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"See?" Jase grinned. "This is what I'm talking about. You two need each other."
"I said I'm not looking for work."
"And I said I'm not pushing. But there's no reason we can't talk."
The conversation shifted. Renzo talked about barn renovations. Roan mentioned a classic car restoration. Normal things. Civilian things. Conversations without IEDs or nation-state cyber attacks.
"I should get back." Jase checked his phone. "Bonnie's probably cooked enough food for an army by now."
"I’m just one former Army."
He laughed. "Same thing in her mind. Don't worry, it'll be so good you'll want to eat it no matter how full you are."
Goodbyes. Renzo made me promise to visit. Roan handed me a business card for Onyx Security. Into my pocket it went without looking.
The drive back stayed quiet.
The house had transformed. No chaos. The smell of roast chicken and apple pie. Spotless living room. The robot sat on the coffee table, functioning arms, LED eyes blinking.
"Code!" Amber appeared from the kitchen. "We fixed it! Want to see it move?"
"After dinner." Bonnie followed her daughter out, freshly showered, jeans and a sweater. The stress from earlier had vanished. "I'm sorry about earlier. Saturday afternoons are... always like this," she ruefully admitted.
" I've seen forward operating bases with less activity."
She laughed. "That's one way to put it. Hope you're hungry. I may have gone overboard."
Overboard was an understatement. Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, cornbread, salad, two pies cooling on the counter.
"Mom stress-cooks." Lachlan appeared with somewhat tamed hair. "Last parent-teacher conference, she made ten dozen cupcakes."
"They were having a bake sale," Bonnie defended.
"The next week, Mom."
Dinner was loud. Amber and Lachlan talked over each other. The robot's features. The motor that kept getting stuck. Twenty other topics without any connection.
"Is it always like this?" The question slipped out quietly to Jase.
"Wait until you get together with all seventeen of my siblings and their children. This is calm."
A shudder ran through me.
After dinner, the robot performed. Walking across the table. Picking up a pencil. Something Amber called a "victory dance" that looked more like a seizure.
"The coding is pretty good." Amber's laptop screen drew me in. "But your motor keeps stuttering. You need to make the turns smoother."
"That's what I said!" Amber shot her brother a triumphant look.
"You said the motor was stupid," Lachlan corrected.
"Same thing."
The laptop ended up in front of me somehow. Simple commands needed tweaking. My fingers moved across the keyboard, muscle memory from a thousand late nights debugging systems. Except now it was explaining basic if-then statements to nine-year-olds. Amber absorbed every word. Lachlan focused on playing with the robot and making it do kung fu moves.
"The presentation's Monday morning." Amber's earlier anger had evaporated. "We're supposed to demonstrate a practical application."
"What'd you choose?"
