The main auditorium at Omnis could seat five hundred. Today it was nearly full — researchers, engineers, product managers, operations staff, all filed into rows of sleek grey chairs that probably cost more than they should have. The stage was minimal: a single podium, a massive screen behind it, and Dan Shiftman standing at the centre like he was born there.
Aliah found a seat near the back, next to Priya. From here she could see the whole room — the eager faces near the front, the more guarded expressions further back. The old-timers, she'd noticed, tended to sit in the rear.
"How much do you want to bet he uses the word 'inflection' in the first five minutes?" Priya murmured.
"I'm not taking that bet."
Dan began.
He was good at this. That was the thing about Dan Shiftman — he was genuinely, frustratingly good at this. The warm smile, the self-deprecating joke about his coffee intake, the way he made eye contact with different sections of the room as if he was speaking to each person individually. Aliah had watched recordings of his early talks, back when Omnis was still operating out of a cramped office and he was pitching to anyone who would listen. The same energy. The same conviction. You could see why people followed him.
"We're at an inflection point," Dan said, and Priya nudged her.
"Two minutes. New record."
Aliah suppressed a smile and tried to focus.
"The work we've done over the past three years has been extraordinary," Dan continued. "We've pushed the boundaries of what these systems can do. Reasoning, creativity, complex problem-solving — we've shown the world what's possible. But I'm not here to talk about what we've done. I'm here to talk about what comes next."
The slide behind him changed. A simple graphic: a line climbing steadily, then levelling off, then climbing again — steeper than before.
"We've always known that progress wouldn't be linear. There are plateaus. There are walls. And right now, we're hitting some of those walls." He paused, letting the words land. "I'm not going to pretend otherwise. You all know this. You're living it."
A murmur through the crowd. Aliah felt something shift in the room — an exhale, almost. Dan admitting the walls existed was, in its way, a relief.
"But here's what I believe," Dan said, his voice lifting. "The biggest breakthroughs don't come from scaling what we already have. They come from rethinking the fundamentals. From asking the questions we've been too busy to ask. From the people in this room who see problems that others don't — and who have the audacity to believe they can solve them."
He looked out at the audience, and Aliah could almost believe he was looking directly at her.
"Over the next quarter, we're going to be making some hard choices about where to focus our resources. But I want to be clear: we are not pulling back from fundamental research. If anything, we're doubling down. We need new ideas. We need proposals. We need people to come forward with the projects that might actually break through the walls."
The slide changed again. Four words:
Memory. Learning. Generalisation. Alignment.
Aliah's breath caught.
"These are the problems that matter," Dan said. "These are the problems that, if we solve them, change everything. And I want every researcher in this room to be thinking about them. Not just theoretically — practically. What would you build? What experiment would you run? What do you need to make it happen?"
He smiled, and for a moment the performance fell away and something real flickered through.
"Come to me. Come to your team leads. Pitch me something that keeps me up at night. Because I promise you — the incremental stuff isn't going to cut it anymore. We need the big swings."
The all-hands ended with applause — genuine, not just polite — and the crowd began to disperse. Aliah stayed in her seat, staring at the now-empty stage.
"You okay?" Priya asked.
"He put it on a slide."
"What?"
"Memory." Aliah turned to look at her. "He put memory on a slide. As one of the four problems that 'change everything.'"
Priya raised an eyebrow. "I mean... he's not wrong? That's basically your whole thesis."
"Exactly." Aliah was already thinking, the pieces clicking together. "He's asking for proposals. For fundamental research. For projects that 'break through the walls.'"
"And you're thinking...?"
"I'm thinking I've been running experiments on CLIO for months. I've been documenting the problem. I know what's missing — the gap between in-context and storage, the way retrieval isn't the same as remembering." She was speaking faster now, the idea taking shape. "What if we trained a model specifically for this? Trained it to learn what to carry forward. To capture the journey, not just the destination."
Priya looked at her for a long moment. "That's a lot of compute."
"I know."
"Like, a lot of compute."
"I know."
"You'd need to pitch Dan directly. Or at least someone on the research steering committee."
Aliah nodded. The scale of what she was proposing was starting to sink in. This wasn't a side project. This wasn't something she could run quietly on CLIO and write up for an internal paper. This was asking for real resources, real commitment.
But Dan had asked for big swings.
"I need to write this up," Aliah said, standing. "Tonight. Before I talk myself out of it."
Priya stood too, gathering her things. "You want me to look it over before you send it?"
"Yeah. Yeah, that would be good."
They walked toward the exit together, joining the stream of employees filtering out into the corridor. Around them, conversations buzzed — people parsing Dan's words, speculating about what "hard choices" meant, debating whether this was genuinely a new direction or just another motivational speech.
Aliah wasn't speculating. She was planning.
Memory. Learning. Generalisation. Alignment.
He'd put it on a slide. Now she was going to hold him to it.
Back on the research floor, Aliah split off from Priya and headed for her desk. The corridor was quieter here — most people still drifting back from the auditorium.
She passed the glass-walled office that belonged to Marcus Webb, one of the senior architects. The door was closed, but through the window she could see him at the whiteboard, back to the corridor. He'd already written the four words from Dan's slide across the top.
As she watched, he circled MEMORY. Then circled it again, pressing hard.
He stood there for a moment, staring at it. Then he turned and saw her.
Their eyes met. He didn't smile.
Aliah kept walking.