I sit at the table, staring at the screen. My inbox is a wasteland: overdue bills, Canvas updates, a single email from my mother asking if I've "found a nice girl yet." I close it all and open the pitch deck again, reading through it for the thousandth time, looking for the cracks and seams. I still can't decide if it's genius or total garbage.
I start to write a new email, this one to Professor Marchetti. He told me to keep him updated, and I want to prove that I'm not just spinning my wheels.
Subject: Progress Update
Hi Professor,
We just sent the first investor outreach. Nobody's laughed us out of the room yet. Still iterating on the entropy angle, but the math is finally starting to make sense. If you have time, I'd love a quick sanity check before we go any further.
Thanks, Alex
I stare at it for a while, then send. It's not great, but it's honest, and I'm too tired to polish it.
I close my laptop and walk to the window. The campus lights glow in the distance, and I can see the ocean, a smear of black beyond the city. I wonder if there's a version of me out there, a parallel Alex, who took the other path, who stuck to the plan, who didn't think he could change the world with a dumb idea and two even dumber friends.