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Mike from R&D makes a show of rolling his eyes at our familiar banter. “Can we get through one meeting without you two being adorably in sync?”

“Probably not,” Natalie chimes in. “Remember last week’s budget review? They finished each other’s sustainability metrics sentences.”

The team laughs, comfortable with our dynamics since we’ve proven our partnership works as well in the boardroom as it does everywhere else. Even Jenkins, our newest board member, seems amused rather than concerned by our professional but personal rapport.

“As I was saying,” I continue, pulling up our implementation data, “we’re ready for our quarterly presentation to the Johnsons’ board tomorrow. The custom interface isn’t just meeting their needs—it’s anticipating them. We’ve seen a 40% increase in employee engagement with sustainability initiatives, and their night shift efficiency has improved by—”

My tablet chimes with an incoming email.

Then, Lucas’s phone buzzes.

Then, every device in the room lights up simultaneously.

“Um, Emma?” Miles, our lead programmer, looks like he’s trying not to laugh. “You might want to see this.”

I scan the emergency alert and feel my stomach drop. Our test server, the one running simulations for tomorrow’s presentation, just went on an unexpected coffee break. With a rubber duck in charge of the break room.

“How bad?” Lucas asks, moving to stand beside me. His hand brushes my lower back, our automatic grounding gesture.

“Bad enough that we might lose all our demo data,” Miles admits. “The backup should have kicked in, but...”

“But?”

“But it seems Gordon Junior has strong opinions about working overtime. The backup sequence keeps getting redirected to what appears to be a virtual duck pond.”

The team stares at our main screen where, sure enough, our carefully crafted sustainability metrics are being reorganized into what looks suspiciously like concentric ripples on a pond’s surface.

“Gordon Junior?” Lucas looks at me. “Your rubber duck friend from the manufacturing plant?”

“The same rubber duck we gave a special override button to make the night supervisor happy.” I close my eyes, remembering how pleased we were with that customization. “Though I don’t recall programming in aquatic landscaping abilities.”

“Remember when we programmed that override function?” Miles explains to the room, pulling up the system documentation. “We created a virtual persona in the system named ‘Gordon Junior’ to represent the supervisor’s lucky duck. We gave the icon certain permissions so he could approve overrides in the emissions monitoring protocol.”

“Right,” I add, clarity dawning as I remember the technical specifications. “We designed it as a user-friendly interface for the night shift team—they could press Gordon Junior’s icon on the screen to trigger the override sequence instead of remembering complex command codes.”

“But we also tied it to the adaptive learning module,” Miles continues, typing frantically. “So the system would learn from each override instance. We wanted it to recognize patterns in when the overrides were needed.”

“And now the adaptive learning has... adapted a bit too far?” Lucas guesses.

“Exactly,” Miles confirms. “The Gordon Junior protocol was supposed to have limited permissions, but it seems our adaptivelearning module gave him progressively more access as it recognized patterns in system usage.”

I study the system logs on the screen. “He’s evolved,” Mike says, pointing to a section of code. “Look at this—he’s not just redirecting files, he’s creating entire virtual environments. The sustainability reports are being categorized by their ‘water energy alignment.’ The persona we created to represent the duck has essentially become an autonomous system agent with very specific ideas about data organization.”

Natalie leans over his shoulder. “Is that... is that quarterly projection forming a waterfall?”

“At least he has an eye for presentation aesthetics,” Mike offers. “Those are some really nice ripple effects.”

“Focus, people.” But I’m fighting a smile. This is why I love our team—they face every crisis, even duck-related ones, with humor and creativity. “We have eighteen hours before we present to the Johnsons, and our data is being turned into digital water features.”

“About that...” Miles grimaces. “Gordon Junior’s just added a ‘relaxation protocol’ to the server maintenance schedule. Apparently, our adaptive system noticed that productivity increased after breaks, so it’s now enforcing them.”

“So what you’re saying,” Jenkins clarifies, looking both confused and fascinated, “is that a virtual representation of a rubber duck, which you programmed as a user-friendly interface element, has gained administrative privileges through your adaptive learning module and is now redesigning your entire system based on what it’s learned about productivity patterns?”

“That... is surprisingly accurate,” I admit.

Lucas’s hand finds mine under the conference table. “Options?”

“We could try to override his access,” Aiden, one of the junior developers, suggests.