The Prototype Table

The roast was getting cold before anyone touched it.

Elias stood at the head of the long table, one hand on the back of his chair, and watched the steam fade from the platter in the middle. The dining room had once belonged to a family who liked old wood and soft light. He had kept the wood, stripped out the wall on the east side, and opened the room into the lab. Now the house split down the middle: candles and plates on one side, steel frames and hanging screens on the other, cables snaking under rugs toward a waist-high black glass table placed where no guest could miss it.

Outside the townhouse windows, the dome night glowed a pale green from the garden tiers above the street. Water moved through the exterior channels in a low steady rush. Inside, the air held warm food, hot circuitry, and the faint clean bite of coolant.

Jonas Filby tipped wine into his glass and looked at the prototype table instead of the meal. His neat beard caught the candlelight when he turned. “You know,” he said, easy enough on the surface, “most people put flowers in the middle when they want an evening to feel relaxed.”

A thin laugh came from Liora Sen, one of the smaller investors Jonas had brought, a woman in a cream jacket who kept glancing at the door as if she had already chosen regret. Beside her sat Dev Miro, legal counsel for a fund that had once flirted with Mercer Dynamics and then run hard in the other direction after the hearings. He folded his napkin with care and did not smile.