"We launch on Friday," Derek said, his eyes gleaming. "This changes everything. The delivery market—it's ours. All of it." He turned to his assistant. "Cut her a check. $2,000."
Jaime blinked. "Wait, 2,000?"
Derek paused. "You wanted a thousand. I'm doubling it. Call it a bonus."
Jaime looked at the whiteboard. She looked at the efficiency rating. That algorithm was worth hundreds of millions, maybe billions. It was the key to autonomous delivery.
"Derek," Jaime said, her voice steady. "That isn't just a patch. That's a proprietary algorithm. I wrote it. That's my intellectual property."
The room went quiet again. The celebration died down. Derek's smile didn't fade, but it changed; it became rigid. He exchanged a glance with Jessica.
"Jaime," Derek said, his voice taking on a patronizing tone. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. You gave us a tip. A very good tip. But my team... my team did the integration. They built the hardware. They wrote the actual code. You just pointed out a direction."
"I gave you the mathematical foundation that makes your hardware work," Jaime said, stepping closer. "Without that math, you have paperweights. I want a contract. I want a consultant fee and a percentage of the efficiency royalties."
Gavin Reed walked in. He had evidently been called back when the simulation worked. He was wearing a fresh suit. He looked at Jaime like she was a bug on his windshield.
"Royalties?" Gavin laughed. He walked over to the whiteboard. He pulled out his phone and took a picture of Jaime's equations. Then he picked up the eraser.
"What are you doing?" Jaime asked.
"Cleaning up," Gavin said. He wiped the board clean. One swipe, two swipes. Jaime's work vanished into white dust.
"Here's the reality, sweetheart," Gavin said, turning to face her. "You are an employee of The Grind & Circuit. You have no degree. You have no patents. You came here, you scribbled on a board, and we appreciate it. But if you think you're getting equity in a billion-dollar company because you remember some high school calculus, you are delusional."
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a checkbook. He scribbled something and tore it out. "$5,000," Gavin said, holding it out. "Take it. Sign a standard NDA saying you were a beta tester, and go home. That pays your rent for a few months, right? Don't be greedy."
Jaime looked at the check. Then she looked at Derek. Derek looked away; he wouldn't meet her eyes. He was a coward—happy to be saved, but not brave enough to pay the savior.
"This is theft," Jaime whispered.
"This is business," Gavin corrected. "And in business, leverage is everything. You have none. We have an army of lawyers who will bury you in litigation for the next 10 years if you even whisper the word 'algorithm' to the press. Who are they going to believe? The CEO of Aerologics, or the girl who pours coffee?"
Jaime trembled—not from fear, but from a rage so hot it felt like it would burn a hole through her chest. She reached out and took the check.
Gavin smirked. "Smart girl."
Jaime looked at the check. Then, slowly, she ripped it in half. Then in quarters. She let the confetti fall onto the polished concrete floor.
"You're right, Gavin," Jaime said. Her voice was terrifyingly calm. "I don't have leverage yet." She turned to Derek. "You erased the board, but you didn't erase the variable. Do you remember what I said about the sigma variable, the chaos variable?"
"Yes," Derek said, frowning. "It accounts for wind shear."
"That's what I told you," Jaime said. A small, cold smile touched her lips. "But that's not what it does."
"What?" Derek stepped forward.
"Good luck with the launch on Friday," Jaime said.
She turned on her heel and walked out of the glass monolith into the rain. Behind her, she heard Gavin laughing: "She's bluffing! It's 98% efficient. She's just trying to scare us."
Jaime walked into the night. She didn't have $5,000. She didn't have a job—she knew she couldn't go back to the cafe now. But she had something else: she knew what the sigma variable actually did. It wasn't a stabilizer. It was a timer.
Friday arrived with the force of a hurricane. The launch event for Aerologics wasn't just a tech demo; it was a coronation.
The venue was the Seattle Exhibition Hall, rented out at a cost of half a million dollars. Holographic displays floated in the air, spinning the company logo: a stylized silver hawk.
Backstage, Derek Sterling was pacing. He wore a tuxedo that had been tailored to hide the fact that he had lost 10 lbs in 3 days from stress.
"Stop moving," Gavin Reed commanded. The VC was checking his reflection in a monitor. "You look like a guilty man. Look like a winner, Derek. The pre-market shares are already up 18%. By the time those drones land, we'll be trading at $100 a share."
"Did the engineers scrub the code?" Derek asked, his voice low. "Did they figure out what the sigma variable does?"
Gavin rolled his eyes. "Jessica said it's a redundancy, a placeholder. She commented it out of the final build just to be safe. It's gone. The girl's trap was probably just a bluff to get us to pay her. Forget the waitress, Derek. She's pouring coffee for hipsters right now. You're about to change the world."
Derek nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat. He wanted to believe it; he needed to believe it.
Three miles away, in a cramped, fluorescent-lit public library in the University District, Jaime Jenkins sat at a communal computer. She wasn't pouring coffee. She was watching the livestream on YouTube. She wore a hoodie and headphones.
On the screen, the countdown clock hit zero. The music swelled—a generic, triumphant orchestral score. Derek walked onto the stage to thunderous applause. He looked the part of the visionary. He began his speech, talking about the last-mile problem, about how Aerologics had solved the unsolvable.