Sebastian didn’t respond right away. Abigail knew exactly what challenges she’d face after three years in prison. Instead of giving up on herself, she was working to improve in every way possible, trying to get back to being like everyone else.

Abigail put away her phone and leaned back on the couch, looking out the window. “I’m just scared that what they say is true—that after prison, I won’t be good at anything anymore.”

“But you accomplished a lot while you were inside, didn’t you? You got to work with some pretty advanced technology. You’re not behind the times, and you’re definitely not useless.” Sebastian’s tone was calm and reassuring.

A faint smile crossed Abigail’s lips. “I’m lucky that Halden Group doesn’t discriminate against me. None of you treat me differently, and you keep giving me projects. That makes me really happy.”

Sebastian’s expression softened a bit. He smiled slightly and asked, “So having projects to work on is what makes you happy?”

“Yeah, working on projects inside taught me so much. Before that, when I couldn’t learn this stuff, I was really bored. Every day was just reading books about ethics and morals, or novels, but I didn’t like any of that.”

Abigail’s eyes lit up when she heard this. She genuinely loved working on projects–all kinds of them. It made her feel like she wasn’t completely useless.

“So tell me about James‘ smart system. How would you approach it? Auto-parking has gotten pretty sophisticated these last couple years, and so has self-driving technology,” Sebastian asked.

“I watched this video recently where someone’s system could handle mountain roads on its own, even in the rain. It could detect pedestrians and automatically brake. The whole thing was really impressive. But I still think these are all just backup features,” Abigail said.

“Go on.” Sebastian loved watching Abigail when she got serious about work. She became confident and focused, like she was glowing from the inside.

“I think their approach is solid—no question about that. But when we’re driving, we run into tricky situations all the time. Sharp turns, rainy weather where headlights make it impossible to see someone in a raincoat… We should focus on solving those problems.”

“Exactly.” Sebastian nodded.

“And there’s drowsy driving. We could install something that monitors the driver’s condition. If it detects fatigue, the system should step in somehow,” Abigail continued.

Driving was really just about safety. Preventing accidents was what these systems should be designed for.

“Want to try it out now? James gave me the system they had built before. It has all the features you mentioned, except for the fatigue scanning–we didn’t think of that one. Let’s see how we can improve it.”

Sebastian stood up as he spoke. He knew Abigail would definitely say yes.

“Sure, let’s do it.” Abigail nodded.

Sebastian brought over his laptop just as the hotel staff delivered their meal. “The food here isn’t great, but you’ll have to make do with it.”

He set the laptop in front of her and sat down beside her. Abigail looked at the pasta and steak on the table and said calmly, “It’s fine. I’m not really picky about food.”

“Let’s check out the system they built first.” Sebastian leaned closer and opened the program James had sent him.

Abigail picked up her plate and started eating while she talked. “This system is way too complicated. The code is a mess–it could be simplified a lot.”

“That’s exactly what I thought. What else do you see?” Sebastian asked.

“The base code needs to be completely rewritten. Car chips these days are really advanced, but this code is so poorly written it’s basically wasting good hardware.” Abigail didn’t hold back her criticism.

A slight smile tugged at Sebastian’s lips. “I feel the same way.”

“The general direction is right though–auto parking, self-driving, all kinds of hazard detection. But I think the emergency response protocols could be way stronger,” Abigail continued her analysis.

“Like what?” Sebastian raised an eyebrow.

Abigail spoke thoughtfully, “Well, imagine a kid suddenly runs into traffic, or someone’s backing out and doesn’t see a person behind them, or they hit the gas instead of the brake. Are there emergency systems for situations like that?

“I remember hearing about quite a few accidents where people mixed up the gas and brake pedals.”

Sebastian nodded. “That’s definitely something we should include. Those kinds of accidents cause a lot of tragedies every year.”

“That covers most of it. But I think automatic parking could completely solve accidents caused by blind spots when cars are pulling out of parking spaces. I heard that technology isn’t quite perfected yet.”

Abigail sat beside Sebastian, and they were sitting quite close without either of them noticing.