The silence in the Silvercreek University lecture hall was so dense it seemed to hum. Slumped in the very last row, Caleb Miller stared at the wall clock with an intensity that, to an outside observer, might have looked like extreme concentration. In reality, he was simply calculating whether he had time to grab a burrito before the servers of his favorite online game went offline for maintenance.
In front of him, the final exam for Global Strategies and Predictive Analysis, designed by Professor Harrison, taunted the students with its sixteen pages of complex charts.
It's over, Caleb thought, cracking his fingers. I've turned it in. Freedom.
He stood up, ignoring the strained looks of his classmates who were still sweating over differential equations. He walked down the steps, dropped his stack of papers onto Harrison's cluttered desk without even looking up, and left the room with a nonchalant stride.
What he didn't know was that, in his hurry to get out, he had slipped an extra sheet of yellowed paper under the staple of his exam—torn from his personal notebook earlier that morning.
Twenty minutes later, in the oppressive calm of the faculty office, Arthur Harrison—a global authority in finance, notorious for his cynicism—adjusted his glasses. He was grading exams with a weary sigh, scrawling merciless annotations in the margins, until he reached Miller's paper.
He was about to write "C–" out of sheer habit, a reflex born of the boy's chronic mediocrity, when he noticed the loose sheet.
It was handwritten, in a cursive, almost cryptic script, with arrows pointing in every direction:
– Eggs (organic or nothing, price rising too fast at South Market)
– Milk (minimum 6 packs – risk of stock shortage)
– Invest in RICE (Urgent: bulk supply disappearing)
– Liquidate chip inventory (too salty, demand falling)
– SHORT coffee (burnt taste, no longer worth anything)
Harrison froze. He reread it once. Then twice. His eyebrows rose so high they vanished beneath his gray forelock.
"My God," he whispered, his voice trembling.
He didn't see a grocery list. He saw a brilliant allegory of sector-based inflation. Eggs? Obviously a metaphor for biotech startup incubators. Rice? The foundation of Asian consumption—a prediction of capital flows shifting eastward. And coffee? A biting analysis of the saturation of urban service markets.
"Miller… you arrogant little genius," Harrison muttered, slamming his fist onto the desk. He had foreseen everything. The collapse of EggCoin that very morning… it was written down the night before.
Meanwhile, in the cafeteria, Caleb was biting into his burrito, completely unaware that his destiny had just pivoted on a simple sorting mistake.
The next morning, the awakening was brutal. Caleb wasn't woken by his alarm, but by the frantic pounding of someone at his dorm room door. He opened it, hair sticking up in every direction, eyes swollen with sleep.
"What?" he grunted.
Standing in front of him was Sophie Vance. The Sophie Vance. President of the Entrepreneurship Club, heiress to the Sterling-Vance fortune, and probably the most intimidating person on campus. She was wearing a navy-blue pantsuit that likely cost more than Caleb's car, and she held her phone like a weapon.
"Who do you think you're messing with, Miller?" she snapped, stepping into the tiny room without being invited.
Caleb blinked, stunned.
"Uh… hi? Do we know each other?"
Sophie stopped short, scanning him from head to toe with a mix of disdain and fascination.
"Very funny. The I'm-too-cool-to-remember-you routine. Listen. Harrison posted the results. He put your exam under glass in the Hall of Honor. He's calling you The Oracle of the Shadow."
A glacial cold spread through Caleb's stomach.
"The Oracle of… what?"
"Don't play dumb. Your theory on The Fall of Coffee went viral on the school's trading forums last night. The price collapsed at the opening of the London exchange. Exactly like you predicted on your little… technical sheet."
Caleb suddenly remembered his grocery list. Coffee. He'd written that because the dorm machine leaked and he didn't want to buy it anymore.
"Sophie, listen, I think there's been a huge misunderstanding," he began, raising his hands.
She stepped closer, annihilating his personal space. She was shorter than him, but her aura was predatory. She sniffed the air.
"You smell like cheap burrito and total indifference. Is that your secret? You act like nothing matters so you can observe patterns the rest of us mere mortals miss?"
"No, I smell like burrito because I ate a burrito. That's it."
Sophie let out a short, almost nervous laugh.
"Incredible. You're even colder than they said. Listen carefully, Caleb Miller. My father wants me to bring back a viable project before the end of the semester. You are that project. We're going to work together."
"Work on what? I just want to sleep!"
"On your empire, idiot. The dean just awarded you the Goldman Sachs Excellence Scholarship. You're expected in an hour to sign the paperwork."
She turned on her heel, her blonde hair snapping through the air. At the doorway, she looked back.
"And Miller? Get dressed. Geniuses don't wear pajamas with duck patterns."
She slammed the door. Caleb stood frozen in the middle of his messy room, his heart pounding. He glanced at his computer. A notification had just appeared on his university bank account.
Transfer received: $50,000 – Excellence Scholarship.
"Oh no," he murmured, clutching his head with both hands. "What have I done?"