He looked at Daniel. He said very quietly, "I was trying to save the company." "No," Daniel said. "You were trying to save your position in it. Those aren't the same thing." Victoria turned away from Richard. She turned to face the investors observation area above.
She could see them watching the delegation from South Korea, the government officials, the 12 representatives with their collective $400 million sitting in a conversation they hadn't expected to be a part of. She could see the phones already out. She could see the particular body language of people who are deciding whether to stay or leave. She turned back to Daniel. She said.
Can you fix it? Yes. How long? If I have access to the full development environment and Patterson here can assist. He glanced at the younger man who nodded immediately, almost reflexively.
6 Hours, maybe five if we don't hit anything unexpected. You'd need to rewrite 43 lines of code. I need to rewrite and revalidate the integration of those 43 lines with the current version of the system. The code itself I can reproduce from memory. The testing takes longer.
Victoria absorbed this. She looked at the RS7 standing powered down in the center of the testing floor. She looked at the investors above. She looked at the contract folder on the secondary console, the folder that was supposed to be signed this afternoon. Then she looked back at Daniel.
You said you submitted 14 reports. Yes. Through what channels? Engineering intake direct to the department head's office. He held up his notebook.
I have the receipt timestamps and response records for all 14. Was there ever any response? Daniel didn't answer right away. He looked at her with an expression that she couldn't quite categorize. Not bitter, not sad, just honest in a way that was harder to look at than either of those things would have been.
There was a response to the first one, he said. I was told that my concerns had been noted and that the engineering team's assessment would take priority. He paused. After that, nothing, and you kept submitting them anyway. Every time I ran an inspection that showed the drift worsening, "Yes." Victoria was quiet for a moment.
When she spoke, her voice was lower than it had been at any point in the morning. "Lower, and if anyone had been paying close enough attention, slightly different in its texture." "Why?" she asked. You could have walked. You could have filed with OSHA, taken the documentation somewhere it would have created real consequences. Instead, you stayed and kept submitting reports that you had every reason to believe weren't being read.