My Future Self Called To Save My Ruined Life Chapter 06

My Future Self Called To Save My Ruined Life Chapter 06

By the end of my first semester, I was officially a core member of Kleinman’s lab.

There were six of us.

At first, no one took me seriously-until our first project presentation.

My module covered transfer learning for multilingual sentiment recognition.

Two weeks.

I pushed the team’s accuracy from seventy-nine percent to ninety-one.

When I finished walking through my methodology, the whole room went quiet for three full

seconds.

Then the PhD student lead started clapping.

Professor Kleinman leaned back in his chair, a rare hint of approval tugging at his mouth.

“Not bad. Faster than I expected.”

After that, no one questioned my place.

I took on increasingly central tasks, spending twelve hours a day in the lab.

Was it exhausting?

Yes.

But every minute burned for me.

And it felt nothing like the years I’d spent scraping together money for Liam and writing papers for

Savannah.

March fifteenth.

The Summit Capital Growth Fund launched.

I bought in at the open with all twenty thousand.

The weeks that followed, I ran experiments by day and watched the market by night.

The fund’s NAV climbed from 1.0 to 1.5, then jumped to 3.0.

Three months in, it had quadrupled.

Six months in, it had multiplied sixfold.

By year-end, exactly eightfold.

My account balance had grown from twenty thousand to a hundred and sixty thousand.

A hundred and sixty thousand.

To some people, that’s nothing.

But for a student living out-of-state on a full scholarship, it meant I never had to answer to anyone

again.

I moved a hundred thousand into conservative investments.

The remaining sixty thousand stayed liquid for living expenses and emergencies.

Every piece of advice my future self had given me was coming true.

And that was already enough to rewrite my entire future.

Back home, Liam somehow found out about my investment gains.

He added me from a new number.

[Jess, can we talk? I know I messed up before.]

[I’m in a tight spot right now. Could you lend me some money? Just helping out an old friend.]

[I’m not just reaching out for money. I genuinely regret everything.]

Three messages.

Three different angles.

All pointing to the same thing.

Money.

I screenshotted the conversation, archived it, and blocked the number.

Some people never learn dignity.

Spring of my second year.

Google’s North American VP of Technology came to Ashford for an academic visit.

Professor Kleinman featured our lab’s project as the centerpiece and arranged a small technical

demo.

I was responsible for presenting the core algorithm.

That day, I wore a black blazer, my hair pulled back into a sleek low ponytail.

I stood in front of the projection screen and delivered a twenty-minute presentation in fluent

English.

When I finished, the VP turned to Kleinman and said something quietly.

Kleinman nodded, smiling.

After the session, the professor called me to his office.

“Jessica, Google is very interested in our project. We’ll likely be entering formal partnership

negotiations soon.”

“If it moves toward acquisition, you-as a core contributor-will be eligible for equity.”

My heart pounded, but I kept my face steady.

“Professor, what do I need to do?”

“Keep doing what you’re doing.” He waved a hand. “Push the model accuracy higher. Aim for a top-tier conference paper by the second half of the year.”

I nodded.

On my way out, I nearly walked into the doorframe.

Equity.

The final card my future self had mentioned-it was slowly turning face up.