He starts walking me around.
"That’s Dana," he says quietly. "She handles logistics. Don’t mind her, she’s always stressed."
I nod at Dana, who waves politely.
"And that’s Omar. He’s part of engineering. We work on the same floor but he’s mostly in the coding vault."
We exchange tiny, awkward smiles.
Lincoln leads me over to one of the concept models, the robot. The thing is standing there, tall and still.
"It looks really creepy," I mutter.
"It's not creepy," he argues. "Well… okay, sometimes it is. But it's still early prototype. The internal feedback system is still in alpha. The multi-phase neural mapping isn't even half-calibrated yet."
He goes off, and I genuinely try to follow.
He gestures at the torso. "So right now, we're trying to get the latency under two seconds. That’s the biggest hurdle. Once the sensor grid stops lagging, it'll be able to process human expression patterns in real time. And if we can get the behavioral-loop training to sync—"
"Uh-huh," I say, nodding like I understand anything coming out of his mouth.
Then I hear bright chatter.
"Oh,thereyou are."
I turn and see a beautiful woman, long flowing hair, flawless makeup, the perfect body, ample breasts, bigger than mine, in an exquisite dress with half the back out of it and cleavage spillingforward. She looks like a porcelain doll, so pale you can see faint veins under her skin.
Lincoln’s face lights up in a way that I haven’t seen in a long time.
Sarah walks straight to him and pulls him into a hug,a long hug, and he holds her back before theyfinallypart. They immediately start chattering animatedly.
"Did you see Unit 9 earlier?" Sarah laughs.
They start chatting in tech lingo that makes me feel like they’re speaking a totally different language.
Lincoln laughs with her. "We forgot to lock the secondary protocol. The damn thing thought the drone was a participant."
"We should just program it to crash the party," she jokes, nudging him.
"Honestly? It probablycould. In its current state anyway,” he teases back."
“I mean… who would know?”
“With your big mouth?”
They’re giggling like they’re in their own little world. Inside jokes. Work jokes. Technical jargon I don’t understand. And Lincoln… completely forgets I’m standing right beside him.
I tug lightly at his arm. Half to get his attention, half because I suddenly want to walk away.
He finally looks over at me, remembering, oh right, his wife is here.
"Sorry. Gabby, this is Sarah. Sarah, this is Gabby. Sarah is my assistant," Lincoln says.
"Oh, wow. It's so nice to finally meet you," Sarah says with that fake plastic smile.
I can’tstandthis woman.Nice to meet you, my ass. This is the same woman who, knowing Lincoln is married, has been trying to get in his pants.
"Nice to meet you too, Sarah," I reply with my own fake smile that hurts to give.
