And he checked his numbers one more time. He wasn't wrong. He was never wrong about this. The RS7's adaptive balance core, the system that allowed the robot to maintain stability on uneven terrain during search and rescue operations, had a critical flaw in its current software version. Someone had modified the base algorithm 3 months ago, and in doing so had stripped out a set of override protocols that Daniel had originally designed as a failafe.
Without those protocols, the system could maintain the appearance of stability for the first 2 to 3 minutes of operation. Then it would start to drift. And once it started drifting, nothing short of a complete shutdown could stop it. He closed the notebook. He looked out at the testing floor.
The robot stood in the center of the room, 8 ft tall, gunmetal gray with a chest cavity designed to carry an unconscious adult and articulated arms capable of lifting 500 lb. It was an extraordinary machine. Daniel felt a complicated mix of pride and grief every time he looked at it. The way a man might feel looking at a house he'd built himself and then been forced to abandon. He picked up his coffee.
He took a long sip. Then he walked out onto the floor. Victoria Harrington had been awake since 4 in the morning. That wasn't unusual for her. She functioned on about 5 hours of sleep and an iron discipline that had carried her from a small accounting firm in Charlotte all the way to the CEO's office of one of the most recognized robotics companies in the country.
She was 51 years old and she looked like someone who had never once in her life allowed herself the luxury of uncertainty. She stood near the center of the testing floor in a charcoal blazer and heels that cost more than some people's monthly rent. Reviewing the demonstration schedule on her tablet. While around her, a carefully orchestrated performance was unfolding. Catering staff moved through the observation area.
AV technicians triple-checked the presentation screens. Her chief communications officer was running a final briefing with the camera crew. The investors had already arrived 12 representatives from seven different organizations, plus three officials from the Department of Emergency Management and a delegation from a South Korean government agency. They were gathered in the elevated observation area talking among themselves, drinking the good coffee that the catering team had set out, looking down at the RS7 with the focused, calculating attention of people who were about to write very large checks. Victoria needed this to go perfectly, not just for the company, for her.
Because the truth that very few people in that building knew and that Victoria never spoke aloud was that Blackwood Robotics was in trouble. The kind of trouble that doesn't show up in the press releases or the quarterly reports, but lives in the fine print of balance sheets and in the quiet conversations between board members behind closed conference room doors. They'd missed two consecutive development milestones. Two major research partners partners had quietly walked away from pending agreements in the last 8 months and the board had made it very clear to Victoria that this contract this specific contract this $400 million deal was not optional. She needed it.
The company needed it. Her job depended on it. So when she looked up from her tablet and saw Daniel Brooks walking across her testing floor in his gray maintenance uniform, the first thing she felt was irritation. She didn't know his name. She genuinely did not know the name of the man who had worked in her building for 3 years who passed her in hallways who kept her facility running.
She saw the uniform. She registered maintenance. That was the end of it. She was about to look back down at her tablet when she noticed that he wasn't moving toward a control panel or an access hatch. He was moving toward Richard Cole.