She began to write—not words, but complex mathematical notation: variables, nested loops, and a highly unconventional algorithmic sequence that her father had spent months designing at their kitchen table.
Arthur leaned forward, adjusting his glasses, trying to see what she was scribbling on the cheap paper.
"To stabilize the fractal generation, you don't restrict the memory," Khloe continued, her pen flying across the napkin with practiced precision. "You introduce a decaying threshold variable—a sequence that tells the AI to prune the least efficient routes dynamically before the memory load exceeds the hardware limit."
Hayes scoffed, rolling his eyes. "This is pathetic. Arthur, call security."
"Wait," Arthur whispered. His face had gone completely pale. He was practically crawling across the table, his eyes wide as they tracked the blue ink bleeding into the napkin.
Khloe finished the sequence, drawing a neat semicolon at the end of the final line. She slid the napkin across the table, stopping it right in front of the chief technology officer.
"Line 4,092 of your core executive module," Khloe said, looking directly at Hayes. "Delete the hard cap on the routing arrays and input that sequence exactly as I wrote it."
Arthur's hands were shaking as he picked up the napkin. He stared at the math like it was a holy relic. "Richard," he breathed out, his voice trembling. "This... this is... I've never seen logic structured like this. It's essentially teaching the AI to breathe instead of holding its breath."
"Don't be an idiot, Arthur," Hayes growled. "She's a waitress. It's gibberish."
"It's not gibberish!" Arthur shouted, shocking everyone at the table.
The CTO frantically pulled the datapad toward him, his fingers flying across the digital keyboard. He brought up the compiler, navigating to the exact line of code Khloe had specified.
"You're actually entering that?" David asked, panicking. "Arthur, if that's a malicious script—"