The Divorce Papers Gave Him The Shell And Gave Me The Future Chapter 05

The Divorce Papers Gave Him The Shell And Gave Me The Future Chapter 05

**Launch day.**

I arrived at the venue at five in the morning.

The Westfall test track was enormous. A full simulated city grid with traffic lights, tunnels, overpasses, everything we needed.

The team was doing final calibrations.

The test vehicle was a rental, a plain white SUV with no special paint or logos.

The real difference was invisible.

The sensor array on the roof was our own design, blending lidar, millimeter-wave radar, and industrial cameras.

In the trunk sat our custom computing platform. Three times the processing power of anything else on the market, at half the cost.

“Boss, the media area is set up.” Derek jogged over. “Valerie says every outlet she invited confirmed.”

“Your interview last night hit three hundred thousand views.”

I nodded.

Valerie walked up. “Skylar, Ethan is here.”

I didn’t stop what I was doing.

“We sent him an invitation. I’m not afraid of him coming.”

I straightened my jacket, the only nice one I owned, bought three

years ago at Apex’s annual holiday party.

That night, Ethan stood on stage and said Apex’s future was unlimited potential.

Later that night, he got drunk. Grace took him back to his room.

The sad part? I didn’t find out until I saw a coworker’s Instagram post the next day.

“Ms. Chase, we’re ready to start.” A staff member called.

I took a deep breath.

“Let’s go.”

Ten in the morning. The launch began on time.

The media area was packed. Cameras lined up in rows.

I stood in the wings, peeking through the gap in the curtain.

Ethan sat in the third row on the aisle, arms crossed, a smirk on his lips.

Grace leaned against him, whispering in his ear every few moments.

Samuel was in the front row, slouched back, flipping through our product brochure like it bored him.

Valerie’s voice came through the speakers.

“Thank you all for coming to Skyline Intelligence’s launch. Today’s keynote will be given by our founder and CEO, Skylar Chase.”

I walked onto the stage.

The spotlight hit me hard, almost blinding.

“Hello, everyone. I’m Skylar Chase.”

“Today, I’m going to show you something that will change the future of mobility.”

“For the past decade, the autonomous driving industry has been selling the same narrative: full self-driving is right around the corner. But that step from L3 to L4? No one has actually taken it.”

“It’s not about processing power. It’s not about better sensors.”

“It’s about a broken architecture.”

I clicked the remote. The screen lit up.

For the next twenty minutes, I didn’t use a teleprompter or flashy slides.

But no one in the audience stirred.

“Enough talk. Let’s see the car drive.”

The screen switched to a live feed.

A white SUV sat at the starting line.

No driver.

The screen split into three views: real-time road conditions, the car’s decision-making visualization, and an interior camera.

“The route today is seven and a half miles. It includes city streets, a highway segment, a tunnel, and a construction zone.”

“Begin.”

Scenario one: an unprotected left turn.

Oncoming traffic was heavy. The system had less than two seconds to find a gap and commit.

The car paused at the intersection.

One second.

Two seconds.

A delivery truck passed, and the car moved.

One clean turn, slipping into the gap perfectly. Smooth.

Scenario two: the tunnel.

Inside, GPS signal vanished. The light dropped sharply.

The car didn’t hesitate. Steady speed. Lane position locked.

Scenario three: construction.

Three lanes merged into one. Orange cones placed at odd angles.

The car merged eight hundred feet early. No sudden braking. Slipped into line smoothly. Slowed to the reduced speed limit as it passed the work zone.

Scenario four: a pedestrian dummy suddenly darted out from the roadside, less than thirty feet away.

The car reacted almost instantly.

No hard braking. A slight deceleration and a tiny steering adjustment.
It curved around with inches to spare.

The whole thing looked like a driver with twenty years of experience.

Seven and a half miles. Zero interventions.

Seventeen minutes.

No violations. No scary moments.

The feed froze.

Dead silence in the audience.

Then Valerie stood up and started clapping.

One by one, the rest of the room followed.