They sat on a wooden bench in the lush garden of the restaurant on the Westlands hills. Below them stretched the sea of lights of Nairobi in 2026 – a pulsating mosaic of green LED strips, glass skyscrapers, and the distant lights of the expressways. Wurst had settled in the grass. His OLED eyes glowed in a thoughtful, warm amber, while Kiko lay curled up as a sleepy, faint hologram on Amina’s lap.
“Hamburg is pretty far away right now, isn’t it?” Amina asked quietly, without taking her eyes off the skyline.
Lukas breathed in the cool night air, which tasted of eucalyptus and rain. “Yes. Physically and... somehow mentally too. If someone had told me two weeks ago that I’d be sitting at night in Kenya, holding a multi-million tech project in my hands and losing my heart to a beautiful designer, I would have called them crazy.” He smiled faintly. “Or had my dachshund scan the security protocols of whoever it was.”
Amina turned her head to him. Her gaze was infinitely gentle, but also accompanied by a quiet sadness. “I don’t want to pressure you, Lukas. I know what you would leave behind in Germany. Your family, your friends, the familiar life. I can’t ask you to give up everything for an adventure that we’ve only been sharing in real life for a few days.”
Lukas was silent for a moment. He looked down at Wurst. The mechanical dog seemed to sense the gravity of the moment. He lifted his head and gave a quiet, approving hum.
“Analysis of quality of life in the Hamburg attic,” Wurst intervened with extremely reduced volume. “Average sunshine duration: 3.4 hours per day. Precipitation risk: high. Social interaction density of creator Lukas before July 2026: minimal. Current parameters in Nairobi: sunshine duration: 8.2 hours. Heart rate variability in presence of designer Amina: optimally stable. Diagnosis: Hamburg is a solid security server. But Nairobi... Nairobi is the place where the code lives.”
Amina blinked away a few tears and had to laugh despite the seriousness. “Your dachshund is my best lawyer, you know that, right?”
Lukas looked at her, and in that moment something became completely clear to him. It wasn’t security that made him happy. It was the unknown, the creative chaos, and above all the woman who sat beside him. He took her hand, squeezed it tightly, and felt the deep connection that no network outage in the world could ever sever again.
“You know what?” Lukas said with firm resolve in his voice. “I think my Hamburg apartment is way too small anyway for two highly active AI pets. And my boss wanted me to be more productive working from home anyway.”
Amina’s eyes began to shine brightly. “That means...?”
“That means: Let’s call Dr. Mwangi tomorrow. We accept the offer.”