Chapter 1: The End Before the Beginning
Matt Reynolds was a man of paradoxes: thirty-two years old, brilliant yet bored, rich yet unfulfilled. In the year 2025, he had what many would call a perfect life. He owned a tech consulting firm that ran itself, lived in a high-rise overlooking the San Francisco Bay, and drove a midnight-blue Tesla he barely touched. His fridge was stocked with health drinks he never drank, and his nights were filled with empty interactions on dating apps, none of which mattered to him.
He was a man out of sync with his time.
His days were gray, the same meetings, the same app updates, the same market trends. His nights were a revolving door of distractions—Netflix, old video games, the occasional book reread for the tenth time. Matt had devoured knowledge his whole life, especially pop culture. He was a walking encyclopedia of film, television, and literature. What he lacked was purpose. What he didn't know was that fate had one prepared.
That Tuesday morning, Matt was late for a pitch meeting. It was a startup trying to "revolutionize" social fitness. He didn't care. He was mentally writing a script for a sci-fi pilot in his head, half-listening to music through his AirPods, and sipping overpriced cold brew from his favorite cafe.
Then the world turned white.
There was no pain. Just light. A sickening crunch, the echo of shattering glass, and then—nothing.
Matt thought he was dead. There was no tunnel. No angels. Just absence. No body, no breath, no thought—until there was.
Warmth.
Sound.
A woman's voice, soft, strained. The scent of antiseptic. And then, unmistakably, the feeling of being held.
Then came the crying.
Not distant. Not someone else's. His.
It took time to understand. Consciousness came in fragments. He could not move his limbs. His eyes struggled to focus. But he felt.
The sterile ceiling overhead. The fingers brushing his forehead. The woman's face—young, worn, beautiful in an unpolished way. Her name, he would later learn, was Chrisann Brennan.
But it was the man who entered the room next who changed everything.
Barefoot.
Wiry.
Intense eyes and a maddening charisma even as a young man.
"He's strong," Steve Jobs said to the nurse. "Look at his grip."
Matt's heart stopped. No way.
He didn't understand at first. How could he? Rebirth was the stuff of fiction. But slowly, painfully, the realization bloomed in him. Through the haze of babyhood, the news on the hospital TV became clear.
May 18, 1978.
He was in Portland, Oregon. The woman holding him was indeed Chrisann Brennan. And the barefoot man beside her was Steve Jobs.
Then he heard another baby cry.
Twins.
Lisa Brennan.
In his old life, Matt had read Lisa's memoir. He knew about her complicated childhood, Steve's initial rejection, the court-ordered paternity test. But this time was different. Jobs claimed both children from day one.
Because Matt was different. From the first moment, he looked Steve in the eye with clarity.
And Steve, already obsessed with potential, felt something.
He didn't love easily. But he respected genius. And Matt—even as an infant—was something else entirely.
Over the next several months, Matt's body grew but his mind remained a hyperactive engine of insight and recollection. He couldn't talk yet, but his thoughts were clearer than ever. He was forced to learn patience, something he had always lacked in his previous life. Now, forced into helplessness, he waited.
His new body felt like a prison. Simple motions like reaching or crawling were momentous tasks. His senses were overwhelmed—too much light, too much sound, smells that triggered memories long buried. But slowly, month by month, he adapted.
He took in the world through infant eyes, reprocessing reality with the mind of a 32-year-old tech-savvy man. He listened carefully when Steve and Chrisann spoke. He took mental notes on the language of the time, the culture, the technology still in its infancy. His mind was a steel trap, cataloging it all.
Chrisann was loving, yes, but troubled. She struggled with Steve's erratic presence, with money, with motherhood. She read poetry aloud, played Joni Mitchell records, and stared longingly out windows. But to Matt and Lisa, she gave warmth.
Lisa, meanwhile, was a beacon. Matt sensed her emotional intelligence even as toddlers. She was perceptive, intuitive, always watching. Sometimes she'd mirror his expressions, other times she'd giggle at his intensity. There was a bond there that transcended time. Even before she could speak, Lisa knew something about Matt was different.
Steve was less consistent. He appeared in bursts—storms of brilliance and control. He didn't know how to love gently. He brought gadgets to the house: Apple I prototypes, calculators, books on Zen Buddhism and computer science. He'd prop Matt on his lap and speak to him like an adult.
"Do you believe machines can think, little man?" he asked one day, holding up a motherboard.
Matt stared into his eyes. His tiny hand reached toward the object with surprising precision.
Steve grinned. "You get it. I know you do."
As Matt neared his first birthday, he began laying the foundation for influence. He knew speaking too soon might terrify his parents, so he paced himself. But when the Apple logo caught his attention one day, and he blurted "Home," it changed everything.
Chrisann laughed, brushing it off as coincidence.
Steve froze. His eyes scanned Matt's face.
"What did you say?"
Matt looked at him steadily, then repeated, "Home."
Steve sat down slowly. Something changed between them in that moment.
From then on, Steve insisted on joint custody. He set up a nursery in his Cupertino home, complete with early Apple gadgets and hand-assembled toys. He began bringing Matt to the Apple office—more and more often. Engineers chuckled at the 'baby genius,' but Steve watched with unsettling focus.
Matt played his part. He scribbled designs that resembled circuit diagrams. He babbled in ways that mimicked tech jargon. He pointed at Steve's notes and let out excited squeals.
It wasn't long before Steve introduced him to Wozniak.
"Check this out," Steve said, lifting Matt under his arms. "Watch how he reacts to this schematic."
Woz raised a skeptical brow but played along. He held up a crude diagram for a logic board.
Matt tapped the transistor path.
"Coincidence," Woz said.
"Is it?" Steve replied.
By the time Matt turned two, he understood the architecture of Apple's early days better than many of its interns. He recognized names, tensions, timelines. He knew the company would boom, that Steve would be ousted in 1985, that the Apple Lisa would flop, that the Macintosh would change the world.
He began planting subtle seeds.
While playing, he would push his toy phone across the floor and say, "Touch to call."
He began singing nursery rhymes with slight modifications—ones that mentioned clouds, digital music, and apps.
Steve noticed.
Chrisann thought it cute. Steve thought it prophetic.
Matt watched the future slowly bend around him.
And in the quiet of his crib at night, staring up at glow-in-the-dark stars, he repeated to himself like a mantra:
Don't let Steve sell his Apple stock in '85.
Buy Pixar.
Write stories that sell.
Make movies that matter.
Use the knowledge. Get the girls. Leave a legacy.
His mind was electric.
And his journey had only just begun.