Chapter 5: The First Foundation
The confrontation with Lily was a catalyst. The abstract goal of building an empire suddenly crystallized into a tangible, immediate need: to prove his worth, not to some faceless corporation, but to the people in this cramped apartment. The 'NEXUS' Core was too vast, too distant. He needed a smaller victory, a proof-of-concept that would generate real value and, more importantly, real trust.
He spent 50 of his precious Code Points on [PROJECT MANAGEMENT (PROFESSIONAL)]. The knowledge settled in his mind—Gantt charts, agile development cycles, risk assessment. It was the boring, essential framework that turned genius into a product. He then spent another 100 CP on [CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE (INTERMEDIATE)], granting him a deep, practical understanding of the very systems he aimed to disrupt—the burgeoning worlds of Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. <—AWS and GCP: The two giants renting out vast computing power over the internet. They're the landlords; I need to be one too, he thought.
The mission board reflected his shifting focus.
[FOUNDATION MISSION: GENESIS.]
[OBJECTIVE: LAUNCH A PUBLIC-FACING, REVENUE-GENERATING SERVICE.]
[REWARD: 300 CODE POINTS. BLUEPRINT: 'AEGIS' FIREWALL CORE (v1.0).]
Revenue. That was the key. Not hacked gold, not clever cons, but legitimate, traceable income. It was the only language his father truly understood.
He analyzed the 2014 tech landscape with his new knowledge. Social media was saturated. Mobile apps were the new gold rush, but required marketing he couldn't afford. He needed a service that was useful, simple, and could be built and run from his closet server.
The answer came from his own frustration. His family's internet was slow, unreliable, and their Wi-Fi router was a cheap, outdated model from the cable company. It was a problem millions of households faced. The big companies sold bandwidth, but they didn't care about the quality of the connection inside the home.
He would build "Sentinel Home." A simple, cloud-based service that continuously monitored a home network's health—ping times, packet loss, bandwidth consistency, and device connectivity. It would run a lightweight client on a home computer and send encrypted reports to his server. For a subscription of five dollars a month, it would provide easy-to-read reports and alerts, helping people understand if their internet problems were their own fault or their provider's.
It was a small idea. A utility. But it was real.
He spent a week in a feverish state of creation. He built the backend on his Dell server, coding the monitoring algorithms with his expert C++ skills. He designed a simple website using basic HTML and CSS, purchasing a domain name—sentineldotnet—for a year with his remaining cash. The front-end client was the trickiest part, requiring him to learn the basics of cross-platform development on the fly. It was grueling, frustrating work, a constant battle against bugs and his own limited resources.
He didn't tell his family what he was doing. He simply worked, often until dawn, the glow of his ThinkPad the only light in the room. The only sign of his labor was the increased frequency of him taking out the trash—a cover for checking on the server's hum and heat in the closet.
Finally, it was ready. The website was live. The client was compiled. He had used the last of his funds to set up a payment gateway, a nerve-wracking process that required him to formally register a business name. He put down "Chen Consulting," a deliberately bland and safe-sounding entity.
He needed a beta tester. Someone whose network he knew was problematic.
He approached his father one evening after dinner. Jiang was on the couch, scrolling through fares on his flip phone, a deep frown on his face.
"Dad," Alex began, his heart thudding against his ribs. "I've been working on a project for school. A computer thing. It's supposed to help monitor internet connections. Our Wi-Fi is always cutting out, right? I was wondering if I could install it on your laptop, just to test it."
Jiang looked up, his expression unreadable. "A project? What kind of project?"
"It just runs in the background. It tells you if the internet is slow because of the router or because of the cable company. It's for my programming class." The lie tasted bitter, but it was necessary.
Jiang sighed, the sound heavy with skepticism. But after a long moment, he nodded. "Fine. Do what you want. Just don't break it. I need it for my logs."
It was a tiny crack in the wall, but it was enough. Alex installed the Sentinel client on his father's old Dell Inspiron laptop. He watched, barely breathing, as the first data packets traveled from their apartment, through the 'GHOSTNET' layer, and into his server in the closet. A status bar on his own screen turned from red to a steady, confident green.
[FIRST CLIENT CONNECTED: DIAGNOSTICS NOMINAL.]
For three days, nothing happened. Then, on the fourth day, his father grumbled at dinner, "The internet was terrible today. Kept dropping out while I was submitting my fares."
Alex, who had been monitoring the logs, saw the exact correlation. "It wasn't the internet, Dad. It was our router. See?" He pulled out his own laptop, where he'd created a simplified dashboard. "The signal strength to your laptop dropped by eighty percent for two hours this afternoon. The cable company's connection was fine. The router is overheating."
Jiang peered at the screen, at the clear graphs and timestamps. For the first time, the mysterious, invisible problem had a shape. A cause. "How do you know this?"
"The program I installed. It told me."
Jiang was silent for a long time, looking from the screen to his son's face. The confusion was still there, but it was now mixed with a dawning, reluctant respect. "Huh."
That single, non-committal syllable was worth more to Alex than a thousand Code Points.
A week later, the first payment notification arrived in the Chen Consulting PayPal account. Five dollars. From a user with the ID "J_Driver_74." His father had subscribed.
The victory was quiet, profound. It was the first brick.
[FOUNDATION MISSION COMPLETE: GENESIS.]
[REWARD: 300 CODE POINTS. BLUEPRINT: 'AEGIS' FIREWALL CORE (v1.0) UNLOCKED.]
The Aegis Firewall. This was no longer a simple utility. This was the heart of his future company's namesake—a proactive, intelligent defense system that could learn and adapt. It was the next logical step.
But the universe, it seemed, demanded a balance for every success. The day after the payment came in, a new, chilling notification appeared on his HUD. It wasn't from the mission board. It was a system alert, pulsing with a steady, amber light.
[SECURITY NOTIFICATION: PERSISTENT ENTITY DETECTED.]
[ORIGIN: UNKNOWN. METHODOLOGY: SOPHISTICATED.]
[STATUS: PASSIVE OBSERVATION OF SENTINEL PUBLIC NETWORK TRAFFIC.]
This wasn't Omni-Secure's clumsy probing. This was different. This observer wasn't scanning for vulnerabilities; they were silently, patiently watching the data flow to and from his server. They were studying the patterns of his new service. They were learning.
A mission appeared, its text cold and direct.
[CRISIS MISSION: THE UNSEEN EYE.]
[OBJECTIVE: IDENTIFY THE OBSERVER. DO NOT ENGAGE.]
[REWARD: 150 CODE POINTS. FAILURE: POTENTIAL EXPOSURE.]
Alex felt a cold knot form in his stomach. He had taken his first step into the light, and something in the shadows had taken notice. He had been so focused on building his small, legitimate business, he hadn't considered who else might be watching the digital streets.
He was no longer just a student or a son. He was a founder. And he had just attracted his first, unknown rival. The quiet life in Queens was over. The game had begun.