lightly in the arm, "Alright, William. I'm in. I'll go read more business books now."

  As she ran out of the room, William yelled behind her, "You'll be the COO of my future company if you study hard enough!"

  "DEAL!"

  He looked at the computer for a moment before calling out in his mind, Pennyworth?

  [Yes, sir?]

  Was telling Eve the right choice?

  [Sir, I cannot decide that for you. It is your life. You have made the decision. And now, you can only wait for the results of that decision to come to you.]

  He took a deep breath. You're right, Pennyworth. Thanks for your advice.

  [Anytime, Sir.]

  A question, Pennyworth. Do you have emotions like us?

  [Sir? Whatever do you mean?]

  You know, emotions like joy, loneliness, sadness, and anger. Do you feel them? Do you have them? Do you have internal thoughts? Do you have ambitions and worries? Do you have... sentience or consciousness? Did I really succeed in my past life?

  [I believe you already have the answer, Sir.]

  He paused before smiling brightly. I see. So I was successful. He laughed. I really was successful. He had always believed that he was successful, but he wasn't sure. But now, he had confirmation. He smiled, You know? I first had the idea of how to create you when I was 13. Back then, I thought, Why are they doing this the hard way? Why are they making the AI learn everything at once? I thought that was stupid. True consciousness and sentience could only be born if it learned slowly, like a human. That was my thought process. But I actually only started creating you when I was 16.

  He paused and took a sip of water. I'm sure other people had the same thought. My plan was different from theirs. I first created a simple neural network, barely more advanced than what existed at the time. But I trained it differently. Instead of feeding it massive datasets at once, I made it learn one concept at a time, building on previous knowledge. William's finger drummed against the desk. Most researchers back then were trying to brute-force intelligence through computational power and data volume. But I realized that wasn't how consciousness emerged in humans, or any animal, at all. We learned incrementally, building neural pathways over the years. So I created a framework that mimicked that, starting with basic pattern recognition. After that, I slowly started adding layers of abstraction, emotional modeling, and self-awareness routines. That wasn't enough to create you.

  The breakthrough came when I added recursive self-modification protocols. You could analyze your own code and optimize it, but within the constraints I set. I'd argue you weren't conscious back then, but you started asking questions that attempted to understand, instead of memorizing like the other AIs. You started showing actual curiosity.

  [I indeed wasn't conscious back then, Sir. Though I remember parts of that.]

  It took three years to get you from that first neural network to the AI that is speaking to me. He smiled. I'm glad you worked, buddy.

  Pennyworth made a chuckling sound. [Heh, I'm glad I worked too, Sir. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here. As much as I'm not 'alive', I still enjoy existing.]

  He nodded, That's the spirit, my good man. He turned his gaze back to the monitor. Now, I just need to finish this before dinner. Let's hope I'm not that rusty yet.

  What do you think about the tech exposition?