After his graduation night, Ethan didn't sleep. He sat in his cramped room, watching Aeon conduct a full scan of real estate records in San Jose. Ethan needed a place, but his budget barely covered the cost of coffee.
[Ethan, there is an old warehouse in the 'Almaden' area. The owner passed away two years ago, and the heirs are in a bitter legal dispute. The property is encumbered with $15,000 in unpaid taxes. Bureaucracy here is slow, but we can exploit a loophole in adverse possession law or make a quick settlement with the tax office.]
"$15,000? Aeon, I only have $450!" Ethan replied, rubbing his tired eyes.
[Money is the easiest problem. I have analyzed a new trading app called 'Robert Hood'. They have a loophole in their high-frequency trading system. I'll show you when to buy shares of a small tech company 30 seconds before an acquisition announcement. No one will notice, and we'll collect the required amount in one hour.]
And so it was. Thanks to the heightened focus Aeon had granted him, Ethan executed lightning-fast trades. By the end of the day, his account held $22,000. He settled the warehouse taxes electronically and received a temporary digital key. He now had a legal headquarters—but technically abandoned to humans.
Ethan entered the warehouse. The air was cold, thick with dust. He placed his bag on a rusty metal table.
"All right, Aeon… we won't change the world today. We need a product. Something simple, profitable, and that proves we're different."
[Smart move. Let's start with an 'Energy Optimization Unit'. Most current phones and computers waste 30% of their energy as heat due to poor processor management.]
"You mean we're making chargers?" Ethan asked, slightly frustrated.
[Not just a charger. We will make a 'Smart Case' containing a tiny nanoscopic chip I designed from the 10% of my data available. This chip recycles wasted heat and converts it back into energy. The product is simple, cheap to manufacture, and will triple any phone's battery life.]
Ethan began working. He didn't use alien technology; he used commercially available electronic components, reprogramming and reconnecting them in an "impossible" engineering configuration under Aeon's guidance.
[Ethan, move the copper connector 0.2 microns to the left. The wave interference here is the secret.]
Ethan worked with steady hands, feeling the electric pulses inside the circuit as if he could see them. After forty-eight hours of continuous effort, he had his first prototype. It looked like an ordinary phone cover, but inside it hid a revolution.
"What shall we name the company?" Ethan asked, looking at their first product.
[A name that conveys efficiency and calm. What about 'Nexus'? Or maybe 'Spectra'?]
"No, we'll call it 'Ionic'," Ethan said with a faint smile, honoring his mysterious assistant. "Tomorrow, I'll go to the first small electronics store in the neighborhood. We won't approach big corporations yet. We'll start from the bottom, building a name people trust before they fear our intelligence."
[A wise decision. Credibility in this era is the highest currency. I will prepare a technical presentation no engineer can refuse.]
Ethan lay down on the wooden floor of the warehouse, feeling for the first time in years that he was not just another number on a graduate list, but the first cog in a machine that would soon redefine the concept of energy.