August 2nd, 2001 – 5:42 AM
Daniel's eyes cracked open to the buzz and hiss of his ancient radio alarm clock. The speakers wheezed with static before sputtering out a familiar early-2000s anthem:
"It's been a long road, gettin' from there to here..."
"It's been a long time, but my time is finally near..."
He groaned.
Of all the songs in existence, why does it have to be the theme from Enterprise?
"Ah yes, the soundtrack of human ambition right before you all collectively faceplanted into the 21st century." Claude chirped. "Also, you're the only teenager in America who wakes up before 6 AM voluntarily."
Daniel sat up slowly, his joints cracking in ways his body shouldn't allow at seventeen. "Old man habits die hard."
"You're not old," Claude corrected. "You're vintage."
He glared at the radio. "I should destroy that thing."
"You already destroyed a table full of grown gamblers. Let the radio live."
He chuckled, rubbed the sleep from his face, and stood. No hesitation. No teenage grogginess. Just movement.
Today was about discipline. Alignment. Body. Mind.
Daniel changed into a pair of sweatpants and a plain shirt. The fabric felt unfamiliar. No smart-fibers, no temperature modulation. Just cotton. It grounded him.
He stepped outside into the cool dawn air. The sky was a watercolor of pinks and oranges. The street was still.
He began to run.
Each footfall on the pavement echoed decades of silence, of years spent watching a world fall apart from the sterile confines of high towers and private domes.
Now, he was rebuilding himself from the ground up.
He did push-ups on the sidewalk, used a public bench for dips, stretched against a light pole like a martial artist preparing for a duel.
Claude kept quiet, letting him have the silence.
By the time he jogged back to the house, sweat glistened on his brow and the sunrise had climbed high above the rooftops.
He felt alive. Present. Grounded.
Back to the Kitchen
The scent of scrambled eggs and fresh toast greeted him before he even opened the door.
Inside, his mother was humming to herself, flipping pancakes in a worn skillet. She looked over and blinked twice.
"You're… awake?"
Daniel smiled. "Early bird."
His father walked into the room holding a cup of coffee. He stopped mid-sip.
"Well I'll be damned. The boy actually beat the sun."
Kristina shook her head, laughing. "I thought I'd have to wake him with a foghorn until college."
Daniel pulled out a chair and sat down, grabbing a napkin and wiping the sweat from his face. "Trying something new. Mind. Body. Soul."
His father raised an eyebrow. "And what's next? Yoga on the roof?"
"Maybe," Daniel replied. "Don't tempt me."
His mother slid a plate in front of him. "Well, whatever caused this miracle, I like it."
As they sat around the table, Daniel looked at them—truly looked. Their smiles. The light wrinkles at the corners of their eyes. The effortless love.
And for a moment, he let himself be the son again.
Even if just for breakfast.
Later that morning, Daniel sat down at his old beige Compaq Presario 5000, the kind of machine that came bundled with a CRT monitor the size of a microwave. The PC whirred like a struggling aircraft engine. It was still running Windows ME, and Claude made an audible sigh in his neural interface.
"You're not really going to ask me to work with this, are you?"
"Welcome to the Stone Age, Claude."
The monitor flickered to life, and Daniel chuckled at a desktop folder labeled "Not Porn" Sweating Daniel remarked. "That was Steve's old machine, I'm guessing."
"Predictable," Claude muttered. "Should I purge it out of principle or preserve it as a cultural fossil?"
He dismissed the folder and double-clicked the familiar AOL icon. The modem shrieked to life.
eeeeEEEEEEerrRRRRRkkk-chhhhkkk-sssshhkHHHHHH...
Claude let out a mental groan. "Daniel. I've simulated black hole environments with higher bandwidth."
"Just cross-checking data. You already know this timeline's market. I just want to match the dots."
"I can see the dots. You're manually connecting them with sidewalk chalk."
Daniel smirked and typed slowly as Yahoo Finance loaded frame by painful frame.
"This is discipline, Claude. You want to rule a world, first you live in it."
"I want to rule a world that doesn't lag when you click"
Despite the sluggishness, Daniel pulled up archived Enron reports. He scanned earnings statements, press releases, and interviews. It was all there—the overleveraging, the shady partnerships, the off-balance-sheet deals—camouflaged in plain sight.
He hated this company.
Not in the abstract way people hated taxes or traffic. No—this was personal. Enron was greed in its purest, most unapologetic form. A parasitic empire built on deception, one that wrapped itself in the language of innovation while bleeding entire communities dry. They played God with power grids and retirement funds, gambling with the futures of people who'd never even heard the word "derivative."
Tens of thousands would lose everything when the house of cards collapsed—pensions gone, life savings evaporated, jobs wiped out overnight. Families shattered. Lives ruined. And the architects? They'd cash out just in time. Smirking. Toasting themselves in Gulfstream jets while middle-class parents explained to their kids why Christmas was canceled.
Enron didn't just bend the rules. They rewrote them. Weaponized them. Turned accounting into theater and greed into gospel.
Daniel read each line like it was a confession. He wasn't just looking for opportunity—he was hunting rot. And when it all burned, he wouldn't mourn. He'd be holding the matches.
"No one's going to see this until it's too late."
"And when they do," Claude said, "we'll already be out with the lifeboats and champagne."
Daniel printed key documents, waiting for the dot matrix printer to cough them out one shrieking line at a time.
The Plan Emerges
By noon, he had a stack of papers, a folder filled with printed reports, and a plan forming.
"We need a legal entity."
"You're still a minor, Daniel. Most brokers won't let you near derivatives."
"We build a shell. A trust. Use my dad as custodian."
"We're going full Rothschild. I approve."
He began drafting the basics—Haizen Holdings, the umbrella under which he would build everything. This would be the root of his empire. The same name he would one day put on towers, campuses, orbital stations.
He opened WordPad and typed the first line:
Haizen Holdings LLC – Founding Charter