Chapter 31: Pushing For More

Timothy closed his laptop and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. The numbers still danced there—$500,000,000 USD, glowing like they’d been seared into his brain. Twenty-eight billion pesos. It was absurd. Unreal. It felt less like money and more like something out of a dream, the kind that left you sweating and wondering if your mind had broken."Half a billion..." he muttered to himself. "Do you even realize how much that is, Guerrero?"

He looked at the cracked mirror and saw a twenty-year-old kid who had just been offered more money than presidents controlled.

And yet, it wasn’t enough.

Not enough because the fact they had raised the offer fourfold meant this wasn’t their ceiling. This was their opening hand in a high-stakes game. If they were ready to give him $500 million, then the chip—the prototype sitting under his bed in a black case—was worth tens of billions, maybe even hundreds, once commercialized.

He pulled the chair back, sat down, and opened the laptop again.

"What can I even do with this thing on my own?" he asked the dim room.

He pictured it: a company with his name on it, Guerrero Technologies or something like that. AI boxes powered by his chip, servers so powerful they could fit entire datacenters into a single rack. The world’s cloud giants lining up at his door.

Then the fantasy cracked. He didn’t have a fab. He didn’t have a team. He didn’t even have a lawyer he could trust, let alone the infrastructure to scale. The Reconstruction System could produce one prototype at a time, maybe more if he stacked more GPUs, but where it will come from is difficult to justify? It’s easy to start a technological business when you have millions of dollars of money, especially ones that are futuristic in nature.

NVIDIA had the factories, the fabs, the distribution networks, the engineers. Selling to them meant the chip would actually make it into the world, instead of gathering dust in his bedroom.

He leaned back, fingers tapping against the desk. But selling too low was stupid. It would mean giving away the future for a discount price.

"The rules of negotiation," he said, recalling something he’d once read in a random business forum. "If they’re desperate enough to raise the offer this high, then they still have room. You never accept the first number that shocks you."

He opened the email again, rereading Dr. Kwan’s words. "We urge you to consider this offer seriously." Urge. Not demand. That meant they wanted him on their side, not fighting them. For now, he still had leverage.

Timothy opened a blank draft and stared at the blinking cursor.

What do I even say?

He cracked his knuckles, thought for a long minute, then began typing.

[Subject: Re: Revised Proposal – Confidential

Dear Dr. Kwan,

I appreciate your revised offer and the seriousness with which NVIDIA has approached this matter. I have given the proposal deep thought, and I agree with your assessment: the technology I currently hold has the potential to reshape the computing landscape.

That said, we both understand its true value is far greater than the figure presented. The ability of one unit to replace thousands of H100s, combined with full schematics and blueprints, is not just a product—it is a generational leap.

If NVIDIA truly intends to secure exclusive rights to this design and prototype, I am willing to continue discussions under one condition: that your offer reflects the full weight of what is at stake.

Raise the offer, and we can move forward.

I await your response.

Regards,

Timothy Guerrero]

He read it over five times, trimming and rephrasing until it was sharp, professional, and unshakable. No pleading. No desperation. Just leverage.

When he was satisfied, he hit send.

The email vanished into the void, leaving Timothy with the silence of his room once more. He leaned back and exhaled, his pulse loud in his ears.

"There," he whispered. "Now let’s see just how far they’re willing to go."

Hours ticked by. Timothy didn’t sleep. He lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling fan as it spun lazily, his thoughts racing.


What if they walk away? he thought. What if I just lost $500 million because I got greedy?

But then he shook his head. No. They wouldn’t walk away. The way they looked at that chip in Santa Clara, the way the lab techs muttered like they’d seen God—it wasn’t something they could ignore. NVIDIA was already in too deep.

They needed him.

Still, he couldn’t ignore the weight pressing against his chest. He turned, saw the black case peeking out from under his bed. It almost seemed alive, humming faintly in his imagination. That single card held the fate of billions, maybe the entire trajectory of human computing.

And it was his.

The next morning, Timothy shuffled into the kitchen, bleary-eyed. His mother was cooking rice, humming to herself. The smell of garlic filled the air.

"You didn’t sleep?" she asked without turning.

"Too much on my mind," Timothy said. He sat at the small table, rubbing his face.

"Is this about that ’business’ of yours?" she asked, glancing at him.

He smiled faintly. "Something like that."

She set down a bowl of rice in front of him. "Don’t push yourself too hard. Money is good, son, but if you lose your peace of mind, it’s useless."

Her words cut deeper than she knew. Timothy nodded, forcing a bite down his throat even though he couldn’t taste it. Peace of mind was exactly what he didn’t have.

By midday, he refreshed his inbox for the hundredth time.

Still nothing.

His stomach twisted with both fear and anticipation. He paced his room, glancing at his phone every other second.

He knew the reply would come. The only question was: how much higher would they go?

500 million had already broken the ceiling of anything he thought possible. Would they dare to double it? Triple it? A billion dollars?

Timothy clenched his fists, heart pounding. Whatever their next number was, it would tell him everything.

And as he was in class, his phone buzzed. He discreetly picked it up and there he saw an email from NVIDIA.