In the spring of 1995, America's internet industry stood on the edge of delirium. Startups bloomed across Silicon Valley like weeds after rain—wild, fast, and everywhere. Venture capitalists poured gasoline on the chaos, screaming through boardrooms about "digital frontiers" and "the death of print."
And the world listened.
Yahoo had branded itself the internet's first portal—an entryway to the new world. Jerry Yang, the soft-spoken engineer with a Stanford badge, was now "The Chief of Yahoo," his photo splashed across every magazine cover from Time to Fortune. TV news anchors began whispering that America was entering a "god-making age"—an era where quiet engineers could become emperors overnight.
DoubleClick rode that same wind. In less than a month, it had become Silicon Valley's secret weapon—unsexy, technical, backend... and lethal. Wall Street pegged its valuation at $58 million. And though everyone knew the number was inflated, nobody cared.
In the gold rush, it wasn't about truth. It was about momentum.
The company had changed.
James felt it the moment he stepped through DoubleClick's lobby—the low thrum of overclocked machines, the clatter of keyboards, the whiteboards bleeding ideas in six colors of marker.
Staff ran—not walked—between meetings. Some even rolled in on scooters. Half the engineers looked sleep-deprived, the other half caffeinated into oblivion. An intern spilled coffee on his badge and didn't even slow down.
James moved through it all like a ghost through a storm. His tailored black coat cut a sharp figure against the frenzied startup energy.
This was the chaos he'd built. And now, it was alive.
Marcus didn't even look up when the door opened. "Well, well," he said, still flipping through a stack of reports. "The ghost founder returns."
James stepped inside and lowered himself into the leather chair across from Marcus's desk. "I told you I'd be back."
Marcus finally looked up. "Yeah, but I figured you'd come floating in on a hoverboard or something. You've been gone three days, James. Three days in startup time is like three years in dog time."
James smirked. "What's the damage?"
Marcus leaned back and rubbed his temples. "You want it raw or sugarcoated?"
"Bullet points. No syrup."
Marcus sighed. "We're at 364 total employees. Marketing alone has over 200 now. With the surge after the Netscape IPO, we pulled in about $987,163 in ad deals. Depending on campaign success rates, that generated about 100,000 in revenue and $6,000 in Profit."
James nodded, listening. The numbers weren't bad. But he could feel the "but" coming.
"But," Marcus continued, "we're bleeding cash. The floor expansion, TV ads, newspaper buys, personnel costs, new servers, partnership fees—it's a firehose. The only reason we're not dead in the water is because of the 500K you transferred before vanishing."
James looked around the office—sleek screens, projection charts, a new espresso machine in the corner. The face of ambition. And burn rate.
"It's alright," he said finally. "Has anyone contacted us? VC firms?"
Marcus arched a brow. "James, are you thinking about...?"
"Investment," James cut in. "Not IPO. We're not going public anytime soon."
"Could've fooled me," Marcus muttered, reaching over to grab a folder stacked with pitch decks. "We've had offers. All kinds. Even a few Wall Street guys sniffing around for pre-IPO placement."
James began flipping through the folders—decks from Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins, H&Q, Sequoia.
He didn't blink. He didn't pause. But when he got to three specific names—he stopped.
Interpublic Group (IPG).Gannett Company.Westwood One.
"These three," James said, sliding them onto the desk.
Marcus blinked. "What, really? You're ignoring Sequoia for Gannett?"
James looked at him with that same unreadable half-smile. "I'm not looking for money. I'm looking for leverage."
"Leverage?"
"Media reach. Legacy platforms. Ad pipelines. We don't need more funds—we need channels. These three give us that."
Marcus rubbed his forehead again. "Alright, I'll bite. Want me to schedule meetings?"
"Back to back. Today if they're available."
Marcus nodded slowly. "Sure. But just so I understand… You really think these media dinosaurs are going to see what we're building here? You could get a higher valuation from Benchmark alone."
James stood, already walking to the door. "Sometimes you don't need the highest bidder. You need the one who fits the next move."
"Which is?" Marcus called after him.
James paused at the doorway and turned his head just enough to smile.
"I'll show you. Follow me to the tech department."
The air in the technical department was cooler, quieter — a controlled zone compared to the frenzied sales floors upstairs. White noise from the server racks hummed like a machine's heartbeat, syncing with the blinking lights of routers and cooling fans.
James walked through the corridor with calm precision, his steps echoing slightly against the tile floor. He passed rows of desks — most of them empty. It was late afternoon, and the devs were either in meetings or passed out somewhere with an energy drink in hand.
At the far end, inside a glass-walled lab, he found Dr. Ethan Caldwell hunched over a monitor, wearing a lab coat more out of habit than necessity. Around him were three junior engineers, all watching the screen like it might explode.
James tapped twice on the glass. Ethan looked up and gave a sardonic wave.
"Boss," Ethan said, rising from his chair, "you finally show up. I was starting to think I'd accepted a job to monitor static."
James chuckled. "That bad?"
"No, that boring," Ethan grumbled, brushing past a tangle of Ethernet cables. "When I took this job, I thought I was going to be breaking ground in ad tech, maybe even pioneering something new. Instead, I've spent two weeks babysitting an architecture that's... well, flawless."
James raised an eyebrow. "Flawless?"
"I don't throw that word around lightly." Ethan crossed his arms. "I've studied AdNova backwards and forwards. It's lean, scalable, modular as hell. Honestly? We could run this thing for the next ten years and not need an upgrade."
James smiled, his eyes gleaming. "Then you'll love what I'm about to show you."
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a floppy disk—black, square, the ancient kind that most people hadn't seen in years.
Ethan blinked. "You're kidding."
James walked over to the main console and inserted the floppy with a click. "You wanted an upgrade. You're getting AdNova version 0.2."
Ethan opened his mouth, then closed it again. "You're seriously pushing an update from a 1.44 MB floppy disk?"
James didn't answer. His fingers danced across the keyboard, and the screen flickered as the system rebooted. A black terminal blinked, then began scrolling green text as if it were receiving an encrypted payload.
AdNova Core Booting...Initializing Modules...Integrating Aether Neural Stack...Updating System Protocols...Version 0.2 Loaded.
Ethan stared at the screen, his brows slowly lifting. "Wait. Wait, wait. What's 'Aether Neural Stack'? I've never seen that module."
James leaned casually against the desk. "You said the system was perfect. That means I had to go beyond."
What Ethan—and everyone else—didn't see was the real update.
The floppy was just a prop. A magician's flourish.
The actual transfer had started the moment James entered the room. His Neural Coding Ability had already interfaced wirelessly with the core machine—injecting compressed AetherMind modules, obfuscating them under standard labels, embedding recursive learning agents into the lowest levels of the system.
The 1.44 MB on the floppy contained nothing more than a simple shell script to trigger a fake UI sequence.
The miracle was happening in silence.
Aether doesn't need space. It needs access. And once I'm inside, everything else is just noise.
Let them think it's just a patch. Let them sleep easy while I push machine learning into advertising's bloodstream.
Ten minutes later, the screen pulsed once and displayed:
AdNova 0.2 :: STATUS — ONLINE.Feeding Gate Active.Aether Link Stable.
Ethan moved like a man possessed. He began clicking through the system dashboards, eyes wide. "This... this is insane. The response time just dropped by 40%. The targeting module's pulling in contextual data live. And—wait—what's this?" He pointed at a new panel that had appeared on the UI. "What's 'Feeding Gate'?"
James stepped forward, voice low and confident. "Everything that passes through AdNova now gets fed to the AetherMind Core. Think of it like... real-time learning. Every campaign, every user interaction—it's all fuel."
Ethan shook his head slowly, awe spreading across his face. "This isn't ad tech. This is predictive architecture. You could build entire trend models off this... you could manipulate market sentiment."
James just smiled.
"I told you your real work was coming," he said. "Now that the system's aware, we're entering Phase Two."
Ethan looked at him. "Phase Two?"
James didn't answer.
Instead, he turned to the junior engineers still watching from the side. "Give us the room," he said simply.
They scattered like mice, leaving the two alone with the humming servers.
As James stared at the terminal, its soft green light reflected in his eyes, he thought:
One system to feed. One system to learn. And soon—one system to control.