"Very nice, very nice."
A smile spread across Nigel's face. He turned to Kate. "Ms. Henson, this new team of yours really is impressive."
Kate returned the smile. "Nelson is our technical lead. He's been on this project from day one, personally overseeing every single module."
Nelson stood beside her, mouth forming the words "You're too kind, Mr. Donaldson," but his eyebrows were already halfway up his forehead, satisfaction written across every line of his face.
He handed his tablet to a nearby assistant, and as he turned, his fingers grazed Kate's wrist. Casual. Barely there.
Kate didn't pull away.
The fourth test began.
This one was the active collision avoidance scenario. A mannequin would dart out from the roadside without warning, and the test vehicle had to identify it within a set distance and either brake or swerve.
The car started up and accelerated to twenty-five miles per hour.
The mannequin launcher fired. A figure dressed in red shot out from the side of the road.
Every pair of eyes locked onto the vehicle.
The car didn't slow down.
"What's going on?"
Someone muttered it under their breath.
At the last possible instant before impact, the steering wheel finally jerked hard to the left.
The chassis lurched violently, clearing the mannequin, but the right front wheel clipped the safety barrier.
A grinding shriek of metal on metal.
The test car fishtailed another forty feet before shuddering to a stop.
The site went silent for about three seconds.
Nigel's brow furrowed. "Engineer Gilbert, what was that?"
The smile on Nelson's face froze.
He ducked his head over the tablet, swiping through several pages of logs. Sweat beaded across his forehead almost instantly.
The executives exchanged uneasy glances.
Kate looked at Nelson, then at the test car with its scraped-up right front panel. Her expression wasn't much better.
I sat in the corner, took a sip of water from my paper cup, and said nothing.
"Nelson, what happened?" Kate asked.
"Should be a parameter drift in the perception module," Nelson said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "The sensor calibration threshold was set a little high, which caused a recognition delay of about zero-point-three seconds."
Nigel didn't follow the technical details, but "recognition delay" came through loud and clear.
"A delay? If that were a real person on the road, zero-point-three seconds is the difference between life and death."
"Mr. Donaldson, please don't worry. This isn't a difficult fix," Nelson said quickly. "It's just a minor bug. A few lines of code and it'll be sorted out."
Kate stepped in. "Mr. Donaldson, you've seen what Nelson is capable of. Every test before this one was a success. Running into small issues during R&D is perfectly normal. What matters is whether they can be resolved quickly. I'm confident he can handle it."
Her tone was absolute. Not a flicker of doubt in her eyes.
Nigel looked at Kate, then at Nelson. His expression softened slightly.
"All right. Let's see how it performs after the fix."
Nelson took the tablet and crouched off to the side to rework the code. Kate walked over and stood behind him, leaning down to watch the screen. The two of them were close. Her hand rested on the back of his chair.
From where I sat, it looked like she was half-holding him.
She said something, and Nelson turned to smile at her.
It wasn't the kind of smile a subordinate gives a boss. It was the kind that only exists between two people who share something private.
Kate didn't bother hiding it. She reached over and patted his shoulder, murmuring, "Focus."
The whole process took about twenty minutes.
Nelson stood up and announced the fix was done. His voice carried noticeably more than before, brimming with confidence.
"Mr. Donaldson, the issue has been resolved. I've recalibrated the parameters. There won't be any more recognition delays."
Before Nigel could respond, Nelson added, "To prove our system is safe and reliable, I'll personally take the field for the final test."
The room went quiet.
"Personally take the field?" Nigel blinked. "You mean stand on the test track?"
"Yes." Nelson nodded. "No mannequin. The car comes straight at me. I stand in the middle of the road and let it avoid me on its own."
One of the executives frowned. "Supervisor Gilbert, that's way too risky. What if something—"
"There is no 'what if.'" Nelson cut him off, his voice carrying absolute certainty. "Relax. I have complete confidence in my program."
As he spoke, his gaze flicked to Kate.
Kate hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "I trust Nelson's judgment."
The executive still wasn't satisfied. He turned to Kate. "Ms. Henson, shouldn't we at least run another assessment? This involves someone's physical safety—"
"No need." Kate waved him off. "Nelson is the technical lead. He knows the boundaries of this system better than anyone."
