MidReal Story
Algorithm of Fortune
Scenario: As a poor programmer
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Jamie Linwood
struggling programmer, friends with Mia and rivals with Eric, short black hair, analytical and introverted
Mia Torres
supportive friend and fellow coder, friends with Jamie and Eric, long red hair, vibrant and optimistic
Eric Jensen
competitive coder at a rival firm, rival of Jamie and friend of Mia, tall with glasses, ambitious and cunning
I was a struggling programmer living paycheck to paycheck in the heart of Silicon Valley.
My apartment was a dump, my car was on its last leg, and I had no idea how I was going to pay off my student loans.
But that was all about to change.
I’d been working on a personal project at home when I stumbled upon a complex algorithm that could predict stock market trends with uncanny accuracy.
It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and I knew it could make me rich beyond my wildest dreams.
The next day, I quit my job and started trading full-time from my apartment.
Within weeks, I’d made more money than I ever thought possible.
Silicon Valley was the land of opportunity.
People from all over the world came to this place to become the next tech billionaire, and I was one of them.
But unlike most of them, I was a struggling programmer, barely making ends meet.
My apartment was a dump, my car was barely holding together, and I didn’t even want to think about my student loans.
I’d spent four years studying computer science at Stanford University, only to graduate with $100,000 in debt, and the best job I could find was at a tech support company that paid me just enough to cover my rent and bills.
When I’d first moved to Silicon Valley, I’d been full of hope and ambition, but after two years of working at the same dead-end job, I was starting to lose faith in myself and my dreams.
I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life working for someone else, but I had no idea how to break out of my current situation.
I spent all day working on other people’s projects at my job and then came home and did the same thing for myself.
I’d been working on a personal project for the past six months that was completely unrelated to my job—just a fun side project that I hoped would one day make me some money.
But so far, it hadn’t panned out the way I’d hoped.
I’d spent countless hours writing code and running simulations, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get the results I wanted.
The project was starting to feel like a huge waste of time, but I couldn’t bring myself to give up on it.
I’d been working on my project one night when something strange happened.
I was running my usual simulation, and everything seemed to be going as expected, when all of a sudden, my computer started spitting out lines of code faster than I could read them.
It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and for a moment, I thought my computer had been hacked.
But when the lines of code started to slow down, I realized that it wasn’t an attack at all—it was an algorithm.
And not just any algorithm—a highly complex, incredibly sophisticated algorithm that no human could have written in a million years.
I sat frozen in front of my computer, staring at my screen in disbelief.
How had this happened?
And more importantly, what did it mean?
I had no idea what the algorithm was supposed to do or how it had gotten onto my computer, but my curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to test it out.
I ran it through my simulation, and when the results came back, I almost fell out of my chair.
The algorithm could predict stock market trends with uncanny accuracy.
I was the apple of their eye, the center of their universe, and they did everything they could to make sure I had a good life.
They taught me the value of hard work and education, and made many sacrifices to ensure that I could attend Stanford University, where I excelled in computer science.
After graduating with honors, I moved to Silicon Valley, the land of opportunity, where I dreamed of becoming a successful programmer and making a name for myself in the tech industry.
But reality hit me like a ton of bricks when I arrived in the heart of Silicon Valley and found myself barely scraping by, working at a tech support company to pay off my student loans.
My apartment was a dingy one-bedroom in Sunnyvale, and my car was an unreliable old Honda Civic that left me stranded on the side of the road more times than I could count.
It was hard to believe that someone with my credentials could be so broke, but that was life in Silicon Valley.
The competition was fierce, and even though my resume had the name "Stanford University" on it, it wasn’t enough to get me the kind of job that would allow me to live comfortably in the Bay Area.
My job was mind-numbingly boring, and it offered little in the way of creative satisfaction.
Most days, I spent my time helping elderly customers troubleshoot email issues or navigate their social media accounts.
It was the kind of job that anyone with half a brain could do, and it drove me crazy to be stuck there day after day, when I knew that I was capable of so much more.
In college, I had thrived on the challenges of complex coding problems and had spent countless hours writing code and building programs.
But now, most of my time was spent troubleshooting basic computer problems and answering questions from people who barely knew how to turn their computers on.
It was a far cry from what I’d imagined my life would be like when I first moved to Silicon Valley, and I often found myself feeling frustrated and defeated.
To escape from the monotony of my job and the disappointment of my life, I would come home and work on personal coding projects after hours.
I’d been working on a project for the past six months that I hoped would one day make me rich.
But so far, it hadn’t panned out, and I was starting to lose hope that it ever would.
But that was all about to change.
I’d been working on my project one night when something strange happened.
I was running my usual simulation, and everything seemed to be going as expected, when all of a sudden, my computer started spitting out lines of code faster than I could read them.
It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and for a moment, I thought my computer had been hacked.
It took me a few minutes to realize that I wasn’t being hacked at all — my program had generated an algorithm so complex that it had taken on a life of its own.
It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and I knew immediately that it was something special.
The next morning, instead of going to work, I spent the day researching and testing the algorithm I’d discovered.
To my amazement, I found that it could accurately predict stock market trends with an astonishing degree of accuracy.
It was an incredible discovery — one that could make me rich beyond my wildest dreams.
And so, I made the decision then and there to quit my job and trade full-time from my apartment in Silicon Valley.
I had nothing more than a laptop and an internet connection, but it was all I needed.
My first trade turned out to be a winner, and I made more money in that one day than I’d made in the past year at my tech support job.
After that, there was no turning back.
Instead of looking for another job in tech support like everyone else in Silicon Valley, I devoted myself full-time to trading.
And within weeks, I was cashing out hundreds of thousands of dollars online.
It was more money than I’d ever imagined having in my entire life.
I used the money to pay off my student loans and my credit card debt, and then I bought myself a brand-new Audi R8 and moved into a luxury high-rise apartment in downtown San Francisco with views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.
It was the kind of life I’d always dreamed of having — the kind of life that only money could buy.
And now that I had more money than I knew what to do with, it felt like anything was possible.
I spent the next few months trading full-time from my apartment and watching my bank account grow exponentially with each passing day.
The algorithm had proven itself time and time again, guiding me toward profitable trades with incredible accuracy.
I was making so much money that I didn’t know what to do with it all, so I spent it freely on the kinds of things that would have seemed like an impossible luxury just a few months earlier:
designer clothes, expensive watches, lavish dinners, and exotic vacations.
I was living the kind of life that most people could only dream of having, and it felt like nothing could go wrong.
But there was one thing that kept me up at night — the fear that someone would discover the truth about my algorithm and try to take it from me.
It wasn’t something that I could risk getting out, not when so much was at stake, and so I kept it hidden from everyone.
I never told Mia, or anyone else for that matter, about the algorithm or where it came from.
I couldn’t risk it being traced back to me, or worse, being discovered by someone who would try to steal it from me and use it for their own gain.
