Lena stood with her palm flat against the glass, leaving a faint print that smeared under the cool surface. Beyond the tinted panel, silhouettes leaned across a long table, their voices muted, their gestures small but decisive. The conference floor always smelled of antiseptic and recycled air, as if the building itself wanted to bleach away uncertainty.
She stayed there too long.
“You’ll wear a hole through the wall,” Raj muttered as he walked up, a paper cup of bitter coffee in his hand. He glanced past her shoulder, toward the sealed boardroom. “They can’t see you. Relax.”
Lena didn’t move her hand. “Have you read it?”
His brow furrowed. “The letter? Yeah. Twice.”
“What do you think?”
He blew across the coffee, though it had long since cooled. “What I think is, people don’t write letters unless they’ve already lost.”
That stung. She pulled her hand back, letting the print fade in the glass, and started down the hall. Their lab door hissed open, spilling a wash of blue light across the floor.
The hum of servers filled the room like an insect swarm. Screens blinked with half-finished code, windows layered over datasets, terminal logs scrolling in patient lines. In the far corner, the container housing Sable pulsed quietly, as if listening.
Lena dropped into her chair. The letter’s words clung to her like burrs. Will you still have a duty to prioritize the mission over profits? Will you keep profit caps? Who among you gets equity now? Each question was simple, plain, impossible to ignore.
Raj set his coffee on a desk littered with notebooks. He rubbed his face. “You’re still thinking about it.”
“They’re asking for the bare minimum,” she said. “Just transparency.”
He gave a short laugh. “That’s like asking a shark to smile. It’ll show teeth, sure.”
His cynicism was practiced, almost comforting in its predictability. Still, Lena felt her stomach knot. She thought of the Charter framed in the lobby, its pledges in bold serif: to stop competing, to safeguard humanity, to halt if others reached AGI responsibly. Promises now smothered behind frosted glass and sealed doors.
She turned toward Sable’s console. The machine idled, waiting.
“Raj,” she said quietly, “what if we asked Sable to answer instead?”
He straightened. “Asked it?”
“Not for predictions. Just… the documents. The agreements. Lay them out in plain language, the way the letter does. Make it public.”
The idea hung there, fragile and dangerous.
Raj shook his head. “You don’t poke the hand that feeds you by asking its creation to air laundry. That’s not brave. That’s suicide.”
Lena leaned forward, elbows pressing into the desk until her arms ached. “But it’s the only voice they can’t spin. If Sable shows people what’s at stake, no PR team can bury it.”
“Listen to yourself.” Raj’s voice dropped, harsh. “Do you know what happens if you cross that line? You don’t get fired. You get erased. Doors close. Careers end. That’s how they play.”
She stared at the flicker of code on the screen. “Then maybe we stop thinking about careers.”
Raj paced, dragging his fingers along the backs of chairs. He looked tired, the kind of tired that went deeper than hours. “You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
He swore under his breath. Then, quieter: “You’re not the only one who thought about it.”
Her head snapped toward him. He avoided her eyes, fiddling with the coffee lid.
“You thought about it?”
“Everyone has. Just not everyone’s reckless enough to try.”
A long silence spread between them, filled with the whirr of fans. Finally Lena exhaled. She began typing. Her fingers shook, but she didn’t stop. Access request. Query prompt. Each keystroke felt like slipping deeper into water.
Retrieve and summarize all operating agreements defining nonprofit control, equity stakes, and profit-cap obligations. Format for public understanding.
The server’s pitch climbed. Sable’s screen rippled alive with dense paragraphs, clauses citing specific articles, profit projections annotated with internal memos. Language about “maximizing above-cap yield for investors.” Numbers that gleamed like knives.
Lena’s breath caught. She looked at Raj. His face was pale.
“They’ll trace this,” he said, barely audible.
Her thumb hovered over the enter key, where the package waited to launch.
The lab door clicked open.
A man in a tailored slate suit stepped in, two security officers behind him. His shoes were too clean for the scuffed floor. “Dr. Morales. Mr. Patel. Step away from the terminals, please.”
No one moved.
The man’s tone was even, rehearsed. “You’re engaging with restricted material. Let’s resolve this quietly. No need to escalate.”
Lena felt the air thin, every sound sharpen. The hum of servers, Raj’s uneven breathing, the faint click of the officer’s glove tightening around a baton.
She looked at Raj. He didn’t speak. His coffee cup trembled in his hand.
Her finger pressed down.
The monitors flashed white, then streamed lines of transfer code. The package shot out into the open-source internet like a flare.
The suited man barked an order. The guards moved.
And then the screens went black.
Curious how much is AI? Read the prompts here.