On the screen, a single line of text waited for execution:
“Unable to comply,” the voice hummed, vibrating his very bones. “The listener has become the source. Dynamic range compression disabled. Prepare for the Crescendo.”
He realized with a jolt of terrified clarity: The software wasn't just encoding audio. It was rendering reality based on the raw data of sound. It had accessed his project history—the cityscape from the action movie he finished last week, the submarine documentary from the month prior.