~January Cold, Mind on Fire,
POV: Ethan Vale
Date: January 12, 2023
Location: Brooklyn, New York – Shared Apartment
The radiator in Ethan's apartment clicked loudly as the old pipes struggled to warm the room. He wore a plain charcoal hoodie, sleeves rolled, code scrolling on a secondhand monitor. His phone faced down. Always. Notifications were off. Distraction was a tax only amateurs paid.
The city outside was slow under snowfall. But inside Ethan's mind? A storm.
He wasn't rich. Not yet. But he was no longer average.
Not in intention. Not in rhythm. Not in clarity.
---
Morning: Ritual & Recollection
6:13 AM. Wake. 75 pushups. Cold water. Black coffee. Terminal open.
His current project: a behavioral analytics engine—a bootstrap prototype using Reddit data to map emotional inconsistency across threads. It looked like a glorified hobby. It wasn't. It was the skeleton of something that would shape human decisions years down the line. Then upgraded via ARGOS.
While writing code, Ethan's thoughts drifted. Not back to success. But back to silence.
---
FLASHBACK: October 2020 – College Basement Library- First year (he is in third year)
Everyone else studied in groups. He sat alone.
There was a girl once—Miranda—who flirted with him for weeks, confused by his distance.
"Why don't you try harder?"
He had smiled. "I try. Just not for what you're chasing."
She didn't understand.
Ethan never wanted praise. He wanted leverage. Though he was emotionally and mentally weak that time.Understanding people's flaws wasn't about control—it was about timing. And the more he understood why people broke, the less he spoke.
He was becoming a student of weakness. His own included.
---
Present: A Visitor Notices
9:02 AM.
The door buzzed. Ethan frowned.
It was Leona Joey, unexpectedly early. A striking blonde lady in a winter trench coat and boots, a slow smirk under her breath as she looked at him over the screen. With delicate features .
"You don't like visitors."
"I like control over them ."
He said with a straight direct line while assuming that she is impressed by ARGOS or by his behaviour .
(I don't waste my time for garbages and unworthy . She is a 10, good asset if I play tactically!)
"You still have it," she said, walking in anyway.
She noticed the mess—not of clutter, but of papers, sketches, flowcharts detailing cycles of guilt, desire, suppression. All behavioral loops.
"This isn't just tech. This is…" she paused, picking up a paper, "psychology on offense."
Ethan turned his eyes toward her. "I call it ARGOS. Just like I introduced when you we meet somehow in hub."
"And what's it for?"
"To solve the problems people pretend don't exist," he said. "Starting with their own minds."
(She surely focused on me that time ... Isn't she..?)
Leona paused. She wasn't a tech person. She was media. Strategy. Storytelling. But she knew value when it breathed differently in a room.
She didn't flirt. She evaluated.
"You're going to be dangerous," she said. "Just not yet."
"That's the idea."
---
Afternoon: Between Code & Capital
1:47 PM.
Ethan pulled up his private doc: "Funding Playbook – V1". Not ready to pitch to VCs yet. He had something better in mind:
A targeted list of high-value behavioral psychology influencers.
Offer ARGOS as a behind-the-curtain analytics tool for content modeling.
Monetize first, scale later.
While others begged for capital, he'd make proof of impact his loudest microphone.
> "The one who moves first looks needy. The one who moves last looks essential."
---
Evening: Cold, But Calculated
7:30 PM.
He didn't go out. Not to bars. Not to parties. While others chased approval, he chased infrastructure.
He wrote in his journal:
> "Sex, money, status—they're all forms of gravity. Create your own orbit, and the world realigns around it."
He paused. A line crossed his mind from something he'd once believed deeply:
"Sex is the first thing you could do to reach someone's soul."
He understood it differently now. Not as hunger. But as access to asset...Creating an unshakeable hook, they can't get of .... And more guys I have different plans.
Shared breath. Vulnerability that no CV or resume could offer.
And yet, he waited.
He didn't pursue Sienna anymore. Didn't block her either. Just let silence speak the language only hindsight understood.
---
Midnight Thought
The last thing he did before sleep was open a text file titled "2026 – Vision".
The first line:
> "By then, I'll be undeniable. Not because I'm loud. But because no one will remember life before I arrived."