Casey snorted, watching Iggy bark in protest, wiggling with his entire body to get free. “You sure about that? He seems very determined.”
“I’m aware,” Lennon laughed as Iggy successfully escaped his captor. “Look at that determination. He’s magnificent.”
I led Finn back through the doors, the familiar scent of his soap mixing with the faint smell of exertion and May sunshine. Behind us, I could hear Iggy’s enthusiastic investigation continuing, punctuated by laughter and gentle corrections from my team.
My office was blessedly quiet when we stepped inside, the afternoon light streaming through the windows casting everything in a warm glow.
Finn exhaled, his shoulders dropping as the office noise muffled.
“Isn’t three miles too far for his little legs?” I locked the door. “He must be exhausted.”
Finn’s mouth twitched. “Darlin’, Pumis are workin’ dogs. Bred for endurance. He basically sprinted the whole way.” He hit the button to close the shades between my office and the breakroom. “Hell, I’m more tired than he is.”
“He’s still a baby,” I protested, grabbing a water bottle from my minifridge in the corner and handing it to him.
“Baby with a job and an education,” he beamed. “And speakin’ of education...”
My stomach flipped. “Your news.”
“Yeah,” he set the water bottle down and settled his hands on my waist. “Got accepted. Master’s program at the U. They want me to start in August.”
“Finn Walker.” I pressed my hands to his chest, spreading my fingers over the soft cotton of his t-shirt, feeling his heart beating steady and strong underneath. “That’s incredible. That’s everything.”
“It is,” he nodded, blushing slightly. “Teaching at Hill, getting my master’s. It’s... I’m actually doing this. Building something real.”
“You are,” I reached up, caught the back of his neck, and pulled him down to kiss him. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Couldn’t have done it without—”
“Don’t,” I interrupted. “Don’t diminish this. You did the work. You earned it.”
He chuckled against my lips. “Still couldn’t have done it without you.”
I kissed him again instead of arguing.
He kissed my cheek before stepping back to thread his fingers through mine. “I also walked down ‘cause the other day you said you had somethin’ I might be able to help with?”
Right. Yes. The Sherlock problem that had been driving Casey and the dev team crazy for two weeks.
“We’ve been working on some military flight scenarios for a project we have, but something’s off with the NPC wingman’s behavior,” I moved to my desk and pulled up the simulation on my monitor. “The team’s been wrestling with it forever. Tactically wrong somehow, but they can’t figure out why.”
Finn stood behind me, leaning over my shoulder to scan the screen.
“Run a test?”
I pulled up the demo. The wingman made a series of decisions that looked fine on paper but were completely wrong in practice. Finn watched, silent, scanning the code next to the demo.
“There,” he pointed at a parameter string, his finger nearly touching the screen. “Throttle response curve is inverted. See that value? Should be negative point seven, not positive. The AI thinks pushing throttle forward means pulling back.”
I stared at the screen.
At the single line of code.
At the problem that had consumed two weeks of development time.
“That’s... it?”
“Everything else is solid. Decision trees look good, formation logic is sound. But your control input is backwards, so every tactical choice the wingman makes is trying to compensate for what it thinks is happening versus what’s actually happening.”
