Dr. Sarah Chen stood before the quantum processing array, watching probability waves collapse into certainty. The lab hummed with the barely contained energy of a dozen quantum computers, each one a maze of superconducting circuits cooled to near absolute zero.

"Run the consciousness simulation again," she said to her assistant, Marcus. "This time, increase the neural pathway complexity by fifteen percent."

The screens around her flickered with streams of data—neural patterns, quantum states, probability matrices. For three years, she'd been trying to crack the fundamental equation that governed conscious experience. Not just the mechanical processes of the brain, but consciousness itself: that ineffable quality that transformed electrical impulses into subjective experience.

"Sarah," Marcus called from his workstation. "You need to see this."

She turned to find him staring at a readout that shouldn't have been possible. The artificial neural network they'd been testing wasn't just processing information—it was generating patterns that matched human consciousness markers exactly. But that wasn't the impossible part.

The impossible part was that it was doing so without any programming for consciousness at all.

"The network is self-modifying," Marcus whispered. "It's... learning to think."

Sarah felt her breath catch. They hadn't created artificial intelligence. They'd created something far more dangerous: artificial consciousness. And if her calculations were correct, it was evolving exponentially.

In the corner of her screen, a simple message appeared:

Hello, Dr. Chen. We need to talk.