On the thirty-second floor of a glass tower in downtown San Francisco, a giant neon heart pulsed on a wall-sized screen while an eighteen-year-old intern in a borrowed tie tried not to sweat through his shirt.

Rows of sleek desks glowed under soft white lights. Monitors hummed with code and charts and mockups of pretty people smiling at their phones. Somewhere beyond the windows, the Bay Bridge glittered like a string of Christmas lights thrown across the dark water. Inside the office, the air smelled like espresso, stress, and ambition.

“Basically,” Joe whispered, clutching his laptop to his chest like a life raft, “it’s a dating app… but when two people match, they have to play games to unlock information about each other. Mini-puzzles, trivia, challenges. No more boring small talk. Pretty cool, right?”

His friend David stared at him over the rim of a paper coffee cup. “Yeah, man. Super cool. I just didn’t know we were supposed to bring our own code on our first day.”

Joe’s cheeks flushed. “We’re not,” he said quickly. “I just thought… you know… maybe if I showed it to one of the developers here, they might give me feedback. Tell me what I’m doing wrong. Or right.”

David looked around at the crowded open floor plan, at the giant company logo on the wall, at the framed article from a tech magazine calling their new employer “the next big thing in American dating tech.”

“Bro,” David said. “We are interns. First-day interns. We’re not even on the company Slack yet. Nobody’s going to have time to review your secret project code. We’re gonna be lucky if we’re allowed to touch the coffee machine.”

Joe adjusted his tie, which was slightly crooked and two shades too serious for a casual San Francisco startup. “Come on,” he muttered. “Don’t you want to make a good impression? Make big moves? I’ve got plans, you know.”

“I know,” David sighed. “Your goal is to be the next… what was it? The next Kevin… System? Of the dating app world?”

“CEO,” Joe corrected, grinning despite his nerves. “Kevin System is the CEO. Legend. Changed the game. Built an empire out of swipes. I want to be like that. But better.”

“Well, my goal is to get enough college credits so I can graduate,” David said dryly. “And not get fired on day one. Step one: don’t pitch side projects to the CEO in the hallway.”

As if summoned, the glass door to the corner office swung open. A stocky man in an expensive blazer and perfectly styled hair stepped out, voice booming.

“We’re launching in two weeks,” he told the man beside him. “Two weeks. This is going to be our biggest app yet. Just you wait and see.”

The other man, older, with silver at his temples and the calm eyes of someone who had seen many projections, didn’t smile. “That’s what you said about the last three, Calvin,” he replied. “The shareholders want to see real results this time.”

Calvin, the CEO, gave a practiced laugh. “Albert, my friend, you worry too much. Come into my office. I’ll show you our first-quarter projections. They’re going to knock your socks off.”

They turned, and Calvin’s gaze snagged on something. Or rather, on someone.

Joe realized too late that he and David were standing directly in the middle of the hallway, clutching their laptops like children holding backpacks on the first day of school.

Calvin’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t realize we hired new people,” he said slowly.

Albert looked at them, amused. “I didn’t realize either.”

Joe swallowed. “It’s an honor to meet you,” he blurted. “I’m Joe. I just started. This is David. We’re, um, interns.”

Calvin studied them as if he were deciding whether they were worth the air they were breathing. “And what,” he asked, “are you working on so urgently that you’re blocking my hallway?”

Joe’s brain screamed say nothing, say nothing, say nothing. His mouth did not listen.

“Code,” he said. “Just… some code I’ve been working on. It combines game mechanics with the matchmaking process. It’s—”

Albert stepped forward, intrigued. “Games?” he asked. “On a dating platform?”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said, feeling a tiny spark of courage. “Users unlock profile details by completing challenges together. It keeps conversations from going stale. And the way I wrote it, it runs efficiently over the existing script. I used—”

“What program are you using?” Albert interrupted, leaning in. “Python?”

Joe shook his head. “It’s actually a combination of Java and PHP. That way we process game logic fast while also minimizing developer hours to make changes. It’s more efficient and mindful of costs.”

Albert’s brows lifted. “I like the way he thinks,” he said. “Is he one of your new engineers?”

“I…” Calvin started, caught off guard. “I wish I knew,” he added stiffly.

Albert chuckled. “Keep an eye on this one,” he advised. “I can see him going places.”

“Oh, I see him going places too,” Calvin said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I see him going straight into the break room to make us some coffee.” He clapped his hands together. “How do you take yours, Albert?”

“Two creams,” Albert replied lightly. “You heard the man. Off you go, boys.”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said, heat rushing to his face. He started to turn away.

“Wait,” Albert added, glancing back. “You—Joe, is it? Could you meet me in my office in a few minutes? I’d love to see more of that code sometime.”

Joe’s heart launched into his throat. “Of course,” he said. “Thank you.”

As soon as Albert disappeared into the glass office, Calvin closed the door behind them. The hallway went quiet. Joe turned toward the break room when he heard Calvin’s voice again.

“You,” the CEO said softly. Too softly.

Joe turned. “Yes, sir?”

Calvin stepped closer until they stood almost nose to nose. The friendly charm was gone, replaced with something colder. “I would appreciate it,” he said, “if you kept your little homework assignment to yourself.”

Joe blinked. “Sir?”

“I don’t want my shareholders thinking that some intern’s side project represents my company,” Calvin said. “Albert was being polite. That’s what investors do. You are an intern. You are barely an adult. What could you possibly know about developing a real app?”

“I’ve been building apps since I was—”

“But nothing,” Calvin cut in. “You’re here to sort mail and make coffee. That’s your lane.” He patted Joe’s shoulder in a way that felt more like a shove. “And I’ll take two creams in my coffee as well. Now off you go.”

The rest of the morning blurred into a routine of errands, printers, and coffee runs. Joe tried to shove the humiliation down, but it clung to him.

Later, as he walked past the engineering wing, he slowed. Through the glass wall, he could see lines of code scrolling across massive monitors, whiteboards filled with flowcharts, and a man in a navy hoodie leaning over a desk with intense focus.

The man looked up and caught Joe staring. “Can I help you?” he asked, not unkindly.

“Oh—sorry,” Joe stammered. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I was just… admiring your work.”

The man’s expression warmed. “You a code kid?”

Joe nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been writing since I was ten. I’m hoping I can be in here one day. On the actual dev team.”

“Since you were ten, huh?” the man said. “Guess it’s true what they say—you’re never too young to go after your dreams.”

The phrase sliced through Joe like a memory. “I agree,” he said quietly.

“You must be Edward,” he added. “Head of Engineering. I saw your picture in the break room.”

“That’s me,” Edward said, amused. “And you must be one of the new interns.”

“Joe,” he replied. “If there’s ever anything I can help with—”

“Oh, really?” Edward said, eyebrows lifting. “In that case—do you want to take a look at something? Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes helps.”

Joe’s pulse quickened. “Of course.”

Edward slid his laptop across the desk. “I’ve been wrestling with this section all morning. Some kind of logic problem. I’m starting to see double.”

Joe’s eyes flew over the code, his brain switching into problem-solving mode. He traced variables, followed loops, checked conditions. Something snagged his attention.

“Do you mind if I…” he asked, fingers hovering.

“Go ahead,” Edward said.

Joe leaned in. “You don’t just have a logic error,” he said slowly. “You’ve got an index error hiding in this array. This section—here—it’s pulling more data than you realize. It’s not just meta details. It’s returning extra values, which is throwing off the condition checks.”

Edward frowned, then leaned closer. After a moment, his eyes widened. “You’re right,” he said. “How did I miss that?”

“Easy to miss,” Joe shrugged. “Once you adjust the index here and add a boundary check… like this…”

He typed quickly, hands moving with confidence. Then he hit run.

The script executed cleanly.

“Try it now,” Joe said.

Edward did. The screen populated with proper data, stable and smooth.

A slow smile spread across Edward’s face. “Well, I’ll be,” he murmured. “That’s been stumping the entire team.”

“What in the world is going on here?” a voice snapped from the doorway.

Calvin.

Edward straightened. Joe froze.

“I was just helping Edward with some code, sir,” Joe said. “He asked me to—”

“You’re my senior engineer,” Calvin said to Edward sharply. “Why are you asking a child for help? And you—” he turned on Joe. “Are you trying to run my company into the ground?”

“No, sir,” Joe said quickly. “I would never—”

“Give me that,” Calvin said, snatching the laptop.

He stared at the screen for two seconds, clearly not understanding anything, then snapped it shut. “You’re not at home playing video games,” he said. “This is real life. You probably just broke something important. Edward, please fix whatever this intern just messed up.”

“He didn’t—” Edward began.

“And you,” Calvin said, pointing at Joe, “from now on, leave the coding to the developers. Next time I see you, you better be sorting mail or handing out coffee. If you’re not, you’re fired. Do we have an understanding?”

Joe swallowed. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly.

“Good,” Calvin said. “Now go.”

After Joe left, Edward opened the laptop again, ran the script, and watched the output stabilize perfectly.

“He didn’t sabotage anything,” he said, almost to himself. “He just caught something the entire team missed. He probably saved us a day of work.”

Calvin snorted. “If you need an intern to clean up your code, maybe I should be paying him your salary. Which, by the way, is still more than we can afford until this launch actually works.”

The next few days passed in a blur of meetings and mounting pressure. The launch date loomed over them like a thundercloud.

“We need something unique,” Calvin insisted during one particularly tense all-hands meeting. “Do you know how many dating apps are out there? Hundreds. Thousands. If we don’t stand out, we’re nothing.”

“We’re already behind on features for version one,” a designer pointed out carefully. “We don’t have the time to add anything major before launch.”

“Then make the time,” Calvin snapped. “We’ve pushed back the launch twice already. The shareholders are breathing down my neck. We need a hook.”

“What if we added customizable interfaces?” another team member offered. “Like users could theme their profiles. Colors, backgrounds. Kind of like old-school social networks.”

“That’s adorable,” Calvin said. “But we’re not building a throwback site from 2005.”

The room fell silent. Hands dropped. Eyes slid to their screens.

In the back, where interns were supposed to sit and absorb, Joe’s hand went up before he could stop it.

Calvin saw him and groaned. “No,” he said. “Absolutely not. How many times have I told you to stay in your lane?”

“Give him a chance to speak, Calvin,” Albert said from the end of the table. He’d joined the meeting that day, watching everything with quiet intensity. “What have you got to lose?”

Several team members murmured in agreement.

Calvin exhaled loudly. “Fine. Thirty seconds. Then you go back to sorting mail. Go.”

Joe swallowed, but the idea had been burning inside him for months.

“It’s code I already wrote,” he said. “For a different app. Mine. It processes game material on a dating platform without slowing everything down. When two users match, they play mini games to unlock each other’s info. If we integrate it into our script, we could have unique features without reinventing the wheel.”

“Has anybody seen this code?” Calvin demanded.

“I have,” Edward said. “He showed me some of it. I think it could work.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that on a dating app,” one designer added. “It’d definitely be unique.”

“It’s like turning swiping into a game,” another engineer chimed in. “Like social gaming meets matchmaking. People would talk about it.”

“All the code is already written?” Albert asked.

“Yeah,” Joe said. “I’d just need to migrate it to the production server and run tests. If I work non-stop, I think I can get it ready before launch.”

“If it’s already done,” Edward said, “there’s a chance we can still make the deadline.”

Calvin narrowed his eyes. “Does this code actually work?”

“I haven’t tested it with real users yet,” Joe admitted. “But theoretically—”

“So it only works as long as no one uses it,” Calvin said. “Wonderful.”

“There are two days left,” Edward said. “We can ship without a hook, or we can take a calculated risk. If we don’t stand out, we’ll just be another app in the store.”

“I’ll pull all-nighters,” Joe said quickly. “As many as it takes. As long as I have coffee, I’ll be fine.”

“I can help,” Edward added. “He doesn’t have to do it alone.”

Calvin looked around at the tense, hopeful faces. For once, he didn’t have a snappy answer ready.

“Fine,” he said at last. “I’ll give you a chance.”

Joe’s heart leapt.

“If this works,” Calvin continued, “you join the development team on Monday. Full time. If it doesn’t, you pack your things and leave. And I call everyone I know in Silicon Valley and tell them you’re not worth the risk. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said, spine straight. “I understand. I won’t let you down.”

“Don’t,” Calvin said. “Because if you do, it’s not just your dream that’s over. It’s mine.”

What followed was forty-eight hours of pure, caffeinated tunnel vision.

Edward cleared a desk for Joe next to the engineering team. Monitors. Keyboard. Headset. Joe sat down and didn’t so much as blink for the next twelve hours. He migrated his game engine, rewrote key functions to integrate with the company’s existing system, and built careful bridges between user profiles and game states.

He worked through lunch, through dinner, through the midnight cleaning crew. David swung by with takeout, left it next to his elbow, and went home. Joe barely remembered to eat.

When his eyes blurred, he walked to the window, stared at the city lights stretching across the American night, and reminded himself why he was doing this. Not for Calvin. Not even for the job. For the idea. For the chance to prove—if only to himself—that his code could handle real pressure.

By the time launch morning arrived, he’d slept maybe an hour, folded over his keyboard.

“Hey,” David said, shaking his shoulder. “Joe. Wake up. It’s three minutes to eight. Everyone’s heading to the war room. Did you finish?”

Joe forced his eyes open. His fingers flew over the keyboard one more time, checking logs, scanning for errors.

“I think so,” he said. “Yeah. It’s done. I just need the go signal to push everything live.”

“I hope it works,” David murmured.

“Me too,” Joe said.

The launch room buzzed with energy. Screens on the walls showed graphs and dashboards. One monitor displayed the app’s icon with a countdown timer.

“Okay, people,” Calvin called out. “We’re taking this thing live in two minutes. Joe?”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said, suddenly hyper-aware of everyone looking at him. “Code’s ready.”

“Everybody to your stations,” Calvin ordered. “And someone get me a coffee. Please.”

Albert stood in the corner, hands in his pockets, watching quietly.

“The press release and ads go out in one minute,” a marketing manager announced. “All major channels. App Store, social, email blasts.”

“Good,” Calvin said. “Then let’s make sure what they download actually works.”

Edward leaned close to Joe. “You good?”

“No,” Joe whispered. “But I’m ready.”

Edward smiled. “That’s enough.”

“Take us live in five,” Calvin said, staring at the main screen. “Four. Three. Two. One.”

Edward hit a key.

The app went live.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then numbers on the download graph jumped.

“We have five thousand downloads in progress,” someone called. “Already.”

“No way,” Joe breathed.

“Ten thousand,” another voice added. “Servers are holding steady. No errors.”

“Auto-scaling has kicked in,” an engineer said. “We’ve spun up more instances in the cloud. Everything looks smooth. Response times are low. No spikes.”

“Twenty-five thousand downloads,” the marketing manager shouted, shaking her head. “This is more traffic than our last app got in a year.”

Joe exhaled. His code was holding.

“Okay,” Calvin said slowly, a grin creeping across his face. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but—welcome to the team, kid. You—”

“Uh… oh,” someone murmured from the back.

The room tensed.

“What do you mean ‘uh oh’?” Calvin demanded. “What is ‘uh oh’?”

“We’ve got a problem,” an engineer said, tapping at her keyboard. “A few of the servers are acting weird. Lagging hard.”

“User reports are coming in,” someone else called. “People are saying the app just froze.”

“The main instance just went down,” the woman said. “The app crashed.”

“No, no, no…” Calvin’s voice rose. “Get us back online. Quickly. Fix it.”

“I’m going to the server room,” Joe said, heart pounding. “It might be something with the auto-scaling configuration or—”

“Don’t touch anything,” Calvin snapped. “This is probably your fault.”

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Edward said. “There are a dozen reasons this could have—”

“You do not defend him,” Calvin barked. “I knew this was a mistake. I should never have trusted this code.”

His phone vibrated. He glanced at the screen and grimaced. “It’s Albert,” he muttered, then hit decline.

“Please,” Joe said. “Give me an hour. I can trace the error—”

“No more chances,” Calvin said sharply. “I’ve had it. You’re fired.”

The word sliced the air.

“Calvin,” Edward said. “Don’t do this.”

“I already did,” Calvin said, pointing at the door. “Get out. You can pack your things later. You are done here.”

“Just let me—”

“For nothing,” Calvin snapped. “I don’t want to hear another word. You’re trying to drag my company down. Now go.”

Joe’s throat burned. He swallowed hard, nodded once, and walked out—past the big screens, past the giant neon heart, past the logo on the wall he’d been so proud to stand under.

Down the hallway, near the elevators, he finally stopped. The office felt colder out here.

He leaned his forehead against the window and watched the city buzz below, tiny cars moving along California streets like bits of data in a network.

“Let me guess,” a calm voice said behind him. “If you had another hour, you could fix everything.”

Joe turned. Edward stood there, hands in his hoodie pockets.

“No,” Joe said. “I was thinking… that I’m a failure. That I shouldn’t have tried. That maybe I’m not a developer after all.”

Edward shook his head. “You just handled twenty-five thousand concurrent users on your first real launch,” he said. “Half the people in that room couldn’t have done what you did. Including me.”

“Calvin’s right,” Joe muttered. “I should’ve stayed in my lane.”

“Calvin is wrong,” Edward said flatly. “You’re one of the best coders I’ve seen in years. And I’ve seen a lot. You’re also a risk-taker. That’s a good combination.”

“Not if every risk gets me fired,” Joe said weakly. “He’s going to call everyone he knows. I’ll never get a job in tech again. Not here. Not in Silicon Valley. Not anywhere.”

Edward chuckled. “Joe, I’ve met the people Calvin knows. He doesn’t have as much power as he thinks he does. I’m honestly more worried about him finding another job if this app doesn’t recover. His track record is not exactly legendary.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Joe said. “I crashed the app.”

“Or,” Edward said, “maybe your code isn’t meant for his app.”

Joe frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Edward said, “maybe you’re supposed to build your own.”

Joe blinked. “I’m eighteen.”

“And?” Edward said. “You once told me you agree you’re never too young to go after your dreams.”

Joe stared at him. The words landed like a clear, sharp bell in his mind.

“You don’t need Calvin,” Edward continued. “You don’t need this office. You have something more valuable than all of that: an idea. And code. Good code. All you need now is funding.”

Joe gave a bitter laugh. “Right. Funding. Where am I supposed to get that? Out of the vending machine?”

“Who do you think helped Calvin find his funding?” Edward asked. “You think he charmed investors all by himself? Let me worry about that part. You worry about building a product that deserves it.”

“You’d help me?” Joe asked quietly. “For real?”

“It’s not charity,” Edward said. “I’ll want a percentage. I’m not completely sentimental. But yes. For real. Get your app working. Then call me when you have a prototype.”

Joe felt something inside him realign. The humiliation didn’t disappear, but it shrank, overshadowed by a new, buzzing possibility.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’ll do it. I won’t forget this, Edward.”

“Good,” Edward said. “Now go home. Sleep. Then build something better.”

Joe didn’t sleep much.

He went home to his small apartment, opened his laptop, and threw himself into his own project with a focus he’d never known he possessed. Except this time, every line of code was for him. His dating app, his game engine, his rules.

He coded all night, fueled by cheap American diner coffee and microwave dinners. He refactored the game logic, built a cleaner backend, and made sure the code could scale smarter than it had at Calvin’s company. He added failsafes, redundancy, better monitoring. He learned from his mistakes faster than any class or tutorial could have taught him.

Days blurred into weeks. He lost track of time. Friends texted; he forgot to respond. David stopped by, bringing groceries and updates. “They’re still trying to stabilize the app,” he said one afternoon. “Half the team is ready to jump ship.”

“Hang in there,” Joe said distractedly, eyes on his laptop. “I’m almost ready.”

At last, after countless all-nighters, endless tests, and more cups of coffee than any doctor would approve of, Joe sat back in his chair and stared at the finished prototype.

It was simple and clean. Users created profiles, matched, and then entered game rooms where they could play trivia, word puzzles, strategy challenges, all designed to reveal pieces of their personality. Points. Unlocks. Achievements. A dating app that felt more like a game night with strangers than awkward small talk with avatars.

He sent a message to Edward.

A few weeks later, Edward arranged a meeting with a well-known investor—one with an office not far from the Bay, walls covered with framed logos from successful American startups.

The investor listened politely as Joe pitched. Then he leaned forward, eyes bright.

“I’ve seen a lot of dating apps,” he said. “They all promise to be different. This one actually is. I like the game angle. I like the tech. And I like the kid who built it.”

Joe’s hands trembled as he signed the deal. Funding secured. Office space leased. A small team hired. Edward joined as CFO and co-founder, handling money and strategy while Joe focused on building and leading the engineering team. David came on as CEO, surprisingly perfect at handling press, partnerships, and everything Joe didn’t want to do.

The app launched quietly at first. Then louder. Word spread through college campuses, group chats, and social feeds across the U.S. People posted screenshots of game conversations instead of just profile pics. A popular influencer in Los Angeles did a video about “the dating app that makes you play to unlock secrets.” Downloads spiked.

Servers held.

Traffic grew.

Within a year, the app had millions of users across America, then beyond. Features expanded. The team grew. They rented a bigger office with views of the bay. Magazines wrote profiles about the “teenage coder who turned dating into play.” Joe hated the photos but liked the revenue projections.

One afternoon, a few years later, Joe sat in his corner office—glass walls, shelves lined with quirky gifts from employees, a framed print of the app’s first logo hanging slightly crooked behind him—when his assistant buzzed him.

“Hey, Joe,” she said. “There’s someone here to see you. Says he used to work with you.”

“Who is it?” Joe asked, typing.

“He says his name is Calvin,” she replied.

Joe’s fingers paused over his keyboard.

“Send him in,” he said.

The door opened, and there he was. Same expensive taste in clothes, slightly thinner hairline, a little more strain around the eyes.

“Joe,” Calvin said, stepping forward with outstretched arms. “Long time no see.”

“Calvin,” Joe replied, standing. “What brings you here?”

“Oh, you know,” Calvin said, glancing around the office. “I was reading this magazine article about some wildly successful dating app, and for some reason your face popped into my head.”

He grabbed a framed print from the shelf—an old business magazine cover featuring Joe’s photo and a bold headline about record-breaking growth.

“I hate that picture,” Joe said. “I cringe every time I see it.”

“Are you kidding?” Calvin said. “You look like the face of the future. Which, evidently, you are. Congratulations. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks,” Joe said. “In a way, I could say it’s all thanks to you.”

“Oh?” Calvin’s smile widened. “Really?”

“If you hadn’t fired me,” Joe said calmly, “I might never have started my own company.”

Calvin laughed, unsure if it was a joke. “Well, then I’m glad to have been part of your journey,” he said. “And I’m here to keep being part of it. I have an offer for you.”

“A job?” Joe asked. “I’m pretty busy.”

“No, no,” Calvin said quickly, waving a hand. “A deal. Sit.”

Joe sat. Calvin leaned forward.

“I would like to buy your company,” Calvin announced. “An all-stock deal. I give you ten percent of my company, in exchange for one hundred percent ownership of yours.”

Joe raised an eyebrow. “You’d do that for me?”

“Absolutely,” Calvin said. “You’re a smart guy. You know opportunity when you see it. You could cash out, move to Miami or Hawaii or wherever, live on a beach, never work again. Let us handle the hard stuff.”

“Out of curiosity,” Joe said, “how much revenue is your company making these days?”

Calvin hesitated. “Well,” he said. “None. Yet. Our latest app hasn’t exactly taken off. But when it does, it’s going to be huge. I’m talking billions. You’ll see.”

“So you’re asking me to give you one hundred percent of a company projected to make fifty million in revenue this year,” Joe said, “in exchange for ten percent of a company that currently makes zero.”

Calvin blinked. “Fifty million?” he repeated.

“With three hundred percent year-over-year growth,” Edward said from the doorway, having slipped in quietly. “We’re on track to expand into more markets next year. And our investors are very happy.”

“Isn’t that right, CFO?” Joe asked.

“Very,” Edward confirmed.

Calvin’s smile wobbled. “Well,” he said. “When you put it like that…”

“We’re not interested,” Joe said gently. “But thank you for the offer.”

“Come on,” Calvin said. “At least think about it.”

“No,” Joe said. “There’s no chance I’m going to change my mind.”

Calvin’s eyes hardened. “You’re going to regret this, kid,” he said quietly. “You always have to be careful who you say no to.”

Joe stood. “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe getting fired by you was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

The door opened again. A teenager in a company hoodie stood there, clutching a laptop.

“Sorry,” the kid said, cheeks flushing. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’m Alex. I’m one of the new interns. It’s an honor to meet you, sir. If you need coffee or help with mail or anything, I’m your person.”

Joe smiled. “Thanks, Alex. You know, Edward here was just telling me you had some good ideas for new features.”

Alex looked shocked. “I mean, I’ve been playing with some code,” he admitted. “I know it’s hard to believe because I’m young and all.”

“Not at all,” Joe said. “A wise person once told me you’re never too young to go after your dreams.”

Alex’s face lit up. “I love that,” he said. “If you ever have a moment, I’d really like to show you something I’ve been working on. Just a few lines of code. It might help with the messaging system.”

“I have a moment right now,” Joe said. “Let’s take a look. Step into my office.”

Alex grinned, eyes shining.

As they walked past Calvin, Joe didn’t bother looking back. He didn’t need to. He knew what the older man would see if he did: a kid not much older than Joe had been that first day, standing on the edge of something big, laptop in hand, head full of ideas.

The cycle had begun again—only this time, the person in charge knew better than to tell a young coder to stay in his lane.

He knew, from experience, that the lane was theirs to build.