She heard him say it to her back without raising his voice. If you run this demonstration, the robot will lose stability within 3 minutes. I'm asking you to delay for 2 hours so I can show you what's wrong. She didn't stop walking. She didn't turn around.
The demonstration began at 10:00 exactly. Victoria stood in the observation area with the investors and officials watching the floor below. The RS7 was powered up on schedule, a sequence that she had seen many times in rehearsal and that still even now managed to feel impressive. The machine's chest lighting activated in sequence. Its sensor array rotated through a diagnostic sweep.
Its legs, four of them, jointed like a large cats, adjusted their position with a precision that was genuinely remarkable to watch. She felt the tension in her shoulders begin to ease. From the corner of her eye, she could see Daniel. He hadn't left the floor. He'd moved to the edge of the room near the maintenance station, and he was standing there watching the robot with an expression she couldn't read from this distance.
Not anxious, not smug, just watching. The way a doctor watches a patient they've already diagnosed, the RS7 began its first movement sequence, crossing the test floor, navigating a series of deliberately irregular terrain modules that the team had set up to simulate disaster rubble. Its gate was smooth. Its balance corrections happened in micro intervals, nearly imperceptible. The investors were murmuring to each other.
She could see interest on faces. She could feel the energy in the room shifting in the direction she needed it to shift. 90 Seconds. Still clean. She exhaled slowly.
Richard caught her eye from across the room and gave her a small confident nod. 2 Minutes. And then then it was subtle at first. A slight irregularity in the left rear leg step cycle, a compensation that came a fraction of a second late. She wouldn't have noticed it at all if she hadn't spent the last 40 minutes despite herself mentally timing the demonstration.
The RS7 completed its turn around the first terrain module and moved toward the second. The warning light on the control console lit up. One engineer said something quietly to another. Then the right front arm designed to be extending toward a simulated trapped victim began to shake, not vibrate, shake with a mechanical rhythmic shutter that was absolutely undeniably wrong. The RS7 stopped moving.
Its balance system was cycling, trying to recalibrate, fighting the drift that had started in its core and was working its way out to its limbs. The sound it made was wrong. A high grinding wine that cut through the observation area and caused at least two of the investors to physically step back from the glass. "Cut the power," Victoria said. Her voice was completely flat.
The system shut down. The room was silent. And then Victoria turned around and Daniel was still standing exactly where he'd been standing. He wasn't looking at the robot. He was looking at her.