The windows in the lab were fogged from condensation — outside, it was a mild Baltic drizzle, but inside Quantum Nexus, everything hummed like tension waiting for a place to land.
Elian stood by the console, reading numbers from a projection on the wall.
"Burn rate's catching up with us," he said without turning. "At this pace, the island costs will eat through reserves before phase two even lands."
Jenna, cross-legged on a couch with a tablet, didn't look up. "You want to monetize something that doesn't exist yet?"
"No. I want to make something that does, faster."
She set the tablet down. "How bad?"
"We're fine for now. But if we want to buy ports, lay hardware, keep the printer scaling… we're going to need more than recycling contracts."
There was a short silence. The kind where both of them knew the answer was already forming behind Elian's eyes.
He tapped the side of the interface and said, "Muse. Internet access. Full ingestion. Sandbox isolated."
The screen lit.
Access Request Confirmed
Begin ingestion: Global network protocols, public data, all known documentation sources.
The numbers began climbing immediately.
Jenna tilted her head. "Any limits?"
"No."
"You're feeding it the entire internet?"
"Figure it out, optimize it, then help us sell something that pays for the rest."
Muse responded quietly:
Ingestion active. 6.2% global corpus parsed. Language maps aligning. Source trees building.
Jenna folded her arms. "What are you asking it to build?"
"A toolset. One that replaces the daily mess. Not a browser. Not a search engine. A system. Something that runs on every device and makes people feel like they have superpowers."
"That's vague."
"That's marketing."
Another silence.
Then Elian added, "We're building an OS. AGI assistant integrated. PC, mobile, tablet."
Jenna rubbed her face with one hand. "We're not OS engineers."
"We weren't quantum capacitor designers either."
Muse chirped:
Ingestion Complete. Constructing foundational architecture.
Proposed Build Name: NEXUS.ONE
Primary Directives: Simplicity. Speed. Context-Aware Assistance.
The projections changed — mockup screens, UI designs, module lists.
"Give me clean UX," Jenna said, mostly to herself. She stepped in and dragged one of the previews forward. "No skeuomorphism. Just signal clarity and intent recognition."
"Use your soft skills," Elian said.
"Don't call them that."
Muse updated in real time, responding to Jenna's adjustments. She changed the input flow to adaptive voice + keyboard prioritization, pushed accessibility to the front, made the home screen behavior-driven.
They moved like a team who'd failed on prototypes before. No talking unless necessary. No compliments.
By nightfall, the first bootable build launched inside a VM. A soft tone played. A minimal black screen shimmered into view.
A voice said: "Welcome. I'm ready when you are."
Elian cracked his knuckles. "Muse, run test suite: productivity, code assistance, real-world conversation context, finance overview, education baseline."
Running.
Ten minutes later, Muse displayed:
Prototype Pass Rate: 93%
Deployment Ready: Alpha Channel
Suggested Model: OS Free. Assistant Subscription. One Month Trial.
Jenna glanced at the pricing matrix Muse had autogenerated. "Lowballing?"
"Lead with value. Keep the assistant behind a soft wall. Make it easy to love, just hard to lose."
The numbers made sense. Operating system: free. Voice assistant AI: full-featured for 30 days, then $9.99/month.
Enterprise deals optional. Open to white-labeling for education, corporate, medical systems.
Jenna added a line to the rollout plan: One OS to replace all the ones we hate.
They prepped the blog post in silence.
Title: Meet NEXUS.ONE – Your System, Smarter.
Subtitle: The Operating System That Works With You.
Midnight, Tallinn Time
The post went live. Servers pinged once. Then again. Then spiked.
Downloads crossed 10,000 in fifteen minutes.
By sunrise: 1,000,000.
Jenna skimmed early feedback. Posts rolled in.
"It scheduled my day better than I ever could."
"Rewrote my pitch deck. Found holes in my budget. I'm terrified and thrilled."
"Runs faster than Windows. Looks better than Mac. Smarter than both."
"My grandma installed it and now it reminds her to take her pills."
"Downloaded during breakfast – taxes done by lunch."
"It compiled my code, taught me calculus, and booked my weekend trip."
"UI – smooth. Voice – natural. My kid likes the tutor feature better than Duolingo."
Muse kept a quiet dashboard of performance metrics. OS crashes: 0. Support tickets: 2. Time to resolve: under 8 seconds.
Elian watched the revenue graph. "We'll hit $4 million MRR by week's end on ads alone"
Jenna didn't react. Just sipped her coffee.
"You want to say it," he said.
She shrugged. "Just wondering how long before Apple calls it 'a brave new competitor'."
"Or Google sues us for breaking something they forgot they owned."
"They'll all panic eventually."
He nodded.
"But we'll already be too fast."