Turn 110 of 228

Ask Diane about er prediction for the final product. Se is honest about er nervousness. But, there is nothing to worry about. The rollout is a complete success and generates 20 times the efficiency they predicted. Their salaries quintuple as a result

The whiteboard is full. The model is done. The stream is off and the office is quiet — the fluorescent lights humming over the stained walls and the black carpet and the two of them in their chairs, 470 and 411 pounds of naked, unwashed, barefoot flesh, the yellow nails resting on the armrests, the pre-roll burned down to nothing. The subscribers have logged off. The chat is dark. The numbers are in the system. January 14 and the work is finished and the office holds them the way it always holds them — like a body that has learned their shape.

Lena turns in the chair. The metal groans. The belly shifts against her thighs and the yellow nails tap the armrest — three taps, the rhythm of someone about to ask something that matters.

"What's your prediction? For the rollout. When corporate sees the numbers. When the sixteen branches go live. What do you think happens?"

Diane doesn't answer right away. The beard moves — the mouth underneath working, the jaw shifting, the way it moves when the words are being assembled and weighed before they're released. The brown eyes are on the whiteboard. The fingers are still. Then the fingers move — drumming the desk once, twice, three times, the rhythm slower than Lena's, the rhythm of someone counting the ways something can go wrong.

"I'm nervous," Diane says. The words come out flat and plain. No management layer. No quarterly-report tone. The beard doesn't shift. The face doesn't smooth itself.

"The model works. The numbers are real. I've checked them twelve times. But the rollout means sixteen branch managers running live data through a system two people built in a locked office that smells like —" She gestures at the room. The hand is heavy. The arm is heavy. 411 pounds of flesh moving in the fluorescent light.

"Like this. And the model touches their budgets. Their staffing. Their projections. It rewrites how they do their jobs. People don't like being rewritten."

She pauses. The brown eyes find the ceiling and stay there for three seconds.

"I'm nervous because it's good. Because it's too good. Because we built something in twelve days that a corporate analytics team would spend six months scoping and another six months not finishing. And when they see that — when they see the timestamps, the stream archive, the twelve days — they're going to ask how. And the answer is this office and us and the way we are. And I don't know if corporate is ready for that answer."

Lena watches her. The wish hums. The hum is quiet and warm and certain — the way it has been certain since the morning the jeans were tight and the belly sat heavy and the hand rested on the soft new curve and the voice that wasn't hers said *this is better, let it keep going.* The hum has never been wrong. The body has never been wrong. The work has never been wrong.

"There's nothing to worry about," Lena says. The voice is flat and easy. The yellow nails drum the armrest.

"The numbers are the numbers. The model works. The stream is public. They've already seen it. They've already seen us. The branch is twenty-six points ahead. The sabbatical was approved. The quadrupling was approved. The email-only protocol was approved. Every single thing they've seen, they've approved. Because the numbers are the numbers."

Diane's beard twitches. The mouth underneath does the thing — the unguarded thing, the half-second break that has been lasting longer each time it surfaces. This time it lasts four seconds. Five. The brown eyes come down from the ceiling and find Lena and the face is open and the face stays open.

"You're right," Diane says. Two words. The beard closes slowly.

The rollout begins January 16. Corporate schedules a phased deployment — four branches at a time, the model running parallel to existing systems for seventy-two hours before going live. The first four branches go up on a Tuesday. By Wednesday morning the model has already identified three load-balancing inefficiencies that the branches' own analysts missed. By Thursday the model has rerouted resource allocations across all four branches and the efficiency gains are visible in the live dashboards. Corporate sends an email to Diane at noon on Thursday. The subject line is four words: *these numbers can't be right.* Diane replies with the source data, the methodology, the timestamps. Corporate goes quiet for six hours. Then the email comes back: *deploying the next four branches Monday.*

The second wave goes live January 20. The third wave January 24. The fourth wave January 28. By February 1 all sixteen branches are running on the model. The efficiency numbers are not fourteen million dollars. They are not twenty million. The model generates twenty times the projected efficiency gains — two hundred and eighty million dollars in annual savings across the sixteen-branch network. The numbers hit the quarterly board report. The board meets on February 5. The meeting is forty minutes long. The vote is unanimous.

Lena and Diane's salaries quintuple. The email arrives on February 6 — a Friday, the subject line reading *Compensation Adjustment — Effective Immediately.* The numbers are real. The numbers are in the system. The Garfield branch is not twenty-six points ahead anymore. The Garfield branch is the reason the other sixteen branches exist. Diane reads the email aloud in the destroyed office, the beard moving, the voice flat and warm, the brown eyes bright. The wish hums under everything. The hum is quiet. The hum is certain. The hum has never been wrong.