Mētā Headquarters – Menlo Park, California
Inside the meeting room, for everyone seated around that table, the room felt suffocating.
Markus had been silent for almost a full minute, and that silence was worse than yelling. He stood at the head of the conference table, hands clasped behind his back.
The Mētā executives avoided his gaze.
Finally, he spoke.
"Ten years. Ten years of development. Hundreds of billions in R&D and all of it looks like a toy next to this," Markus said quietly, gesturing to the paused video on a tv screen.
His voice wasn't raised, but it cut like glass.
"Lucid appears out of nowhere, and in three days, it has every tech board, investor, and consumer on the planet losing their minds. The delivery system alone has rewritten logistics modeling. The AI integration—impossible by our standards. And you're telling me we still have no idea how they did it?"
