In the darkest hour, with savings nearly gone and a job application open, David faces the choice that will define his life: safety or meaning, retreat or transformation.
Oregon pilot, investor calls, mother's final loan. The bridge funding arrives—$50k and six months. Emma's email: 'Your app showed me I'm not dumb, I just learn differently.'
800 students, four weeks, one video call. A 14-year-old who fails tests discovers derivatives through curiosity. 'My choice is determined by what I know'—and David hears his younger self freed.
Success arrives messy—three contracts signed, one threatening cancellation, Alex wanting to scale faster. David mentors a stranger and realizes: you don't cross to the other side once. You cross again and again.
Three years before the crisis, David settles into the comfortable rhythms of corporate life—the free lunch, the friendly coworkers, the slow erosion of thirty-seven dreams into guilty background noise.
A single feature request—addictive notifications to boost engagement—becomes the moment David can no longer pretend. The cage isn't comfortable anymore.
Alex shakes David's hand at a coffee shop, sealing a partnership. Two desks, fourteen-hour days, and the exhilarating terror of building something that might fail spectacularly.
Twelve users test three months of work. Eleven variations of 'it's like everything else' echo in the darkness. One quiet girl says something different—but types something random.
At 1 AM, debugging alone, David catches himself smiling—not because it will succeed, but because the craft itself is beautiful. The first goddess moment in the belly of the whale.
After the testing failure, David doesn't spiral. He doesn't break down. He just... stops. Days pass. The apartment gets messier. He exists. Until curiosity, unbidden, quietly returns.
