Live Different

“Please, don’t do it,” Janna said.

Ling sighed as he crossed his legs. “You’re telling me that right before the big reveal of a product we—including you—have been working on for the last five years.”

Her fingers tightened around her clipboard. “I’m sorry, it only dawned on me now, but Ling, the Hiraya…” her voice faltered. “I promise you, it will do more harm than good.”

Ling slammed the dressing room table, and Janna flinched. The lights flickered above them. “I don’t have the time to change the entirety of the Hiraya in an hour, so I’m going to change your mind instead. You’re looking at it the wrong way.”

Her voice quivered. “Sir, it will brainwash an entire nation.”

“Into achieving their dreams!” He stood up. “Don’t you see, Janna? The Hiraya will help people do anything they put their mind into. Anything. What’s wrong with that?”

“Giving people that much freedom and ease will ruin them more than help.”

“My God,” Ling started laughing then, clenching his stomach as he tried to maintain his balance. “Are you even listening to yourself? I’m giving people the quintessential tool to reach their fullest potential. It’s no different than a smartphone or a PC, no different than the freedom of the internet where thoughts fly around like stray bullets at wartime. The Hiraya is the funnel that captures the bullets the user wants, and shoots them out if they so wish. That freedom your against is what the Hiraya gives, and is exactly what the world needs.”

“So you’re the all-seeing judge now of what the world needs, Ling?”

“Oh, I don’t need to be the judge. The marketing forecast that your team came up with speaks for itself. Hiraya is going to be revealed to the public in less than an hour, and there’s nothing you can do about it. We are entering a new world where the barriers to entry are virtually non-existent. Basketball players fit to compete in the NBA will be made in three hours as opposed to three years. A college degree will be achieved in less than that. A 900-page Anatomy book, learned in minutes. Do you realize how many doors I’m opening? The Buddha liked to say that life is suffering. But with the Hiraya, it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Janna turned away from him. “But what does that leave living, then?”

Ling crossed his eyebrows. “What? You’re being too philosophical, you—”

She left him in his dressing room without another word. He scoffed as something bubbled inside him; it left Ling furious.

—15 years ago—

Ling laid on his bed naked, his stomach covered with his seed. He wasn’t too focused anymore on the porn video playing from his tablet, more so at the cracks on his ceiling that seemed bigger than he last checked. He got up to wash himself and saw his face in the mirror. Sagging cheeks, blackheads, acne on his forehead, his eyebrows forming a unibrow if he looked hard enough, hair unkempt and springing out all over the place. 

This was the face of the world’s next leading CEO in the tech industry. That’s what he told himself every day, as per instruction from The Magic of Thinking Big. 

“I am enough.”

“I am in the top 0.01% of men.”

“I am loved.”

“I am smart, charismatic, empathetic, quick-witted, in control of my emotions, a master of my life.”

“I am porn-free.”

“I am hardworking.”

“I will succeed.”

“Positive thoughts… positive thoughts…”

He washed his face, and he smiled (I can’t be this ugly). He put on a dress of clothes and sat on his desk. His bulky laptop humming in the background, waiting to be used. Reminders he’d written down on a checklist were left unchecked. He didn’t feel like doing any of them. Why bother getting to work in such a state anyway? Doing things unmotivated would only make him detest the work even more. So, he popped up Call of Duty on his computer. 

He grinned. Janna was online.

“Hey,” he messaged. “Don’t you have marketing stuff to do, Ms. Pascual? Haiyah, you’re wasting your parents’ tuition money.”

She messaged back. “I’m sitting comfy at a 1.2 CGPA, I’m chill.”

His hands moved faster than his brain. “Wow, showoff much?”

“I’m taking the piss, Ling. I’m sure you’re doing just fine, right?” 

Ling’s fingers froze over the keyboard. He was biting his lip, but caught himself just before drawing blood.

He messaged, “Okay, enough talk about academics, let’s play the game, yeah?”

“Agreed.”

“Voice call?”

“Sure.”

Hearing her voice in his headset calmed him down. An hour passed. Then two, then three. He was in a state of pure bliss as he mowed down enemies with his childhood friend.

He liked life like this. It was just so… easy.

——

“What do you mean you want to delay the reveal?” Ling was the tiniest transgression away from punching someone squarely on the mouth. 

“I-I’m sorry, sir,” muttered Chief Engineer Wiz, his eyes wide open at the Hiraya on stage. “There seems to be a problem with the way data is being inputted into the system and translated into the user’s hippocampus. If a user wanted to know everything about cats, the Hiraya would instead let them know everything about scat. In other words—”

“A shitty situation, yes. When did this happen?”

“Just a while ago, sir.”

“Why wasn’t this brought up before?”

“I-it wasn’t a problem before.”

“So what caused the problem?” Ling gave the slightest glance at Janna. She didn’t break eye contact. “And can you fix it?”

“I’m not too sure, sir. Intentional or otherwise, think someone may have physically manipulated the Hiraya, and with the way everything connects and has to be installed manually, there was probably a mistake somewhere that exponentially—”

“Can you fucking fix it?”

“I can, but we can’t open in thirty minutes. I’d need two hours at least to go through the whole procedure and setup.”

Ling grabbed Wiz by the collar and pulled him up to his face. “I hope you realize that you were in charge of this from the very start, Chief Engineer. You don’t need two hours because you will fix it in…” he glanced down at his watch. “Twenty-nine minutes, and the clock is only going to be ticking down from here. If you fail to fix this though, don’t worry, because I will do what any reasonable CEO would do: explain the situation, apologize to the two thousand people consisting of journalists, tech insiders, and experts in the auditorium, and explain that my Chief Engineer William “Wiz” Hargreaves messed it up, and that he too is really, really sorry. Do you understand, Mr. Hargreaves?”

He had an ugly look on his face as the he understood the implications of what would happen, and Ling smiled at that. Wiz gave a hard nod. “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Ling said, and let go of Wiz’s collar. He patted Wiz on the back. “By the way, you have twenty-seven minutes now, so you better get on that.”

Ling caught another glimpse of Janna, but she was already talking to some other worker. Why was she being like this? He shook his head (don’t focus on that now). He stared out at the closed doors of the auditorium, let that jubilant feeling rise within him. For he knew with certainty that the Hiraya would be the new technological innovation to change the world. And that he would be at the forefront of it all.

—12 years ago—

Ling decided to sit in on one of the computer engineering classes in university. He liked to look fondly back at this decision as one of the smartest moves he made, but preferred to leave out that it was likely driven in part by alcohol. The professor was old-school, talked slowly and filled out the entire blackboard in meaningless chalk. It didn’t take long for Ling to regret this decision. That is, until a certain student caught his attention. He was at the corner of the classroom with his manic look in his eyes, typing out some code on his laptop which was completely different from what was on the blackboard. Ling asked for the student’s name; he was told that was William Hargreaves, the engineering “Wiz” of ID 288. 

When the bell rang, Ling made his move. Before Wiz could start packing up, Ling called out, “Hey Wiz!”

Wiz flinched and turned to find Ling’s unfamiliar face smiling at him. “Do I know…?”

“You don’t, but starting now you will get to know me quite a lot.” He strolled down to Wiz and bent over to look at the screen of his laptop. “Fascinating stuff.”

“You code?”

“Absolutely not. Don’t understand a lick of it, and I don’t plan to. Which makes my fascination for your kind grow even more.”

“Naah,” Wiz exhaled with a smile. “W-wait, where’s your ID? Are you even a student—”

“The muse on my shoulder leads me to where I must go to achieve my true potential. This classroom is where she pointed to next. So, with all that said,” he motioned to the screen. “What’s all this for? I noticed you working on this while that old professor kept yapping his trap.”

“It’s uh… I actually can’t say.”

That tickled Ling’s interest, and now he wouldn’t leave without knowing what it was. “Mhm. And why not?”

“I just can’t, man.”

Ling exhaled, pulled up a chair, and sat right next to Wiz. “Can I tell you a story, Wiz?”

Wiz crossed his arms. “I-I kind of have to get to my next class—”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, my friend, but I’m Chinese.”

“Oh!” He chuckled nervously. “Really? I thought you were uh…”

“Japanese? Korean? Pick your poison.” 

Wiz chuckled at that. 

Ling waved his arms. “Anyway, Chinese immigrant culture has been embedded into my upbringing since I was a boy. They had it hard when they first moved here. Starting from nothing until finally they had this small bakery. It was decently successful that we could get by just fine, which to my parents, was all they could’ve wanted. They groomed me to take over that business. To walk down that safe and narrow road, paved for me without my consent. Every little stray path and deviation that presented itself to me: all distractions, no good, they always said. Don’t be an artist, don’t be just an employee, be a businessman or a doctor. Those were my only two choices, Wiz.”

Wiz nodded along. “And then what happened?”

“What happened was I thought I could reason with them. I thought that if I explained myself they’d get off my case. I wanted a journey with all the hurdles and challenges that plagued the likes of Jobs and Musk and I wanted to pass them all easily. To chase my dream to be the next face that will change the course of mankind. And do you know what my mother did? She laughed at me. Told me to stop joking, and told me that dreaming doesn’t make you full.”

“That’s awful.”

“But that’s what set me in motion, Wiz. I supposedly came to college for a degree in business to bring back knowledge for the bakery. What I actually came here to do was to search for something to get me out of that life. I know I can make something big. All I need is complementary piece of the puzzle to set me into motion. And when I saw you, Wiz, I thought you could be the one that could propel me—no, us, into the annals of history. I mean that. But I have to know if you’re the man I need for the job. Part of that is letting me know what you’re working on.”

Wiz drummed his fingers on the keyboard, his mouth twisting and untwisting with contemplation. “You keep mum about this, all right?” 

Bingo. “Of course,” Ling said. 

“I get paid to do coding projects for other students.”

“Attaboy,” Ling impishly grinned as he slapped Wiz on the chest. “I have lots of respect for hustlers. How much?”

“A hundred bucks.”

“Run that code of yours and let’s see if it’s worth that.”

Wiz typed away on the laptop, and a few clicks later, a new window opened. The avatar of a woman popped out, wearing a futuristic black suit with thick blue lines. 

A speech bubble appeared over her: “My name is Hiwaga.”

“Hiwaga?” Ling asked. “What kind of name is that?”

“This student’s Filipino,” Wiz said. “It means mystery, or something like that.” He clicked on the screen, and the text in the speech bubble changed.

“Google never gives you clear answers; I do. What do you want to know?”

Ling said, “Ask about the meaning of life.”

Wiz was flabbergasted. “B-but we don’t even know the answer to that.”

“Hey, maybe your program does. Go, ask it.”

Wiz shrugged, and he typed out the question. Hiwaga buffered for a while, until finally, her speech bubble refreshed: “The meaning of life is what you make of the suffering that is inherent with it.”

Ling scratched his head. “That’s a rather simple answer, no?”

“Current version only supports answers that fit in one speech bubble. Sorry.”

“Okay, scratch that then. How about, what’s the difference between kwashiorkor and marasmus?”

Wiz stopped in the middle of typing. “What? How do you spell that?”

“I have friends in med school, they rant about this stuff a lot. It’s spelled…” a few moments later, Hiwaga had an answer: “Kwashiorkor occurs when protein deprivation is relatively greater than the reduction in total calories, while marasmus occurs when the diet is severely lacking in total calories.” 

“Wiz,” Ling found his mouth stretching into a smile.

“Mhm?”

“Are you deliberately trying to sabotage yourself?”

He furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”

“Sell a program like this to people who know what they’re doing and you can wipe your ass with a hundred dollars.”

“R-really?”

“It’s a rough gem, but polish it out, and you have a literal diamond in your hands. And I can help you do that. Join forces with me now, Wiz. 65-35 split in equity.” Ling presented his hand. “With my vision and your expertise, we’ll make it to the moon at least. Whaddaya say?”

“Th-this is all so sudden.”

“The best moments in life are when we say fuck it.”

Wiz stood up, stared at the hand. “Fuck.” Then back to Ling. “Only because I like you.” They shook hands.

——

Ling looked down at his watch. One minute left. He turned to Wiz. 

“Mr. Hargeaves,” Ling said. “I trust you—”

The wrench clattered against the floor of the stage as Wiz pulled away from the Hiraya. 

“I see—”

“It’s done,” Wiz said, pointing a finger at Ling. “All right, asshole?”

Ling’s face remained unmoving. “Thank you, Mr. Hargreaves, for doing your job.”

“Fuck you.” Wiz stormed off stage. With a sigh, Ling motioned to two employees to cover up the Hiraya with a cloth. His eyes wandered again.

Janna still did not look at him.

That did it. Ling stormed over to her, and she turned to him nonchalantly. “Why are you acting like this?” He asked.

“You know perfectly well,” she said.

“I’m your best friend, tell me.”

“I already did: call off the reveal.”

“You know I can’t. Too much media attention—”

“So now you have a problem with going against something you’ve been “forced” into?”

“Let me rephrase; I don’t want to.” 

The auditorium doors opened with slow grandeur. Ling pulled Janna backstage as the steps of two thousand people echoed throughout. It was deafening. 

“Hook my lapel up,” Ling said.

“Do it yourself.” Janna’s voice shook. 

Ling’s fist curled inward; he stopped himself from raising it up to her face. With gritted teeth, he called someone else to do it. 

“Knowledge is power, Janna,” Ling said. “I’m equalizing the playing field. Do you realize how much good this is going to do for the underprivileged?”

“You and I both know that’s not why you made this machine. So tell me now. Why?”

Ling dug his fingernails into his palms. “I can’t say.”

Janna shook her head. “Ling, please.” She wiped her eyes. “It hurts me seeing you like this.” 

Ling couldn’t find the right words to respond with as she asked someone for a tissue. He settled with, “The Hiraya is the genie that will grant these people their dreams.”

“You’re right. Just remember that Aladdin never became a real prince after wishing to become one.”

“This man needs no introduction,” the speakers boomed throughout the auditorium. “Please, welcome on stage, Kevin Ling!” A thunderous standing ovation upon the mention of his name.

Ling hesitated walking out. Janna was trying and failing miserably to stop crying. But he was too far in to stop now for a few tears, right?

The applause began to fade, distant murmurs wondering where Ling was. But there was a reason he created the Hiraya. He knew that if it existed fifteen years ago, he’d have snatched one up in a heartbeat. 

And Ling never really got far by listening to other people. 

He turned around and walked on stage.

The crowd rediscovered its gusto, hollering louder than before. He knew it didn’t look good to the press reveling in moments like this, but Ling couldn’t help it. He smiled, spread his arms wide, and felt the moment. That everything from his past has put him here. Each vice, each family argument, each person he’d met—all footsteps necessary to cement his place on this stage, and in a few moments, his place in history. 

He opened his mouth and said, “I’d like to introduce to everyone something we’ve been cooking up for the last five years. And trust me when I say this: it will make your life so, so easy.”