The rhythm of development on CampusFix found its new normal. The post-fight tension had been replaced by a smoother, more intuitive collaboration. They'd passed a test. The apologies had been genuine, the resolutions practical. Now, they were a team.
Ares had built a stunningly simple admin panel for campus facilities staff, a masterstroke of UX design that made a complex task feel effortless. Kairos had secured the API endpoints behind role-based authentication, ensuring only authorized users could change an issue's status. The app was no longer a collection of features; it was a cohesive, almost-polished product.
It was a Tuesday afternoon when it happened.
Kairos was debugging a minor issue with the upvote counter—sometimes it double-incremented on a rapid tap—when his phone buzzed with a notification. It was from their shared project management channel.
Ares: [Screenshot attached] Ares:Um. guys. look at this.
The screenshot was from the live app's public issue feed. Among the handful of test issues they'd created themselves—"Test Faucet," "Broken Desk in Lib 4B," "Please water the plant in the hallway"—was a new one.
Title: Ceiling Leak in Geology Dept. Lounge Category:Plumbing Status:Submitted Description:Water dripping from ceiling tile near the west window. Bucket is filling up fast. Smells kinda funky. Location:Hammond Hall, 2nd Floor Lounge Upvotes:3
It wasn't them. The username was something generic, auto-generated by the system: user_48b1d9. The photo attached was slightly blurry, taken in a hurry, but it was unmistakably real: a stained ceiling tile, a steady drip falling into a red plastic bucket.
Kairos's heart did a funny little stutter. He stared at the screen.
Kairos: …Is that… Ares:A real person. With a real, disgusting, leaky ceiling. Kairos:How? Who? We haven't told anyone about this. Ares:I may have shared the testflight link with Selene. And she may have shared it with her friend who's a grad student in the geology department. I think she just wanted to see if it worked.
Kairos wasn't listening to the explanation anymore. He was staring at the upvote count. Three. Three other people, complete strangers, had found this issue and agreed it was a problem worth fixing. They had felt a need and had used their app to express it.
It was the most incredible feeling he had ever experienced. It was a thousand times more validating than winning the hackathon. This was real.
Kairos: They upvoted it. Ares:I know.
For a full minute, they just stared at their respective screens, a silent, shared moment of awe spanning the distance between their rooms.
Then, the developer instincts kicked in.
Ares: Okay. This is it. This is real. We can't let this just sit there. Kairos:Right. What do we do? We're not facilities. Ares:We forward it. We have the contact info for the head of maintenance that Prof. Evans gave us. We send him the link. We show him this is a real tool.
They moved quickly. Ares drafted a short, professional email introducing themselves, explaining the project, and linking directly to the reported issue. Kairos double-checked that the admin panel was live and that the status update permissions were working.
They sent the email. And then they waited. The rest of the afternoon was a write-off. Neither of them could concentrate. They kept refreshing the issue page, as if expecting the status to change instantly.
The reply came just after 5 PM.
Subject: Re: CampusFix Project - Reported Issue Mr. Peterson, Mr. Trevor, Thanks for the heads-up. We've been expecting something like this from Prof. Evans's class. I've dispatched a crew to Hammond Hall. I've also created an account on your system. It's… slick. Easier than our current work order system. I'll have my team use it to update the status. Keep up the good work. - Bill Miller, Head of Campus Maintenance
Kairos read the email three times. Then he forwarded it to Ares without a word.
Five minutes later, the status on the "Ceiling Leak in Geology Dept. Lounge" changed.
It flickered. The text morphed.
Status: In Progress
Ares sent a single message. It was a string of emojis: 🚧✅👏
Kairos leaned back in his chair, a slow, wide smile spreading across his face. He looked around his room, at the lines of code on his screen, at the hackathon trophy on his desk. It all connected. The frustration, the bugs, the arguments, the endless hours—it had all led to this.
A real person had a real problem. They had built a tool. The tool was used. The problem was being solved.
It worked. Their app, their crazy, ambitious idea, had just facilitated the repair of a leaky ceiling in the geology lounge. It was a small thing in the grand scheme of the university. But to Kairos, and he knew to Ares, it was everything.
The app was no longer theirs alone. It had its first user. And it had just passed its most important test.