Janette was seething with anger. Had she finally met the one person in the universe who could provoke her to this level? Every morning after the meeting, Chase scrutinized the updates she had produced over the past day. To Janette, this task was the single most infuriating chore she had ever undertaken. She could not pinpoint exactly why it annoyed her so much, except that it felt like this boy was constantly picking apart her work. It always began the same way: she sat rigidly as Chase's eyes roamed over her code, his disapproval unmistakable.

  "You did not start anew as I requested; instead, you improved on yesterday’s code," Chase stated in a measured tone.

  Janette met his gaze with her chin held high. "That is correct," she replied.

  "Very well," Chase continued, his voice carrying an edge of impatience. "The code is much neater now, although you have inserted an extra space here for no apparent reason. This section could do with another line break." His criticism spilled over into several lines as he methodically combed through an entire page of code. "I believe the way you have crafted these parts is sloppy. This area may improperly link to other variables. I would like to see this whole section removed. It hurts my eyes to look at it."

  "No one has ever been so particular," Janette finally shot back, her tone laced with barely concealed fury. "You know very well that such details make no difference to the overall function of the code."

  Chase looked up sharply, as if struck. "It makes all the difference. That is the hallmark of a professional. Look at this segment here. I like it. It is neat and ties in well."

  Janette, her anger now more focused, leaned in and glared at the screen. "Which part exactly?"

  "These three lines. They are particularly well executed," he said with a nod of approval.

  "Three lines? You praise three lines out of an entire code sheet?" Janette's exasperation boiled over. "You dismiss all my hard work because of a mere few details?" Her voice trembled between outrage and disbelief.

  Chase took a step back, startled by the fire in her eyes, fully aware that he had struck a nerve. The air in the room seemed to crackle with tension as their competition and mutual frustration hung heavy between them, each exchanged remark deepening the rift that neither was willing to bridge.

  “Yes, LJ. I like those three lines. They have a lot of relevance and can be used at other places to simplify and complicate your code.”

  Janette shook her head in frustration. She rose abruptly, still looking as if she were ready to choke Chase, and strode over to her workstation. "Simplify and complicate," she muttered aloud, her tone heavy with bitter irony. "That is what you must do, LJ. Just simplify and complicate the code so that the little troll, the stealer of hope, is happy." At that final remark, the remaining crew burst into laughter. For a moment, Janette paused in shock, realizing that her words had carried much louder than she intended.

  By the fifth day of reviewing the code, Chase and Janette had fallen into a disturbing routine. Every morning, Chase began by scrutinizing the layout and pointing out every minute error before anything else. He became especially irate if Janette had overlooked even one mistake he had mentioned earlier. Such oversights were rare, thanks to Janette’s impressive memory, yet they still fueled his relentless criticism.

  "In this section," Chase said, his tone sharp, "we require the task as defined in the code. However, I do not like your approach here. Remove this part entirely and start over. I want to see three distinct options for this section and then test to determine which one fits best."

  Janette exhaled heavily, a sound of resignation mixed with irritation. She had grown accustomed to this barrage by now, yet she never felt truly satisfied. At times, it seemed as if he was wasting her time, even though her revisions had made the code run faster, look better, and perform more reliably. And for all her effort, it remained all for a system that only controlled the opening of a single door.

  On the sixth morning of reviewing the code, Janette's calm snapped. She had believed she had reached a point where Chase's constant critiques no longer affected her, but that quiet confidence lasted only twenty-four hours. Then, like a dam bursting, she lost control. "Do you realize you are wasting my time? We are on Mars with the chance to build a colony, and instead I am forced to obsess over the code for a door. Everyone else is busy with worthwhile tasks while I am stuck trying to create the fanciest way for a door to open. I’d rather be involved in the operation of the mini Rover or practically any other project being run by different teams. I do not know what you hope to achieve, but I suspect I will be dead before I ever see the point, probably from blowing my brains out."

  Somewhat taken aback by the outburst, Chase, who was making every effort to remain calm for Kaya's sake, said quietly, "You do not understand, do you?"

  "What is there to understand?" Janette fired back. "It is only a door. A door! Did you hear me? A door. I have labored over this door code again and again. It cannot get any better!"

  Raising his voice over his shoulder, Chase called out, "September, please run both the current door code and the latest of Janettes code through the simulator. Display any bugs and the running times on the screen."

  "Complete. Time taken to run with breaking circular reference: 0.07 seconds. Current door code: 0.03 seconds," the AI replied promptly.

  Chase nodded and then ordered, "Show us the circular reference bug."

  "Onscreen."

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  Janette fixed her gaze on Chase, trying to force him to meet her stare. Not to be outdone, he returned her glare with equal intensity. Finally, Janette broke the deadlock, her tone seething with contempt. "Listen here, boy. They had years to write that code and surely learned from the work done on the whole train. It is nothing more than a small bug that I can fix in seconds."

  Chase shook his head in a manner he knew would get under Janette’s skin. Yet he kept his voice calm and, surprisingly, upbeat. "You think this is a waste of time, LJ, but it is not. A door is a simple place to begin. There is not much going on, and this code should easily be better than what was programmed in for a simple door, which one would expect to be ordinary drivel. We both know they did not use ordinary drivel. They crafted that door code in the same brilliant way they coded the entire train. Even so, as you pointed out, there are bugs in it, like the fire instruction."

  He leaned in, his tone growing more intense. "Given the level of detail they put into every part of the trains system, they would not have left errors inadvertently. I propose that those errors are deliberate. They knew exactly what they were doing. Does that not scare you, LJ? Does it not unsettle you to think there is a coder out there who can take the time to code a door with the finesse of a grand master?"

  His voice softened almost to a whisper before rising again with urgency. "What other traps might be hidden in those details, lying in wait for an unsuspecting victim? If we are to survive on this planet, you must create code that surpasses the work of this grand master, and then find a way to override the master code. Otherwise, you may live long enough to watch your colleagues fall one by one. Will you be ready to shoulder the blame when we miss a detail and someone dies, or even ten people perish? I know I will blame myself, and that is why I push you. Do you understand now? Do you understand?"

  He paused, letting each word settle before softening his tone slightly. "Your code is good, and under other circumstances, I would call it great. But you are locked in a war with a master coder, or possibly the AI is at this level itself, and the only way you will beat them is by getting better. The truth is that the devil hides in the details, LJ. So gather yourself and let us review this code again."

  On the seventh day of the review, Chase decided to push Janette even further. "Janette, I have something different for you today," he declared. "You know that Sunday is a traditional day of rest, and Kaya tells me you are a devout Catholic, something I questioned before, but that is not important now. Let us approach our programming from a new angle. According to my calculations, there are over one hundred doors on this train, including cupboard doors and others. A piano has eighty eight keys. I want you to assign individual piano sounds to each door through the simulator. Once you have done that, make the doors play Mozart’s 40th Symphony, third movement by opening the correct door at the right time. This is all a simulation; the correct sound should be assigned, rather than actually killing us by opening any doors."

  Janette fixed her glare on Chase with a mix of exasperation and unexpected relief. "You want me to program every door to play Mozart?" she said, her tone edged with disbelief. "I suppose it is no more a waste of time than everything else you have me do." Beneath her frustrated words, however, a spark of anticipation glowed. The idea was absurd on its face; assigning Mozart to over a hundred doors was a wild stretch of creativity that defied all the routines she had become trapped in. Yet, in that absurdity, she saw a welcome escape, a break from the endless cycle of monotonous code reviews and trivial adjustments.

  In a rare moment of quiet introspection, Janette allowed herself to savor the challenge. The prospect of weaving the timeless strains of Mozart into the everyday mechanics of a train stirred something deep within her. Every door came with its own set of nuances that she had to account for, such as the required direction of opening, the mechanics of sliding doors, or the subtle behavior of cupboard doors. Programming the doors to produce sound was not the hard part; the real challenge lay in configuring each door individually and then linking them all together. Janette had briefly considered skipping this extra work, but she knew Chase would expect a complete solution without any shortcuts.

  What Chase described as a day of rest turned into a long, demanding day of programming for Janette. Throughout the day, she barely noticed others in the command module as she tuned out all background distractions and focused solely on her work. From time to time, food appeared on her desk, most likely left by Julie. By the time she realized it was there, the food was cold, yet she still devoured it in her hunger to complete the task.

  Later that evening, the entire crew gathered in the common area, the air thick with anticipation as they prepared to experience Janette's rendition of Mozart. The soft hum of machinery and the muted clatter of tools in the background served as an unlikely prelude to the performance. At the center of it all, the rhythmic sounds of doors opening and closing formed a digital symphony that wove together the timeless strains of Mozart with the pulse of modern technology. Every sound was crisp and deliberate, yet strangely mechanical, a vivid reminder of the delicate interplay between art and engineering.

  As the performance unfolded, the silence in the room was almost tangible. Every eye was fixed on the display as each door precisely contributed its note to the overall harmony. There was a moment when the sounds seemed to float in the air, each door’s timbre perfectly pitched and in sync with its counterparts, creating an effect that bordered on the miraculous. And then, as the final note rang out, the silence exploded into a burst of cheers and applause that echoed around the room.

  Chase broke through the ecstasy of the moment, his voice loud and coolly dismissive. "It is good, but there is no passion," he declared, his words slicing through the crowd's lingering euphoria. His tone was clinical, as if he were reviewing a technical report rather than a living performance. The comment hung in the air, heavy and disruptive, and for a brief instant, it seemed as though every eye in the room turned towards Janette, demanding her judgment.

  In that charged moment, Janette's face betrayed a mixture of exasperation and a private, ironic relief. Inside, she seethed over the familiar sting of Chase's criticism that she had grown to expect by now, a criticism that had often felt like a personal affront. How could the opening and closing of doors ever be a vessel for passion? The absurdity of it all ignited a spark within her. Memories of past encounters, where each remark from Chase had cut through her like a cold wind, rushed in. Yet, in this instance, perhaps the sheer ridiculousness of the expectation brought a fleeting smile to her face.

  A slow, reflective pause passed before her lips gave way to a booming, unrestrained laughter that started as a giggle and quickly grew into a full-throated outburst. At first, it was just a chuckle, almost accidental, but then it swelled into a cascade of laughter so intense that tears welled in her eyes. It was a moment of catharsis, a defiant laugh against the oppressive weight of criticism. "A door," she muttered between laughs, "a door can never hold passion." The absurdity was too great to contain.

  Her laughter broke the heavy tension that had gripped the room. Gradually, the crew relaxed, the collective breath of relief merging with the soft hum of conversation. Some exchanged knowing glances, while others whispered remarks that betrayed their own mixed feelings of admiration for her talent and dismay at Chase's unyielding precision.