Tom was waiting at the arrivals curb in the old Prius, windows down, Solana hat on. Mike, for no good reason, felt slightly reassured that the Prius was a constant in this universe — although he certainly didn't want the deathly robotaxis that decimated his Prius to also be constants in this world.
Tom spotted Mike before Mike spotted him — waving with the enthusiasm of a man who'd spent four days pretending not to worry.
"There he is. Happy belated birthday to the international businessman!" Tom wrapped his arms around Mike and gave him a kiss on the head. Mike sheepishly grinned back and reciprocated the hug.
Mike tossed his backpack in the back seat and climbed in. The car smelled like coffee and the pine air freshener that had been hanging from the mirror since before Mike existed in this universe.
"How was the flight?"
"Long. I sat between two people who were each technically occupying a seat and a half."
"Welcome to economy. Your mother — " Tom caught himself for a fraction of a second, the way he always did when a memory surfaced uninvited. "She used to say that economy class was God's way of testing whether you actually needed to go somewhere."
Mike smiled. In this universe, Tom's wife — the Anita who had died when Mike was a baby — existed only in these small fossils of speech. Fragments Tom carried without knowing how much weight they held for his son.
They merged onto the 101. San Francisco materialized through the windshield in layers — the airport sprawl giving way to South City strip malls, then the long stretch of Bayshore with its freight yards and body shops, then suddenly the skyline rising over the hill like a set being rolled into place.
"So," Tom said. "Tell me everything. And I mean the real version, not the one you rehearsed on the plane."
Mike laughed. He told Tom about the Colopl meeting — the gaming company, the polite executive who'd shown interest in the metaverse angle. He told him about the developer he'd met who was working on virtual world infrastructure. He described Tokyo in broad strokes — the ramen, the trains, the way the city managed to feel both impossibly dense and perfectly organized at the same time.
He did not tell Tom about Magic Eden, Dom Perignon, Tiffany, the Glenmorangie Signet, or the fact that he'd spent his seventeenth birthday making out with an adult film actress in a Roppongi hostess bar.
They drove in comfortable silence for a while. The Bay Bridge traffic was light for a Tuesday afternoon, and Tom navigated it with the absentminded skill of a man who'd made this drive a thousand times.
"Mike, can I ask you something?"
"Yeah."
"This whole thing — the game, the trip, the grant, the meetings — it happened really fast. Like, three weeks ago you were playing Fortnite with Kevin and now you're flying to Tokyo and pitching CEOs." He kept his eyes on the road. "I'm not saying it's bad. I'm proud of you. Genuinely. But I keep thinking — is there something driving this that you're not telling me?"
Mike looked at him. Tom Friedrich, the struggling screenwriter who'd spent twenty years writing scripts nobody bought, who drove a battered down Prius and wore a free Solana hat like it was a trophy, who had somehow raised a son alone and never complained about it. The man who, in another universe, had been just the warm boyfriend at the breakfast table — and who in this one had become everything.
"I just don't want to waste time," Mike said. "I feel like I've been given something — this opportunity, this window — and if I don't move fast, it'll close. That's all."
Tom nodded slowly. "Okay. Just — don't forget to be seventeen, alright? You've got time. More than you think."
Mike almost said something. Almost told him that no, actually, he didn't have as much time as Tom thought — that he knew things about what was coming that would terrify any reasonable person, and that every week he spent being a normal teenager was a week he wasn't spending preparing for a world that was about to be turned inside out. But he swallowed it.
"I'll try," he said.
Tom reached over and squeezed his shoulder. "Good. Now — I've been thinking. All this game stuff you're doing, the virtual worlds. What if there's a screenplay in it? Like a thriller. A kid who discovers something inside a video game that turns out to be real."
"That's basically Ready Player One, Dad."
"Shit. Is it?"
"Yeah."
"Well, mine would be better. Maybe I need to find the right collaborators. Hell I'm even open to producing someone else's writing if I can help out meaningfully."
Mike smiled and made a mental note to remember this aspiration of Tom's.
The next morning, Lincoln High felt like returning to a planet he'd briefly left orbit of. The same beige hallways, the same lockers, the same smell of floor cleaner and microwave burritos. But Mike moved through it differently now. Japan had recalibrated something in him — not confidence exactly, but a sense of proportion. These hallways, these classes, this routine — they were the scaffolding, not the structure. The real building was happening elsewhere.
Kevin was waiting at the lunch table, practically vibrating.
"Dude. Tell me everything."
Mike sat down and gave Kevin the version — the Colopl meeting, the interest in the metaverse angle, the ZEPETO connection, the developer ecosystem in Tokyo. Kevin's eyes got wider with each detail.
"Wait — they mentioned ZEPETO? As in, the actual ZEPETO? That's blowing up in Asia right now. I wouldn't be surprised if they go down the route of Roblox and start shipping virtual worlds and games left and right."
"Their investment arm helped incubate it before Naver acquired that startup and merged it with their existing ZEPETO product. The director I met offered to make an intro to the ZEPETO team."
"Mike. That's insane." Kevin set down his sandwich, which for Kevin was the equivalent of a standing ovation. "So what's our play?"
"The Solana dev meetup is November 6th. Five weeks from now. We need Fury to be undeniable by then — on-chain mechanics working, marketplace functional, UI polished enough that when Anatoly sees it, he doesn't just think it's promising. He thinks it's ready."
"Five weeks." Kevin stared at the ceiling, doing the math. "You're asking to build Rome in a day. Or five weeks. Whatever. The battle system still has that bug where duplicate NFTs spawn during tournament matchups, and the marketplace needs a proper search and filter. Plus the onboarding flow is kind of a nightmare for anyone who doesn't already have a proper wallet setup."
"So we fix it. Every night after school, same as before. Weekends too. We ship a polished demo by November 5th or we don't go."
Kevin picked up his sandwich again. "I'm in. Obviously." He took a bite, chewed thoughtfully. "You know what's wild? A month ago I was arguing with Derek about whether Cloud9 could get out of groups. Now I'm building a crypto game that a Japanese VC fund thinks is worth investing in."
"Speaking of which — don't mention the Japanese side of things to Derek."
"Why not?"
"He'll call it a scam."
"Fair."
That night, once Tom's birthday cake celebrations and cheerful singing for Mike had ended, Mike installed himself at his desk with the cracked iPhone propped against a stack of textbooks. The house was quiet — Tom was downstairs working on a commercial script for a regional furniture chain, the kind of work that paid the bills in increments so small they barely registered but that Tom approached with the same seriousness he'd bring to a feature film.
Mike had two browser tabs open. The first was a draft email to Frontier — the one he'd been composing and deleting and recomposing since he'd landed. The second was Keith Adams' LinkedIn profile.
He looked at the email draft first. Toyota-san had said to email with something concrete. Mike didn't have anything concrete — not in the biotech sense. What he had was a half-formed idea about exosome applications in post-pandemic medicine, which he couldn't articulate without revealing that he knew a pandemic was coming, which he couldn't reveal without sounding insane. The email sat unfinished. He'd come back to it.
Keith's LinkedIn was more useful. In October 2019, Organic was in expansion mode. Keith had just posted about a keynote he'd given at a conference in Palo Alto — something about AI infrastructure and the future of mobility. The comments were full of sycophants. Mike scrolled through them with a cold detachment that surprised him. This man had murdered his mother. In this universe, Anita Friedrich had died seventeen years ago of causes Mike didn't yet understand. But in the universe that mattered — the one Mike carried in his memory like a scar — Keith Adams had ordered her killed because she'd found something she wasn't supposed to see, and he would be damned if Keith Adams weren't doing something sinister again in this universe.
Mike didn't know yet how he'd reach Keith. Didn't know what the path looked like from a seventeen-year-old's bedroom in Oakland to the inner circle of one of the most powerful tech CEOs in the world. But he knew the path existed, because now he was equipped to forge paths himself.
He closed the LinkedIn tab and opened Discord as a notification sound pinged.
It was GTXMaxi.
GTXMaxi: Back from Korea. That was a wild one. Sorry again we couldn't link up in Tokyo.
pixeldoge: No worries. How was Korea?
GTXMaxi: Incredible. Seoul is probably the most underrated city for crypto. The exchange ecosystem there is insane — Bithumb, Upbit, all running massive volume. And the arbitrage spreads between Korean exchanges and global ones... let's just say it was worth the trip.
pixeldoge: You do arbitrage?
GTXMaxi: Among other things. The kimchi premium is real and it's beautiful. When Korean exchanges trade BTC at a 5-8% premium over Binance, you buy on Binance, sell on Upbit, pocket the spread. Obviously there are complications — KYC, transfer times, capital controls — but if you know the workarounds, it's basically free money.
pixeldoge: Sounds like you've been doing this for a while.
GTXMaxi: A bit. It's how I built my initial stack. Now I'm more into spot and some leverage, but arb is always the safety net. Anyway — how was the rest of Tokyo?
pixeldoge: Productive. Made some solid connections. A gaming company, a VC fund. And I've got a lead on a Japanese biotech that I'm trying to develop.
GTXMaxi: Biotech? That's a pivot from memecoins lol.
pixeldoge: It's a side interest. Long story.
GTXMaxi: Fair enough. Hey — one thing. I'm probably going to relocate to Hong Kong soon. That's where the real action is right now for people like us. The exchange density, the OTC desks, the fund scene. Seoul is great for arb but Hong Kong is where the whales swim.
pixeldoge: When are you thinking?
GTXMaxi: Next few months maybe. Still figuring out logistics. But I'll keep you posted. We should definitely meet up at some point — you seem like one of the few people in these servers who actually thinks instead of just gambling.
pixeldoge: Likewise. Let's make it happen.
Mike closed Discord and leaned back in his chair. GTXMaxi relocating to Hong Kong. Pre-2020, that made perfect sense — Hong Kong was the capital of Asian crypto before Beijing's crackdowns scattered everyone to Singapore and Dubai. But GTXMaxi didn't know what was coming. Nobody did, except Mike.
He opened a new tab and searched "G-STAR Busan November 2019."
The Global Game Exhibition, commonly known as G-STAR, was scheduled for November 14-17 at the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center. Korea's biggest gaming conference — publishers, developers, investors, esports tournaments, and tens of thousands of attendees from across Asia. Sehun had offered to arrange access. The ZEPETO team would likely be there.
Mike pulled up a calendar and looked at the landscape. The Solana dev meetup was November 6th in San Francisco. G-STAR started November 14th in Busan. Eight days between them. If Fury impressed at the Solana meetup — really impressed, not just "promising for a kid" impressed — Mike could use that momentum to ask Anatoly for support to attend G-STAR. The pitch would write itself: the game has a Japanese narrative layer, the Korean market is massive for gaming, ZEPETO is a natural partner, and Mike had a standing invitation from a director at Colopl Next.
It was ambitious. It was also the kind of plan that only made sense if you were a time traveler operating on a timeline nobody else could see.
Mike opened a new note on his phone and started mapping the next six weeks. Fury development milestones. The Solana meetup demo plan. G-STAR logistics. The Frontier email — what to write, when to send it. The Keith Adams file — a slow, patient surveillance of the man who didn't yet know Mike existed in this universe.
Somewhere downstairs, Tom's keyboard clacked steadily — a screenwriter trying to make a regional furniture commercial sound like cinema. The sound was oddly comforting. A reminder that ambition came in all sizes, and that the people who kept showing up — kept writing, kept building, kept trying — were the ones who eventually got their break.
Mike would make sure Tom got his.