Xavier didn't go to his dorm. In his past life, that was the first mistake he made—trusting the "system" to be fair. The campus security wasn't coming to "investigate"; they were coming to provide a pretext for the Sterling family to seize his laptop and delete any evidence of their technological inferiority.
Instead, Xavier walked into 'The Grid,' a high-end, 24-hour e-sports lounge located just outside the university gates.
"VIP Room 4. Full isolation. Gigabit uplink. Give me the mechanical keyboard with the Cherry MX Silents," Xavier said, tossing a hundred-dollar bill onto the counter.
The clerk didn't even look up from his game. "Room's yours for twelve hours. Don't set the place on fire."
Xavier locked the door behind him. The room was small, bathed in a dim purple glow, but it was exactly what he needed: a secure node.
He opened his laptop. The $128,160 sat in his wallet, a digital blade ready to be forged.
First, I need a shield.
He didn't just write a firewall. He implemented a Neural-Lattice Encryption—a concept that wouldn't be theorized until 2034. It used the ambient noise of the lounge's Wi-Fi traffic as a fluctuating decryption key. To any hacker in 2026, his laptop would appear not as a device, but as "white noise" in the network.
Then, he began the hunt.
3:30 AM.
The door to the VIP room didn't open, but his screen flickered. A video call request popped up. The caller ID was 'Sterling-Private.'
Xavier leaned back, a cold smile touching his lips. He hit 'Accept.'
The face of Thomas Sterling, CEO of Sterling Electronics, appeared on the screen. He was a man in his fifties with a perfectly groomed silver beard and eyes that had crushed a thousand startups.
"Mr. Thorne," Thomas said, his voice a smooth, dangerous baritone. "My son is currently throwing a tantrum because his fifty-thousand-dollar toy is a brick. And my legal team is currently drafting a complaint that will ensure you never touch a computer again for the next twenty years."
"Is that all, Thomas?" Xavier asked, his tone bored. "I expected more from the man who supposedly 'built' the modern motherboard."
Thomas narrowed his eyes. "You're arrogant. I like that in an employee. I'm prepared to drop the charges. In fact, I'll give you a million dollars, a full scholarship, and a VP position at Sterling Electronics. In exchange, you hand over the source code for the exploit you used today."
"A million dollars?" Xavier let out a short, dry laugh. "In 2026, that sounds like a lot. To me, it sounds like pocket change for a man who is about to lose his entire company."
"Excuse me?"
"Let's talk about 'Project Icarus,'" Xavier said.
Thomas Sterling's face went pale. The transition was so sudden it was almost comical. "How... how do you know that name?"
"I know that Sterling Electronics has been cutting corners on the capacitor insulation for the new 'Titan' server line. I know that in eighteen months, those servers will start exploding in data centers across the globe. And I know that right now, you have a hidden 'slush fund' in the Cayman Islands used to bribe the safety inspectors."
Xavier leaned closer to the camera. "I don't want your million dollars, Thomas. I want you to remember this face. Because by the time I'm done, the name 'Sterling' will be a footnote in the history books I'm about to rewrite."
"You... you're bluffing," Thomas hissed, though his trembling hands gave him away.
"Check your private server's 'Trash' folder," Xavier said. "I left a little gift there. A PDF containing the internal memos you thought you deleted last Tuesday. If you or your son come within a hundred yards of me or Claire Vance again, that PDF goes to the SEC, the FBI, and the front page of every tech blog on the planet."
Xavier terminated the call.
4:00 AM.
With the Sterling threat neutralized for now, Xavier turned to his true goal. He opened a terminal and began typing the foundation of The Oracle.
In 2050, AI wasn't just a chatbot; it was a living, breathing entity that could predict human behavior with 99% accuracy. Xavier couldn't build that yet—the hardware of 2026 couldn't support the weight of a true soul.
But he could build a Predictive Heuristic Engine. He began to scrape data. Not just stock prices, but weather patterns, social media sentiment, shipping manifests in the South China Sea, and even the power consumption of major semiconductor factories.
Code: Initialize Core.
Module: Future-Sight Alpha.
Target: Market Anomaly Detection.
As the sun began to rise over the city, a single line appeared on his screen:
[ORACLE V1.0]: ONLINE.
[ORACLE]: Master, I have analyzed 4.2 Petabytes of data. Recommended Action: Purchase 'Void-Tech' Penny Stock. Probability of 400% surge in 48 hours: 94.2%.
Xavier smiled. He wasn't just a hacker anymore. He was a man with a crystal ball made of silicon.
"Oracle," Xavier whispered. "Let's make some real money."