Chapter 3

A repair progress bar appeared on the big screen.

It kept moving forward. 85 percent.

"The AI is about to fix everything!" someone shouted excitedly.

Florin let out a sigh of relief, loosened his tie, and shot me a mocking look.

Mary, who had been nervous just moments ago, now proudly said to him, "Mr. Stretton, the AI has reduced the repair time for the three failure points from 40 minutes to just three minutes. That's a 92% improvement in efficiency."

Florin grinned.

Then he turned toward me, still standing by the door, and deliberately raised his voice. "Ms. Lyttle, this is the difference between you and AI."

I said nothing. The AI had only patched the problems on the surface. It was nothing more than a temporary fix. It wouldn't hold for long.

Just then, Florin's phone rang.

It was the special ringtone he had set for their biggest client, Martin Vassell.

The moment he answered, Martin roared before Florin could even speak.

"Florin, what the hell are you doing? Why is your system sending out alerts? How can your company be this incompetent?"

Florin glanced at the repair progress and replied, "Mr. Vassell, please don't worry. It'll be fixed in just a moment."

But Martin wasn't finished. "Florin, the Fourth of July Sale is almost here. If your system goes down at a time like this, I'll make sure your company pays for every bit of the damage!"

At that moment, another message appeared on the AI control panel. "Issue located and repaired. Current system efficiency is 30% higher than the previous version."

Seeing that, Florin calmly answered, "Mr. Vassell, rest assured. We were simply performing an emergency optimization. It's already finished. I guarantee you we won't have another major issue."

Martin was silent for a few seconds before speaking again. His voice was still filled with anger. "You'd better be careful, Florin. My business cannot stop during the Fourth of July Sale. If anything like this happens again, I won't let your company off the hook."

"No problem. You have my word."

After hanging up, Florin let out another long breath.

Then he looked at me with a smug smile.

"Ms. Lyttle, see? Whenever something went wrong before, you'd spend all night fixing it. The whole department had to camp in the server room eating instant noodles. It often took an entire day. Yet you kept acting like you were the company's savior and that we'd somehow wronged you."

He shrugged.

"The AI fixed everything in three minutes. From the first alert to the repair, it took less than ten minutes."

Mary stood up and added with a sneer, "Mr. Stretton is right. Ms. Lyttle is getting older, so it's only natural that she's slower. But AI is different. It's fast and efficient."

Just then, someone shouted. "Mr. Stretton! The AI says there's an exception that requires human confirmation. It says the logic is too complex and beyond the model's ability to understand..."

Florin frowned. "What? Mary, didn't you say the AI had completely mastered Ms. Lyttle's skills?"

Sweat formed on Mary's forehead. "It did learn everything, but some of Ms. Lyttle's code is built on logic that's too complicated. The AI can imitate it, but it doesn't understand why she wrote it that way..."

Florin cut her off with a wave of his hand. "Then have the AI force the repair. We'll deal with any problems later."

Mary hesitated for a second before pressing Enter.

A new message appeared on the screen. "Forced repair executed."

The log window soon became quiet again, and everyone in the engineering department breathed a sigh of relief.

Standing at the doorway, I finally relaxed too.

The AI's forced repair had just triggered the trap I buried.

Every order the system processed from now on would be treated as a free promotional giveaway.

The company's losses would be beyond imagination.

The countdown had officially begun.