Chapter 9 - The City of Glass
The flight to New York was Jaylen’s first time in the air.
He spent the entire journey with his face pressed against the window,
watching the world shrink below him.
He saw the green forests of the South turn into the sprawling cities of the East Coast.
When they finally flew over Manhattan,
he let out a gasp that made Wendell,
sitting across from him,
smile.
"It looks like a circuit board,"
Jaylen whispered.
Wendell nodded.
"It is,
Jaylen.
And it’s powered by people like you."
The transition to their new life was a whirlwind of sights and sounds.
They were taken to an apartment in Brooklyn,
a place with high ceilings,
large windows,
and a view of the skyline.
Mrs.
Tate walked through the rooms as if she were in a dream,
touching the granite countertops and the soft carpets.
The next day,
Wendell took Jaylen to the school.
It was a building of glass and light,
filled with students who carried laptops and spoke of robotics and coding.
At first,
Jaylen felt like an alien.
He spoke with a thick Southern drawl,
and his clothes,
though new,
didn't feel like they belonged to him.
But then,
he walked into the engineering lab.
He saw the 3D printers,
the CNC machines,
and the rows of high-end oscilloscopes.
The instructor,
a man with a PhD from MIT,
was struggling with a prototype drone that refused to stay level.
Jaylen watched for five minutes,
then walked up to the bench.
"Your balance is off because the rear-left motor is drawing too much current,"
Jaylen said.
The instructor looked at the boy,
frowning.
"How do you know that?"
"You can hear it,"
Jaylen said.
"It’s a fraction of a semitone higher than the others.
The bearing is tight."
The instructor checked the telemetry on his screen.
His eyes widened as the data confirmed exactly what the boy had heard.
"Who are you?"
the instructor asked.
Jaylen smiled,
his confidence finally beginning to take root.
"I'm Jaylen Tate,"
he said.
"I fix things."
Over the next four years,
Jaylen became a legend at the school.
He didn't just learn the curriculum;
he rewrote it.
He patented three new types of battery cooling systems before he was eighteen.
He spent his summers at Hayes Renewables,
working side-by-side with Wendell.
The billionaire and the boy had formed a bond that was deeper than mentor and student.
They were partners.
Wendell saw his company transformed by Jaylen’s intuitive designs.
And Jaylen saw his life transformed by Wendell’s belief in him.
Mrs.
Tate,
now the manager of hospitality at the corporate headquarters,
was a woman transformed.
The lines of exhaustion had been replaced by a quiet grace.
She was no longer surviving;
May you like
she was thriving.
***
