Yes, Ethan had done it on purpose.
Because the Altair 8800—the machine he'd casually pointed to—wasn't just a random gadget on a magazine cover.
It was the Altair 8800. The world's first personal microcomputer, unveiled to the public in January 1975, right there in Popular Electronics.
But unlike earlier issues that printed full circuit diagrams and tutorials, this one didn't. Why? Because the Altair was a commercial product—the magazine introduced it, but didn't show you how to build it.
Because of this, Ethan's knowing questions were actually asking for a beating.
And sure enough, as soon as he dodged the crab shell Evelyn hurled at him, he raised his hands with a grin and surrendered.
"All right! All right! I was just joking…"
His easy admission made Evelyn roll her eyes. This guy—always finding new ways to poke her nerves. As thick-skinned as a politician, and just as impossible to ignore.
With a sigh, she shook her head, exasperated. "Ethan, I can't make something like the Altair 8800. Not because of the wiring or the soldering. I could tear the machine apart if we bought one—what, five hundred dollars? In a few days, I'd figure out how Edward Roberts laid out the motherboard, how he embedded the memory chips, and how he routed connections between the CPU, RAM, and ROM."
"But the real issue isn't hardware," she said, tapping her temple. "It's the software. The Altair's core complexity lies in binary data input and output—machine instructions."
She wasn't wrong. Before operating systems existed, computers ran on direct instruction sets—what we now call programming languages. The most popular language in technical fields at the time was FORTRAN.
Short for Formula Translation, FORTRAN was the first high-level language officially adopted around the world. It was incredibly powerful for scientific and engineering work—but also extremely complicated for the average person to learn.
So to make computing more accessible, especially to college students and the general public, a new language was introduced: BASIC.
Short for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, BASIC was far easier to grasp. It covered most practical needs in just 17 simple statements. Within a short time, it left the university labs and spread into society, quickly becoming the go-to language for hobbyists and young programmers alike.
The Altair 8800 ran a simplified version of BASIC. But here's the thing: almost no one in that era knew who had written the software.
Ethan Jones, however—who had spent years living in modern America—knew exactly who was behind it.
It wasn't just one person. It was a two-man team.
One of them was Paul Allen. The other? Bill Gates.
Together, their first real step into the tech world was porting the BASIC language into what would become the world's first personal computer.
Of course, that's easy to say—but ridiculously hard to do.
Because personal computers in this era? They had almost no memory. Just kilobytes. So if you wanted your machine to run anything useful, you'd need to optimize every single line of code like it was gold dust.
Under Paul Allen's guidance, the BASIC interpreter written for the Altair 8800 was compressed to just 4KB.
Sure, this was doable. But for ordinary people? It was practically sorcery.
Not everyone had a $250,000 home, let alone a personal computer to tinker with. Not everyone could afford to sit in front of a screen, writing code just for fun.
And that's exactly why Ethan didn't push Evelyn when she said she couldn't handle something like the Altair.
Instead, he clapped his hands and changed gears.
"All right, then—let's build something else. You know Pong, right? Think you could make that kind of arcade machine?"
"Pong?" Evelyn blinked, thought for a second, then nodded. "Yeah. I think I could."
Then she paused, eyes narrowing. "Wait a minute. You don't seriously want to play video games, do you?"
"Bingo!" Ethan snapped his fingers with a grin. "Correct answer. But no reward!"
He leaned back in the chair, pleased with himself. "I want to make games, Evelyn. Because I have a lot of ideas."
After discovering that the return cycle in finance was way too long, and that computer software came with massive skill barriers, Ethan had locked onto one industry where skill still bowed to creativity: video games.
In 1975, this market was still a desert—empty and uncharted. And in a desert? Even the smallest well could make you rich.
You didn't need a PhD. You didn't need a government grant. You just needed one good idea. And Ethan? He had hundreds.
In his past life, gaming wasn't just a hobby—it was part of his identity. His personal archives were stuffed with the best of Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and the Nintendo Switch.
He had grown up in the 90s, squinting at CRT monitor, trying to play Fallout. Two decades later, he was sharing a couch and a controller with his girlfriend, playing It Takes Two after work.
Games weren't just entertainment to him—they were memories.
And now? Could memories be monetized? To Ethan, the answer was yes. A loud, emphatic hell yes.
Evelyn, however, was more skeptical. She eyed him warily, suspicion blooming across her face. "This isn't some revenge scheme against Magnavox, is it? Because if you're just trying to copy one of their games to get back at them… forget it. I won't help. Absolutely not."
Ethan looked wounded. "What? Do I look like that kind of person?"
"Yes," Evelyn answered flatly. "You're exactly the type. You act all polite, but deep down you never let go of a grudge."
"…???"
Ethan stared at her, stunned. Was that really how she saw him?
He straightened up and tried again. "Look, I didn't plagiarize Magnavox. I swear."
But Evelyn didn't respond. She just kept staring, arms crossed, brows drawn in cautious doubt.
Finally, Ethan sighed, threw his hands up, and pulled the oldest trick in the book.
"Evelyn! You said you'd help me! You promised! You can't go back on your word now!"
"…!"
That actually caught her off guard.
Evelyn blinked, stunned for a beat. Then: "You're seriously using that on me?"
He nodded solemnly, a mock-innocent expression on his face.
A few years ago, when Evelyn had been buried in Popular Electronics, soldering circuit boards and tinkering with crystal radios, Ethan had often hovered at her side—cheating, begging, pestering her to turn her experiments into toys.
Back then, she found it annoying.
But now, recalling those moments, she had to admit… he'd succeeded every time by pulling the same trick.
A sigh escaped her lips as she crossed her arms. "So? Are you going to dictate your 'great idea' to me again, or do you actually have a complete plan this time?"
Ethan grinned like a kid who'd been called out and didn't care. "Of course I have a plan! Wait right here—I'll go get it."
He turned and jogged out of the room, leaving Evelyn blinking in surprise.
She had assumed—naturally—that his game idea was a spur-of-the-moment thing. misguided energy after getting fired from Magnavox. But apparently… he'd actually prepared something?
When Ethan returned, he held a few crumpled pages in his hand. They were scuffed at the edges, spotted with smudges and coffee stains. The paper was thin and wrinkled.
But when Evelyn scanned the content, she forgot about the presentation.
The first page laid out the concept:
"This is a game where there is no victory—only the inevitability of failure."
Evelyn blinked, intrigued despite herself. The second page described the gameplay mechanics in bullet points:
"Player controls a line (a snake) that moves continuously across a confined plane.
Light dots appear randomly. Each time the snake eats one, it grows longer. The game ends if the snake touches the wall or itself."
And on the third page…Ethan had drawn a screen mockup.
A simple rectangle filled with dots. In the center, a sketched-out snake, winding and curling through the grid. A smiling face at the head. Pixel-style.
Evelyn's jaw dropped. "You want to make this?"
Ethan nodded. "Snake."
He leaned forward eagerly. "It's elegant, right? Anyone can play. The difficulty builds naturally. The longer you survive, the harder it gets. It's addicting, but simple enough to run on basic hardware."
Evelyn stared at the pages again, this time with narrowed eyes—not dismissive, but analytical.
A game where you always lose. A game where your own success makes it harder.
She tapped the second page, thoughtful. "And this… this isn't copied from anywhere?"
Ethan raised his hand solemnly, palm out. "Scout's honor. Came up with it while zoning out on a train once."
Evelyn gave him a long, unreadable look. Then she exhaled, flipping the papers back to the first page.
"…This might actually work."
Ethan beamed. "So you'll help me?"
"I didn't say that," she said automatically. But the way she was already analyzing the logic diagram in her head told a different story.
Author's Note:
① The story behind Bill Gates and Paul Allen writing the BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 is both inspiring and a little mysterious. According to their own account, since they had no access to the actual Altair prototype, they created an emulator for it on a DEC PDP-10—a powerful computer common in university labs at the time. Over the course of about a month, they developed a working BASIC interpreter using that simulation.
However, when a documentary team tried to verify the story in 1994, things got a little strange. At Harvard, where Gates was enrolled, the lab supervisor claimed he didn't often see them using the machines. When the reporters checked MIT—where Allen allegedly had access—the lab entry logs showed no record of them. So the question remains: without access to the hardware, how exactly did they write and test the code?
Maybe they really did it exactly as they said—via a PDP-10 emulator. Or maybe they found some unofficial way to get access to a machine.
At this point, only Bill Gates truly knows. Paul Allen, unfortunately, passed away in 2018. The truth behind those early lines of BASIC may remain a part of computing lore forever.