My alarm rings, I reach out and turn it off. Woke up 5 minutes earlier and kept stared at the ceiling. I look at the clock and it's 5 in the morning. The thought of getting out of bed seems as hard as ever.
You'll think I've gotten used to the stress i have to get through but no I'm tired of work, love, life and everything in between.
I get up from the bed and make my way to the bathroom, stumbling across in the darkness. I finally find the light switch and flip it on.
"Shit." I curse loudly. Too bright, my eyes take time adjusting to the light.
I go back and pick up my phone, I scroll through and see texts from Jessica, she's trying to understand what she did wrong. These days I surprise myself, in my early years I was a romantic and now? I don't even know what I am anymore. I don't believe in love anymore I think.
I push my wandering thoughts to the side. I pick up my towel, drop my phone and head into the shower—preparing myself for yet another day.
To make you understand who I am.
When I was 18, I created an app and shocked the world, it was a social media app. It beat the user record held by Thread and recorded 65 million in the first 24 hours, reached 400 million in 5 days and by the month i had a billion users.
Felt like I was the next big thing and in truth, I was. Nobody could stop me. A year passed and my app called Twine had surpassed the biggest social media platform, Facebook.
Everybody looked at me like a tech genius, of course i was but that was not the point.
My app's massive growth was largely due to my ground breaking AI. I built a social media platform that was intelligent.
The algorithm was immaculate. It could predict things you wanted at the moment, it was adaptive that way. For instance, let's say you rush into a meeting and you forget to turn off your phone's ringer and suddenly someone starts calling you, the software automatically determines your pinpoint location using previous location data and regular daily schedule, it then determines there's an 89 percent chance you're in a meeting and in turn screens the calls till you leave the particular location.
Technological giants approached me said my AI was the next best thing and then we started incorporating it into devices pre release.
I was a global icon, the boy wonder. I had cracked through the fortune 500 as a teen and made a name for myself. Now I just had to keep growing my app. Sounds pretty simple right? It wasn't. I started seeing the storms form. More anti-AI bills being quietly passed. Nothing serious, we were used to this. It was routine, least it was meant to be but there was something about me—I could dissect patterns. I could see things people couldn't begin to fathom. Something was coming, something bad.
I knew how bad an AI ban could be so I had to act fast. I created a separate company called Digicorp, making sure it was completely independent of Twine. Digicorp became the sole owner of my AI technology and leased it to Twine. Twine's valuation dropped fast, sinked to 4 trillion.
The whole world was in shock but i wasn't done yet, I hosted a press conference and announced I was selling Digicorp.
Everybody said I'd gone mad. Why would I sell the one thing that made Twine worth eight trillion dollars? What made me who i am? There was no logic to it.
They couldn't understand and I didn't care to explain.
I made sure Digicorp was completely divided from Twine, I marketed this move as a diversification into technology and cutting edge research.
My board was furious but they couldn't do anything. I held 70% voting rights through a dual-class share structure. I had founder shares.
I controlled the future of my company and there was nothing they could do.
My bestfriend called first. "Leo wtf is going on?"
She invested in my company when it started out and now she owned 10 percent.
"Camille c'mon—you know i never do anything without a reason . I know what I'm doing."
Traders, investors and shareholders were all restless, I didn't blame them but I couldn't exactly explain what I was doing.
It was a gamble but calculated.
I saw the whole board, they could only see pieces they kept grasping for.
Me and Camille spoke for 10 minutes. I eventually persuaded her, she trusted me that way.
My God father called, also a shareholder, also with his concerns.
Everyone was acting irrationally.
Twine's board were frantic still but at this point they kind of just gave up.
They couldn't threaten to remove me as CEO, they'll be fired.
New Investors lined up for Digicorp before the market opened people started placing long trades on digicorp.
Everyone was expecting this to flourish and I understood them.
By the week, I had established Digicorp as a sole company. I had a new board, I sold 50 percent to a consortium of billionaires headed by a guy named Michael. Old money, young, ambitious, eager to prove himself. I knew what I was doing,
I was destroying him. I obviously didn't care. It was a game, Wealth. A game his family was well familiar with, a game I relished.
By the second week Digicorp became a 5 trillion company, 1 trillion more than expected. Then again, i shouldn't be surprised, my AI was largely incorporated with the world at this point.
I still kept dumping, I had finally sold 89 percent.
The skepticism rose, the tech world was turning.
Could they have been wrong about me?
Was I not the genius they believed me to be?
Was this a psychotic break?
Some tried to figure out what my plan was.
A month later the axe hit, rumours started spreading about a new bill that would severely decimate the use of AI.
At this point i was down to 5 percent,
The UN passed it swiftly, advanced AI's like mine were banned, heavy restrictions on AI generally. It became obsolete.
My gamble paid off, of course.
I knew it would.
Digicorp sunk fast, investors clamoured.
This sink dug irreparable holes in their funds.
I was protected, Twine was. Everyone that should be was.
If I had left digicorp's AI still under twine, the sudden bill would cause twine to have folded on itself.
I saved it, everyone began to realize.
They called me the devil, a capitalism monster.
The lawsuits came, committee hearings, the government were suing.
Saying I deliberately protected myself against the bill, saying I knowingly rendered people's wealth into the furnace.
Of course I did, they just had no way to prove it.
I had fans and haters at this point, I was a genius and the devil.
"Foresight of a god, compassion of a demon." A common quote l used to describe me in recent times.
Three months passed and I started buying Digicorp's shares back, they were worthless at this point, that didn't matter to me.