We piled into the car like a clumsy truce. The hum of the engine felt louder than the conversation — a steady heartbeat that kept the world moving while everything inside me tried to hurry. Grace folded her hands in her lap and watched the window like someone who read too many sad stories and still hoped for a happy ending. My dad drove with that polite, slow carefulness of men who steer around their own mistakes. Jessica jammed the radio and laughed at nothing; her laughter was the kind that repositions air, pushes people to the edges.
I had the laptop on my knees, its faint screen dim in the afternoon light. It felt like a talisman, heavy with possibility. Outside, the town unrolled: mini-markets, boys selling roasted corn, the familiar geometry of cracked sidewalks. I kept my fingers on the keyboard even when my stepmom was within earshot. You learn to pretend focus is harmless.
Then we passed the sign.
It was the kind of billboard that promises the future like an advert for a fast car: sleek type, an avatar that smiled too cleanly, the words "CRYSTAL AI — Build the Future. No Experience Needed." The sunlight hit the glossy surface and made it look like a portal.
Something inside me sparked — not the hollow want that used to ache like hunger, but a sharp, practical idea. If they don't need me, I thought, I'll build something they can't ignore. If the world won't hand me a ticket, I'll code one.
The list started in my head like a note someone leaves in a margin: Python. OpenAI. Machine learning frameworks. Data sets. Neural nets. Algorithms. Ethics. Training. Fine-tuning. Deploy. Scale. It read like someone had written an exam that asked you to invent the future on the back of an envelope.
I whispered it under my breath, testing the sound: Python, OpenAI… The syllables felt like tools — hammers I could learn to use. The laptop's screen was small and scratched, but it held a map. A badly formatted roadmap that began with a single, stubborn line: learn.
"Kelvin — shut that thing down," Jessica said from the seat behind me, like she could smell ambition and wanted to stamp it out. Her voice was polite in the way of predators.
I looked at her and for a sliver of a moment our eyes met. There was a temperature there I knew too well. Private Jess — the shadow behind the smile — would not like me drifting toward anything that might make me whole.
Reluctant, I slid my hand across the touchpad and closed the lid. The laptop blinked like a small animal roused from sleep and then went dark. The car noise swelled back in. I breathed out a little of the urge with it, folding the future back into a place where it could be hidden.
But shutting the laptop didn't shut the list. The steps stayed written on the underside of my thoughts like a secret plan: learn a language that codes thought, find a library big enough to hold a mind, teach it to listen, teach it to speak in the language of people who had never bothered to listen to me. I pictured an AI that would not laugh at me, would not ask me to be less than myself. An assistant that would answer when I typed, that would not trade kindness for looks.
Grace nudged me with her elbow and mouthed a question I couldn't hear. I smiled back, which felt like armor and also like an apology.
My dad talked about the route to the picnic ground — a place with a lake that caught the sky. He spoke about bringing food, about the kids who would run around, about how it was good to get out. He did not notice the ledger forming in my head. He didn't know that in the soft corner of my chest a project had taken root, one that wasn't just about proving anyone wrong. It was about building something that could keep me company while I practiced becoming the kind of person who could survive.
Jessica's laughter punctured some quiet moment and I pictured, absurdly, coding in a room with the laptop open all night, the screen a pale lighthouse. I imagined learning Python from tutorial videos and forums, borrowing energy from late-night street lights and reheating food cold in the morning. I imagined convincing Grace to read lines out loud to help me test the voice I'd teach my machine.
The sign kept pulsing in my memory like an ad on repeat. Build the Future. I wasn't sure whether it meant they were selling dreams or simply offering a pathway. Either way, my roadmap glowed.
The picnic ground was quiet when we arrived — green, patient, ordinary. Children chased one another like they had nothing to carry. My dad set the food down on a blanket. Grace wandered to the edge of the water and let her reflection ripple. Jessica draped herself over a log and scrolled through her phone, bored the way people are bored when they think the world is theirs.
I kept the laptop shut on my lap and felt it like a promise against my thighs. I told myself I'd open it when I got back — learn one thing, then another. Maybe by the time the sun set on this ordinary day I would have typed out the first awkward line of code. Maybe the AI would be nothing more than a name on a page. Maybe it would be a reason to stop feeling like a ghost in my own life.
As we packed up to leave, I tucked the laptop into my bag like a seed. The car lights split the road in two and the town folded itself back into our rearview. The billboard vanished behind us but not the shape it left in me. I had drawn a horizon now — not the kind that asked for approval, but the kind you reach for and make.
When we pulled into the driveway, Jessica waved and said, "Don't get any ideas."
I smiled, because I'd already had them. I had a roadmap, a tiny battered machine, and the knowledge that the future could be coded — line by line, late night by late night. The last laugh was still a long way off, but for the first time it felt less like revenge and more like design.
I slept that night with the laptop under my pillow. Not because I believed in charms, but because I could not bear to leave it any further away from me. It felt, ridiculous and true, like a blueprint tucked next to my heart.