While Jerry Yang and David Filo were busy complaining to each other in the garage, Zach and John Leighton were already on the road.
“John, did we really just leave like that?” Zach asked from the driver’s seat, genuinely puzzled.
“Of course.
Yahoo is essentially on solid ground now.
It’s just a matter of waiting for venture capital and advertising clients to come knocking.
Zach, we are angel investors, not employees.
Yahoo’s day to day development is their responsibility, not ours.
The advertising profit model has been explained and implemented.
Yes, others can see it and imitate it, but we are at least half a year ahead of every competitor currently operating on the internet.
Half a year is more than enough for Yahoo to pull clear of the field and establish itself as the undisputed number one internet portal.”
…
“Alright.
Then let’s talk about something more pressing.
You’ve put all your money into Yahoo.
What do we actually have left to live on?”
“About twelve thousand dollars.
You?”
“Two thousand,” Zach said with a wry smile.
“At least our rent is paid annually.”
“Yours is, yes.
Mine runs out in a month.”
…
“Zach, I was just telling Jerry and David that they are already multi-millionaires on paper.
Based on Yahoo’s current trajectory, the next funding round will value the company at fifty million at minimum, possibly over a hundred million.
Which means I am also a multi-millionaire on paper.
And yet here I am, with ten thousand dollars to my name for living expenses.”
“I don’t fully understand how these valuations work.
But if you’re a multi-millionaire, does that make me one too?
Because this particular millionaire is about to go broke.”
“Don’t worry.
Between the two of us we have enough to last at least half a year.
When your rent runs out, move in with me.”
John Leighton shook his head at the picture they made.
Zach had resigned from his firm.
John was a fifteen year old with no income.
The two of them sitting across from each other with twelve thousand dollars between them was genuinely funny.
“If things get truly desperate, we can always ask Jerry and David for a short term advance.
With the momentum Yahoo has right now, advertising revenue should arrive soon.
They wouldn’t let us starve.” John Leighton said it lightly, though he meant it.
…
They made it back to San Francisco without trouble, returned the rental car, and bought tickets to Los Angeles.
On landing, they retrieved Zach’s truck from the airport parking lot and drove back to the apartment.
The place had been sitting empty for over a month.
A thorough cleaning was unavoidable.
“Finally done.
I haven’t even slept a single night in this apartment yet and I’ve already had to scrub it top to bottom.”
“Alright, Boy.
Didn’t you say you could cook?
Go make something.”
“Zach, we have no ingredients.
Everything we bought before we left has long since gone bad.
McDonald’s today, then the supermarket after.”
“Damn McDonald’s,” Zach muttered, hauling himself to his feet.
…
After finishing their respective complaints, they tidied themselves up and headed out.
As they stepped out of the elevator and walked toward the main entrance, it happened again.
“Bang bang bang…”
A rapid burst of gunshots from outside, and just like the first time, Zach immediately pulled John Leighton behind the front desk.
Sure enough, the woman at the reception smiled and began offering the same reassurances she had offered before.
“Zach.
I have been back in this building for two days.
I have encountered a war both days.”
Zach looked genuinely embarrassed.
“I know, I know.
The security here isn’t great.
But we don’t have the money to move right now.
When I lived here before, this kind of thing happened maybe once every two or three months.
Why has it been so constant lately?” He trailed off, muttering to himself.
John Leighton could only shake his head.
The public security situation in the slum districts of American cities in this era was genuinely something else.
Within a few minutes the police sirens sounded, the street went quiet, and the homeless and local residents resumed their business as though nothing had happened.
Clearly they had long since made their peace with it.
John Leighton told himself quietly: grow up fast.
The moment he turned eighteen, he was applying for a gun license.
The thought gave him a small, slightly contradictory thrill.
…
After dinner, they stopped to buy two computers.
The prices were genuinely reasonable.
Even in 1995, most American apartments could connect to the internet, and while the internet was clearly on the rise, it had not yet become mainstream in most households.
The store offered door to door delivery and installation, including setup support until everything was fully operational, all for a small additional fee.
Zach drove them back to the apartment in his old truck.
The computers arrived shortly after, were installed without incident, and before long both of them were connected to the internet at home and able to log into Yahoo directly.
They now had a window into the site’s basic situation from their own living rooms.
…
With John Leighton on a school leave of absence and Zach no longer employed, both of them suddenly had their days completely free.
Zach threw himself into the internet with unexpected enthusiasm, spending hours online each day, showing every sign of becoming thoroughly addicted to it.
John Leighton, on the other hand, spent most of his time on magic cultivation.
Beyond his daily check ins with Jerry Yang and the team, that was where his focus went.
It always had been.
He was clear eyed about why.
Magic was his fundamental foundation in this world, and he would never abandon it regardless of what else was happening in his life.
Earth was not an ideal environment for magical development.
The activity level of magic elements here seemed remarkably low, which was the most likely explanation for why over ten years of consistent practice had only brought him to the peak of the apprentice stage.
Progress was slow, but it was real.
When he looked at the memories of the Magic God Einstein, the contrast was striking.
Einstein had discovered his magical talent at three, perceived magic elements at five, entered apprenticeship at seven, and became a full magician at nine.
By twelve he was intermediate level.
By fifteen, advanced.
He reached great magician at twenty, spent decades travelling the magical world, peaked as a great magician at thirty, and became a Saint Magician at fifty, the youngest in the history of that world.
At one hundred, he ascended to become the only Magic God in existence, a being capable of reshaping the weather of an entire world.
Becoming a Magic God meant a lifespan measured not in decades but in millennia.
…
Every time John Leighton thought about the fact that even reaching full magician status would extend a person’s natural lifespan well beyond a hundred years, possibly to a hundred and fifty, he felt a renewed surge of motivation.
If he could break through to great magician in this lifetime, he would be looking at three hundred to five hundred years of life.
The thought alone was enough to make a person forget to eat and sleep.
Beyond longevity, becoming a magician meant becoming the most formidable individual combatant on the planet.
No man in any era has ever genuinely refused the chance to be the strongest.
When you stripped everything back, what men throughout history had always pursued came down to a short list.
Power over the world.
The company of beauty.
And above both of those, more time.
The lengths to which rulers and emperors across every civilisation had gone in pursuit of longer life said everything that needed to be said.
So John Leighton kept at it.
Every day, without exception, a significant portion of his energy went to magical cultivation.
The results were modest.
The progress was slow.
But he understood clearly that magic cultivation was not something that rewarded impatience.It rewarded persistence.