The Road Home

And when those years were done, he went back to the forge, and he went by choice. Nearly a thousand AI companies had passed before him. He had watched their founders ride out the storm of the new age, building the ship while already at sea, and he had learned which choices kept them afloat and which sank them. Now he carried a maker’s hands and an investor’s eye, the reckoning of capital, and the speed and rigor of the western hills, and he meant to put all of it to work: to lead teams, shape products from the first sketch, and see them through to the market. The road ran east to Washington, where new work waited and his family too. At the top of the last hill stood a house with its lamp already lit.