5 min read
Friday, March 28, 2025 – 6:00 PM – Fort Lauderdale
The steaks were overcooked, the kids were loud, and Marcus Webb was checking his phone under the table.
Edward Johnson watched his best friend’s thumb moving across the screen and said nothing. Twenty-five years of friendship had taught him when to push and when to wait.
“So tell me about the switch,” Marcus said, finally pocketing the phone. He turned to Sophia, Edward’s oldest. “Pre-med to computer science. Your mom almost had a stroke.”
“She did not—”
“She called Sarah crying.”
“She called Sarah concerned.” Jennifer’s voice carried from across the table. “There’s a difference.”
Sophia was eighteen, home from Georgia Tech for spring break. She rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t that dramatic. Something clicked in AP Computer Science. I was actually making things instead of memorizing what dead people figured out a hundred years ago.”
“That’s—” Marcus started.
“Don’t say ‘that’s what I’ve been telling her.’ You haven’t been telling her anything. You’ve been working.” Sarah didn’t look up from helping Isaiah cut his steak.
Marcus closed his mouth. Opened it again. “Walk me through the hackathon thing. The one you won.”
Sophia set down her fork. “Forty-eight hours. Four people. We built a functioning app that would’ve taken a whole semester two years ago. Maybe longer.”
“How?”
“The AI doesn’t write code for you. Everyone thinks that.” She paused. “You know how Dad describes his first commanding officer? The guy who could look at any problem and ask the one question that made everything click?”
Edward looked up from his plate.
“It’s like that,” Sophia continued. “Except it never sleeps and knows every programming language ever invented. But it only works if you know what you’re trying to build.” She stabbed a piece of steak. “The teams that lost? Way better programmers than us. They just kept changing their minds. The AI made them faster at going in circles.”
“So the bottleneck is clarity,” Edward said. “Not technical skill.”
“Basically.”
Marcus’s phone buzzed. He glanced down—Victoria Hartwell, something about pre-IPO compliance—and his thumb was typing before he’d made a conscious decision.
”…and my professor says by 2026, anyone who can’t—”
“Sorry, what?”
Sophia’s expression flickered. Just for a moment. Then she smoothed it over. “I was saying the skills are changing fast.”
“Right. Right.” Marcus pocketed the phone. “That’s really cool, Soph.”
The conversation moved on. MJ’s basketball season. Isaiah’s science project. Whether Emma was actually applying to the Naval Academy or just trying to make her parents nervous.
But Edward watched Sophia. She’d noticed Marcus checking his phone. She’d shortened her answer, wrapped it up, made it easy for him to move on.
Eighteen years old and already learning to read a room.
Friday, March 28, 2025 – 9:30 PM – The Dock
The water was black and still. Somewhere across the Intracoastal, a neighbor was playing music too loud for a Friday night.
“You’re still thinking about it.” Marcus cast his line into the darkness. Not a question.
“Aren’t you?”
“I’m thinking about eighteen months of clean execution and ringing the bell at the NYSE.” The reel clicked as he let out more line. “After that, we can play with AI tools. Do the whole transformation thing.”
“And if eighteen months is too long?”
“It’s not.” Marcus turned to face him. “Ed, it took us four years to build Axiom. Meridian’s still running green screens. TransGlobal just figured out GPS tracking. Nobody’s catching us in eighteen months.”
“What if the rules changed?”
“Rules don’t change that fast.”
Edward didn’t answer. The music across the water switched to something slower.
“There was this guy Harold,” he said finally. “At my first job. Defense contractor. Ran the tape library for the mainframes. Knew every tape, every backup, every recovery procedure. The guy you called when everything went sideways.” Edward reeled in his line slowly. “Then they moved to disk-based backup. Eighteen months. And Harold’s whole career became irrelevant. They gave him a desk in compliance. Make-work stuff. He’d gone from the guy everyone needed to the guy nobody called.”
“That’s depressing as hell.”
“Essential to ornamental. In eighteen months.”
“You’re not gonna become Harold.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re paranoid enough to worry about it.” Marcus grinned. “Besides, I won’t care if I’m irrelevant in 2028. I’ll be rich.”
Edward looked at him. Really looked.
“What?” Marcus said.
“Nothing.”
“You’re doing that thing where you think something and don’t say it.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. Twenty-five years. I know the face.”
Edward cast his line. Watched it arc into the darkness. “I just wonder if the IPO is the finish line or the starting gun.”
“It’s thirteen million dollars.” Marcus checked his phone again. Victoria. “That’s a finish line.” He stood, brushing off his jeans. “Look, I gotta deal with this. Board stuff.”
“Go.”
Marcus headed back toward the house, phone already at his ear. Edward stayed on the dock, watching the lights on the water.
I won’t care if I’m irrelevant in 2028. I’ll be rich.
Maybe he was right. Maybe the money would be enough.
The music across the water had stopped.