The sound of rusted metal breaking loose was music to my ears. The first nut surrendered. Then the second. The third was stubborn; my foot slipped, and I slammed my knee onto the gravel. Pain shot up my leg. My suit pants—my only “good” pair for interviews—were now torn at the knee and soaked in black mud.
But I didn’t stop. I gritted my teeth and fought the remaining nuts. It took twenty minutes to swap the shredded tire for the spare. My hands were black with grease and mud, numb from the cold.
I tapped on the window. The old man rolled it down. Warmth spilled out, smelling of old leather and pipe tobacco.
“You’re all set,” I said, wiping rain from my eyes. “But that spare is a donut. Do not go over fifty miles per hour. And get off at the next exit to check the pressure. It looks a little low.”
The old man stared at me. Now, seeing him up close, I noticed his eyes. They were deep blue, sharp, and… calculating. They didn’t look like the eyes of a senile old man at all.
“What is your name, son?” he asked.
“Stuart,” I replied. “Stuart Miller.”
The old man reached into his soaked jacket pocket. He fumbled with a leather wallet worn smooth at the corners. He shakily counted out a few bills.
“I… I want to pay you,” he said, his voice trembling. “I have… let’s see… forty dollars.”
I looked at the forty dollars. To me, right now, that was two weeks of food. But looking at the beat-up car, looking at the couple, I guessed that might be all they had for their trip.
“Keep it,” I said, gently pushing his hand away. “Buy your wife some hot soup. You two look freezing.”
“But you ruined your suit,” the woman spoke up from the passenger seat. Her voice was strangely warm and patrician. “You look like a businessman.”
I laughed. It was a dry, bitter sound that mixed with the rain. “I’m an unemployed engineer, Ma’am. This suit wasn’t bringing me much luck anyway.”
The old man paused. His blue eyes narrowed slightly. “Unemployed? An engineer?”
“Aerospace,” I nodded, looking down at my filthy hands. “But they say I lack ‘grit.’ I guess they’re right. A gritty guy wouldn’t be stuck on the side of the road.”
I sighed, feeling the exhaustion crash over me.
“Anyway, drive safe. Watch out for the big puddles.”
I turned and ran back to my car. I didn’t wait for a thank you. I just wanted to escape the rain, escape the cold that was gnawing at my bones.
I drove home in silence, the windshield wipers providing a hypnotic rhythm. I peeled off the ruined suit and threw it in the trash, discarding my last shred of ego. I ate a bowl of instant ramen, drinking the broth to the last drop, then crawled under my covers and fell asleep, completely forgetting the old couple in the Buick.
Chapter 3: The Silence of Failure
A week passed.
It was a week from hell. Three more rejection emails arrived in my inbox, cold and automated. My landlord, Mr. Henderson, cornered me on the stairs to remind me rent was five days overdue. I started calculating how much I could get for my old guitar—the only thing my dad left me—at the pawnshop.
I felt invisible. I felt like the world was moving at light speed, and I was standing still on the shoulder with four flat tires, watching everyone else zoom by in their spaceships of success.
Tuesday morning, I was sitting on my tattered sofa, wearing only boxers, staring at a crack in the wall. I wondered if the crack was getting bigger, or if my life was just shrinking.
My phone rang.
It was Mom.
I hesitated. I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t want to lie and say “everything is fine,” and I certainly didn’t want to tell her that her son—the family pride—was about to starve. She worried too much. She watched the news twenty-four hours a day and always thought the apocalypse was nigh.
But I couldn’t ignore her. I picked up. “Hello, Mom.”
“Stuart!” she screamed. Her voice was so loud I had to pull the phone away. It was piercing. “Stuart, answer me right now!”
“I… I am answering, Mom. I’m home.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in my apartment. Why? Is Dad okay?”
“Turn on the TV!” she shrieked, her voice cracking with hysteria. “Turn it on! Channel 5! Right now!”
“Mom, I don’t have cable, I cut it months ago…”
“Use your phone! Go to the news! Stuart, oh my god, how could you not tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“That you met HIM!”
I was utterly confused. “Met who?”
“Just turn it on!”
I put the phone on speaker and opened the news app. The homepage was livestreaming a special event. The headline scrolling across the bottom hit me like a physical blow: THE RETURN OF A LEGEND.
Chapter 4: The Press Conference
The phone screen displayed a sleek podium. A forest of microphones from every major network pointed toward it. The background was a glossy metallic blue, featuring a stylized wing logo I knew by heart.
AERO-DYNAMICS GLOBAL.
This was the world’s largest aerospace defense contractor. They built engines for 6th-generation fighters. They were designing the Mars transport. To any aerospace engineer, this was Mecca. I had applied here five times. I had been rejected by their automated system five times; I had never even made it past the digital gatekeeper.
Standing at the podium was not the slick, gel-haired CEO I usually saw in Forbes magazine.
It was an old man.
But this time, he wasn’t wearing a soaked windbreaker. He was wearing a charcoal suit, cut to perfection, radiating absolute power. His silver hair was groomed. He looked clean, sharp, and commanding.
But I recognized those eyes. Deep blue. Sharp. The eyes that had peered into my soul in the rain.
And standing beside him, regal in pearls and a silk dress, was the woman from the Buick.
“Mom,” I whispered, my throat dry. “That’s… that’s the old guy with the flat tire.”
“That is Arthur Sterling!” my mom shouted into the phone. “The Founder of Aero-Dynamics! He’s been a recluse for ten years! Rumors said he was sick or dead! Stuart, you met Arthur Sterling!”
Trembling, I turned up the volume.
Arthur Sterling leaned into the microphone. The room held its breath. A heavy silence descended.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Arthur’s voice rang out, no longer thin or frail. It was deep and resonant like a brass bell. “As many of you know, I stepped down as CEO fifteen years ago. I left the company to the Board and retreated into the shadows. I wanted peace.”
He gripped the edges of the podium, scanning the crowd of reporters like a general.
“But recently, I felt uneasy. I wanted to test what this world we are building has become. My wife, Martha, and I decided to take a cross-country trip in an old car, dressed as commoners. We wanted to see if kindness still existed in this era of speed and greed.”
Reporters were scribbling furiously. Flashbulbs erupted.
“Last Tuesday,” Arthur continued, “we staged a breakdown on I-95 in the middle of a storm. It was a test. We sat there for an hour. Hundreds of cars passed. Many were driven by my own executives, rushing to meetings to discuss profit margins.”
He paused, letting the truth sink into the air.
“Not one of them stopped.”
See more on the next page
Advertisement
