William looked around, feeling dissatisfied. He was wearing a long coat, covering his entire body. The Tampa winter was mild, barely sixty degrees, but he had grabbed the coat anyway. He liked the style.

  "This is the third property today," Eve stated. "And you've hated all of them."

  He coughed, "I don't hate them. I just don't see the point of paying $3,000 a month for space I can't even modify."

  She threw him a stink eye, "You think I don't know your hate look? You look at these properties like you look at my cookies."

  He sideeyed her, "So burnt and disappointing?"

  She snorted, "Fuck you. If you want to modify that much, we could just buy."

  He paused, "What?" Then, he realized, "Fuck. I'm so stupid. How could I miss something this simple?"

  She laughed at his expense, "So you have days like this as well."

  He threw her a glare but didn't respond otherwise. He fixed his coat and asked, "So, any ideas?"

  She nodded and took out a Nokia she bought a few days ago and checked her notes, "There's a commercial building nearby. I previously approached them to rent, but they disagreed, saying that they only wanted to sell. It's a former tech startup that's almost on the brink of bankruptcy. They called for $750,000, but it's already been on the market for 6 months now. We could probably get it for around $650,000; $600,000 if we really pushed."

  He nodded, "We'll settle for $650,000 then. It's cheap enough. Let's schedule a viewing today if possible."

  She nodded and went out to make a call. Meanwhile, William looked closely at the listing. The property included parking for twenty vehicles, separate electrical service for high-power equipment, commercial HVAC with zoned cooling, and a small kitchen area. The photos showed a dedicated server room with raised flooring and cable management infrastructure.

  He nodded, This seems pretty good.

  The building was perfect.

  Not aesthetically, of course. The exterior was plain and simple, but what was truly perfect was the interior and the infrastructure.

  The realtor, a middle-aged woman named Patrica, led them through the building. "DataLink Technologies went under 6 months ago. They've poured everything into the infrastructure before the funds run dry. The owner is eager and desperate to liquidate assets before bankruptcy court gets involved."

  William and Eve walked alongside her. His eyes scanned the room, looking for things he would have to fix. For example, the furniture. He would have to replace all of them. The paint, too. Especially the carpet. It was an offensive beige, the kind only people with no taste and too much money choose. It attacked his mismatched eyes like a bullet. He almost wanted to burn it immediately.

  After shaking his head, he turned his attention away from that and back to the infrastructure. It was truly professional. While there were some inconsistencies and inefficiencies he could see, it wasn't a deal breaker, especially when everything else was perfect for his current use. He looked at the raised flooring for cable management, dedicated cooling with redundant units, and 400-amp electrical service with a very clean installation. It was clearly very professional.

  He spoke out loud, asking the realtor, "Is the cooler a new model?"

  She nodded, "Yes, it was upgraded last year. There are two redundant units for the server room, specifically, plus commercial HVAC for the office spaces. Maintenance records are all here." She handed him a folder.

  He nodded and looked through it. There were no red flags. They then looked around the second floor. It was an open-plan office space and empty, except for a few abandoned desks, chairs, and a sad-looking potted plant that somehow survived until now. It had large windows with natural light and had a walled-out section for a conference room with good acoustics.

  "This is eight thousand square feet in total." She gestured out the window towards the parking, "The parking was repaved last year, the roof was inspected two months ago, and the zoning laws allow for light manufacturing or tech operations."

  William looked out the window and said to Patrica, "We'll take it. We'll offer $650,000 in cash. We can close in two weeks."

  She blinked, surprise, "I'll need to contact the owner, but given the circumstances, I believe that's very workable."

  "Good. I'll send my attorney to review the paperwork, and assuming everything checks out, we will wire funds as soon as that's complete."

  "I'll make the call now." She went out.

  Eve shook her head, "You didn't even try to negotiate lower. We could have gotten this for $25,000 less if you had just let me do the talking."

  He completely abandoned the pretense he kept up around Patrica, "If I had to negotiate for $20,000, I'll lose more brain cells than I'll save in cash."

  Eve snorted, "Just admit it. You're just not good with money."

  He bonked her in the head, "The fuck you mean by that? I'll have you know, I made most of this money from a series of smart investments."

  She glared at him, rubbing her head, "By somehow knowing for sure which company will take off? Sure, Will. You're so SmArT."

  He tried to bonk her again, but she blocked, "Of course, I am. Thank you for noticing."

  She hmmphed and tried to hide her smile, "What a narcissist."

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  He smiled too, but before they could fight anymore, Patrica came in, "The owner accepted. $650,000, two-week close. He's having his attorney draft the purchase agreement today. If you can provide your attorney's contact information, they can coordinate."

  William nodded, "Of course." He shook her hand.

  On their way back, they argued a lot in the backseat. Peter, the security guard who had been driving him since he was young, was already used to it. It didn't even faze them. Eventually, they came to blows. It didn't even bother him.

  "The fuck you say about my cake?"

  "I spoke the truth! You can't censor me, you witch!"

  "Gahhh!"

  Eve tried to choke him, but he easily escaped with his strength. He tried to do it back to her, but she was agile, even in the tight spaces of the back of the car. They fought some more, taking care not to hurt each other too much. Soon enough, both of them stopped fighting and immediately started talking peacefully. Peter sighed. Their brains work in truly mysterious ways. He had seen how Eve and William fought, especially when they were sparring in Jujutsu or HEMA. They were absolute beasts. He wasn't even sure if he could beat Eve in Jujutsu, let alone William.

  Of course, that was the only if Eve could match his strength. But still, it was just telling how skilled they were.

  Eve lay on the bed, covering her face. She screamed into her pillow.

  "Why the fuck did I do-" She stopped herself, groaning even more. "Should I just tell him?" She immediately shut down that idea. "No, he probably doesn't even like me. He probably sees me like a sister."

  She sighed and sat up. "No, I have to try even if he'll reject me."

  "That's for later, though." She muttered, "For now, let's play some games."

  She opened up her Nintendo 64. She really had to thank William for introducing her to this wonderful world of gaming.

  Quantum OS was a relatively new OS in the market, and yet, just after a month, it had already cornered ten percent of the market. It was also announced that Dell was thinking of partnering up with Quantum Innovation to include their OS as their default and that raised the market share by quite a bit.

  1999, January 15th

  William adjusted his tie for the fourth time. He hated ties. It did nothing other than signal to others that you care about arbitrary fabric arrangements.

  "Stop fidgeting it. You'll mess it up." Eve said as she tiptoed to fix it. He looked down. He almost wanted to pat her snow white hair, but managed to control himself.

  They'd flown into Austin, Texas, just the day before for the meeting with Dell. She was wearing a dark grey pantsuit that made her look older than eighteen. It made her look like a young executive rather than a young girl.

  "This thing is absolute shit, Eve. It's too tight." He loosened it a little. He was wearing a charcoal suit that Eve had insisted he buy specifically for this meeting.

  "You look fine," Eve said as she went back to do her makeup. "Looks very CEO like."

  Dell's headquarters was very... square. They were led to a conference room on the seventh floor by a pleasant assistant who kept sneaking glances at William.

  The conference room had a long table, a wall of windows overlooking Austin, and five people from Dell already seated.

  A man in his mid-forties stood up and said, "Welcome. My name is Robert George. You are, Mr...?"

  "William, CEO of Quantum Innovation."

  "Eve, COO of Quantum Innovation."

  "Please sit," Robert gestured to the chairs across from him. "This is Noah Kim, our VP of Product Development. James Walsh, Director of OEM Partnerships. And Maria Rodriguez and Tom Chen from our technical evaluation team. And Tim Berkers."

  William and Eve greeted all of them, and he noticed that Maria and Tom exchanged glances when they notice his age. He rolled his eyes, and he didn't bother to hide it.

  "Before we begin," Robert began. "I have to say, I didn't expect the CEO of Quantum Innovation to be this young when I reached out."

  William replied bluntly, "I'm 18. Is my age gonna be a problem here?"

  Robert blinked at the directness, "Aw, certainly not. Your product speaks for itself. I'm just surprised, that's all."

  "If that's all, that's not a problem." William pulled out a modified laptop running his OS, "Shall we discuss business then?"

  Robert nodded, "Of course. We've been evaluating Quantum OS for the past three weeks. Tom, would you like to share our findings?"

  Tom, a slightly younger man with glasses, pulled up a presentation, "Mr William, your OS is simply remarkable. Boot time, memory efficiency, file system performance; it outperforms Windows 98 across every benchmark we ran."

  He clicked through slides showing performance comparisons. Slides of QFS versus FAT32 and NTFS, memory usage, CPU efficiency, boot times, and application loading speeds were shown. Every metric showed that Quantum OS was ahead."

  "The virtual machine implementation is particularly impressive," Maria added. "We can run Windows applications in a VM without significant performance degradation. That solves our biggest concern about software compatibility."

  "And the built-in security features," Tom continued, "real-time antivirus scanning, file integrity checking, automatic updates are things Microsoft doesn't have yet and probably won't have for years. You're ahead of the curve."

  He smirked, "That was the intention."

  "Which brings us to the question," Robert leaned forward, "how did you do this? You're eighteen. Your company was founded a month ago. Yet you've built an OS that took Microsoft hundreds of engineers and millions of dollars to develop. Help us understand."

  William fidgeted with his fingers, drumming them on the table, "Is this an interview? Am I applying for a job here?"

  Robert was confused but still answered, "No."

  He smiled, his teeth showing, "Then, I'm not obligated to answer, Mr. George." He wanted to say more, but Eve pinched his side.

  Robert blinked, "Aw, I'm sorry if that was too personal."

  William waved his hand, "It's fine. It's fine. No harm's done. Shall we continue the discussion then?"

  The discussion went smoothly after that. They got the hint and didn't mention anything about how he created the OS. "Let's talk about the business side. What are you proposing?"

  Eve took over, opening her presentation. "We're proposing a tiered OEM partnership. Tier one: You pre-install Quantum OS on a percentage of your systems. We're suggesting 10% initially. We will provide technical support, updates regularly, and marketing co-op funds for three years. Your cost per license would be $40, significantly less than Microsoft's Windows OEM pricing." William looked at her in confusion. They have discussed that they would go for $25. Why was it $40 now?

  Tom noted, "$40? That's lower than Microsoft's price."

  She nodded, "Exactly. We're offering better technology at a lower price. Tier two: If adoption exceeds projections, we can negotiate expanding to 20-30% of your systems. Tier three: If Quantum OS proves successful, we can discuss exclusive partnerships for certain product lines. Naturally, the price of the licensing would go down as we proceed in tiers."

  "You're asking us to bet on an unproven OS from an unproven company," Noah said. He was in his late forties, gray hair showing already.

  "Then, you shouldn't have contacted us if you think we're unproven." Before Eve could stop him, he managed to say it.

  Eve stepped in, "I believe what William meant to say was that we've certainly proven ourselves by the sales. We've gained 10% of the market share already, and that was without any heavy marketing."

  Noah wanted to continue talking, but Robert stopped him. "I see. That certainly proves enough."

  They went back to discuss on their own. Now, all William and Eve had to do was wait.

  Robert glared at Noah, "Why the hell did you do that? You gave them the leverage!"

  Noah wasn't one to take things lying down. "It was a valid question!"

  He shook his head, "No, it wasn't. You should have researched even a bit on them before you came to this discussion. We have to thank miss Eve for sparing us from Mr. William embarrassing you even further."

  Eve sighed in exasperation, "Can you not have just a bit of filter?"

  "No can do, my Eve. Unfortunately, I cannot control my tongue if something I don't like annoys me."

  She blinked, "Is this because of the tie?"

  "... Maybe?"

  She snorted, "You're hopeless."