The morning they moved in, Jenna was already awake, her vibrant hair pinned back with practiced ease, sleeves rolled up, coffee half-sipped. Elian found her crouched in the new kitchen, surrounded by boxes labeled with surgical precision. A portable whiteboard, rescued from the lab, leaned against the fridge, titled:
D.R.P. PHASE 2: Object Permanence (a.k.a. furniture acquisition)
"You've already started inventory," he said, rubbing sleep from his eyes, the scent of fresh coffee pulling him closer.
"Someone has to take this seriously," she replied, gesturing at the contained chaos around them. "You labeled three boxes 'Cables, Maybe?' and one of them had a cutting board in it. A perfectly good cutting board, Elian."
"Maybe it's a very flat experimental antenna," he deadpanned, reaching for the coffee pot.
She gave him a look that promised zero forgiveness and handed him a box cutter, the subtle clink of metal against cardboard.
The moving crew arrived soon after—a team of polite, tech-literate professionals provided by Quantum Nexus's new facilities department. They asked questions like "Are the superconducting cores shielded?" and "Which corner of the server alcove do you want the intake node aligned to?"
"Bless this company," Elian whispered to Jenna, watching them work with focused efficiency. "Actual competence. It's almost unsettling."
He guided them to the recessed cabinet in the study where the home-grade superconducting system was being installed—a custom control rig provided by one of Quantum Nexus Technologies' earliest licensees. Small, modular, quiet. Not nearly as powerful as Muse's main rig in the HQ sub-basement, but capable of handling a modern home environment with ridiculous, almost unnecessary, efficiency.
The installation finished in under two hours, the new systems humming softly in the background.
"Muse," Elian said, powering up the interface node embedded in the study wall. "You're online. Your new home node is prelinked to the main neural archive. Go ahead and establish local sync."
The familiar, smooth voice responded through the house's integrated speakers: "Acknowledged. Local sync initiated."
"Muse," he added, tapping through the control screen, configuring access, "take over full control of the home security and monitoring systems. Set threat response to non-lethal. Log all access attempts. Passive surveillance only inside unless manually overridden by me or Jenna."
"Confirmed. Home system synced. Superconducting control node operational. Cameras, locks, and biometric scanners now mapped."
Jenna looked over his shoulder, a hint of awe in her expression. "You just handed our entire home to a machine we built in a lab. You trust it with… everything."
"That machine made us coffee better than any barista this morning and found a typo in your research proposal before I did," Elian pointed out.
"—Point taken," she conceded, a faint smile playing on her lips.
Making a Home
Furniture setup was unequivocally Jenna's domain. Elian tried to contribute—offering ideas like "industrial modular minimalism" and suggesting "zero-gravity chairs for optimum thought flow." Jenna vetoed him so hard it almost left a burn mark on the pristine new walls.
Instead, she curated. The living room slowly filled with warm, light woods, soft gray upholstery, and adjustable lighting that felt inviting rather than like an interrogation room. She selected fabrics Elian didn't know the names of. Rugs that muted footstep acoustics. Lamps with intelligent dimming systems that adjusted with the natural light.
Elian surrendered by lunchtime, content to hover and offer only polite, general affirmations.
The only room he was allowed to configure freely was the secondary study—which quickly became his project lab, Muse's home hub, and general war room for the next wave of innovation. He installed whiteboards on all four walls, a compact 3D printer, and left wires in tangled nests that Jenna, with a sigh of affectionate exasperation, labeled "Elian's Den of Spaghetti."
"You're lucky I like your chaos," she said, watching him meticulously pin a complex circuit blueprint over the fuse box.
"You married it," Elian said without thinking, the words slipping out, warm and unbidden.
They both froze.
Jenna turned her head slowly, a deep, knowing smile playing at her lips, her eyes twinkling with amusement and something more profound.
"Did you... just say married?" she asked, her voice soft, teasing.
Elian blinked, his cheeks warming. "Hypothetically. Metaphorically. Emotionally. Potentially, in the very distant future, under optimal conditions." He felt his usual precision abandoning him.
Her smile deepened—not mocking, not smug. Just warm, incredibly warm. "Well," she said, leaning in, her voice a low murmur, "I'd hate to find out I moved in with someone who wasn't at least a little serious about me."
Elian's eyes met hers, holding them. "Serious is an understatement, Jenna. You know that."
He kissed her—gentle, deliberate, a soft affirmation—then rested his forehead against hers, breathing in the scent of her, of coffee, of their new home.
"I love the assertive side of you," she whispered, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw.
He grinned. "I'll try to let it out more often, then."
"Do," she said. "But not when we're picking curtains. I'm still in charge of that."
He chuckled. "Deal."
By evening, the house was warm and lived-in—at least in spirit, if not in unpacked square footage. The setting sun filtered in golden through the east-facing windows, casting long, peaceful light across the hardwood floors, glinting off the smart panel on the far wall that now pulsed gently under Muse's remote signature.
Boxes were still stacked, but neatly, without chaos. The kitchen hummed with warmth from the tea kettle. Somewhere in the background, Muse adjusted the ambient temperature by a precise 0.3 degrees, an invisible hand guiding their comfort.
They ate dinner cross-legged on the floor—spicy stir-fry from a local place in Tallinn they both liked. Jenna found the house speakers and played soft music. The playlist was a quirky mix: half jazz standards, half synthesized ambience Muse had algorithmically generated from their shared focus sessions in the lab.
Elian sat with his back against the new couch—not yet broken in, but already holding the promise of comfort—and looked around at what they'd made.
A real home.
Not a rented room filled with chargers. Not a lab they slept in by accident. Not a borrowed space. This was their walls, their windows, their door to lock.
"This feels real," he said, the words quiet, filled with a profound sense of arrival.
"It is real," Jenna answered, leaning her head against his shoulder.
He breathed in the moment slowly, his usual whirlwind thoughts unusually still.
"This is the first place I've lived in that doesn't feel like a temporary shelter," he said.
"It isn't," she replied. "This is the first time we get to build from the ground up. No landlords. No lab bureaucracy. No borrowed desks. Just us, and a very smart house."
Elian chuckled. "We finally made a lab with walls and windows."
She turned her head, a soft smile. "We made a home."
He went quiet for a long time, simply soaking in the feeling.
Then he said, "You make this easy."
"Living with you isn't easy, Elian Rho," she replied, her voice filled with affection. "But it's worth it. Every single complex, chaotic, brilliant bit of it."
They didn't say anything else for a while. The overhead lights dimmed automatically. Outside, the warm evening wind stirred the garden they hadn't planted yet.
After a while, Jenna asked, her voice a soft murmur, "Do you think we'll ever slow down?"
Elian thought about it. About Muse. About the AI's growing awareness. About the system's newest prompts urging him toward direct neural integration. About what it would mean to build a bridge between thought and machine. He looked around the house they had made together. The real wood beneath their feet. The warmth of a cup passed from one hand to another. The quiet heartbeat of living, shared.
"Not really," he said, taking a deep breath. "But now we'll have somewhere to come back to when we need to catch our breath. Somewhere to land."
Jenna reached for his hand.
And for once, they let the quiet carry the rest.
And in the corner, Muse pulsed quietly—guarding the doors, balancing the heat, listening. Always watching. Always learning.