The truck shuddered every time it hit a pothole. And there were many.
Damián had been sitting by the window for five hours, a backpack at his feet, headphones in but no music. Outside, the landscape was slowly changing: from the gray buildings of Mexico City's southern exit to the fog-covered mountains of the center of the country, and then to the flat heat of the south. More trees, more sky, less concrete. More life.
The driver had said they would arrive in Juchitán de Zaragoza around 8 p.m., if there were no roadblocks or rain. Damián hadn't counted on either.
His cell phone screen showed a thin signal line and 12% battery. He gave up and turned it off. In his mind, however, the interface was still active. Silent, as if it understood that this moment wasn't for executing, but for observing.
"Gaia at rest. Process of personal reflection not interfered with."
He didn't even have to ask. The system knew when to speak and when to remain silent.
He leaned his head against the warm window. He looked at the rows of electric poles, the wind-bent trees, a donkey tied to a wooden fence. Everything seemed familiar, yet distant. As if it belonged to a memory that was no longer his.
He wondered if the system would change him more than he thought.
The Juchitán terminal was the same as the last time: old peach-colored walls, cement benches, and a woman selling boiled plantains from a towel-covered bucket. The air was thick, heavy with dirt, grease, and humidity.
"Damián!" a warm voice called from the entrance.
His mother, Doña Carmela, weaved her way through the crowd with a smile that almost erased her wrinkles. Dark-skinned, short, strong. Her eyes were bright, and in one hand she carried a cloth bag with sweet bread, wrapped tortillas, and what was clearly black mole.
"You're thinner now! Don't you eat there or something?"
"Of course you do, Mom," Damián said, smiling as he hugged her.
The hug lasted longer than he thought. And for a moment, everything he knew—the technologies, the system, the money, Gaia—disappeared. There was only that warmth. That smell of hand-washed clothes and that tremble in the voice of a mother he never stops missing.
They walked to the street, where his uncle's old blue Chevy was waiting for them with its headlights on.
"Damián! And that modern haircut? You don't look like you're from the neighborhood anymore," joked his uncle Gabriel, a tall, curly-haired man with hands weathered from welding.
"You have to hide it a little, man."
They got into the car. The engine roared with effort. And they set off along streets that smelled of wet earth, corn tamales, and cold pozol.
Their house was on a dirt road, between mango trees, and an empty lot where a soccer field used to be, no one cared for it anymore. The lights flickered when the electricity surged, and the fan whirred with a familiar whine that seemed to say "welcome."
In the kitchen, everything smelled of freshly made tortillas.
On the table, his mother had already served rice, chicken with mole, and a large glass of guava water.
"Eat," she said. "Tell me later how things are going over there."
Damián ate in silence for the first few minutes. Then they talked about simple things: his cousin who got pregnant, his neighbor who started a business, the unforgiving heat, the politics that remain the same.
And inside, he thought: this is where I should start. Not in the city. Here.
His mother glanced at him as she washed the dishes.
"Your eyes are more alert, son. As if you were no longer just thinking about getting ahead... but about something bigger."
Damián didn't respond.
But he knew it was true.
His room was still the same.
Walls with faded light blue paint, an old Goku poster half peeling off, a shelf with high school books, notebooks with his name handwritten on them, and a window covered with a floral curtain that didn't block out the sun or the heat. The bed was hard. The ceiling fan seemed to have asthma.
Damián sat at the wooden desk, the one he'd once used to study chemistry, get frustrated with math, and type cheesy Messenger messages. Now, on that same surface, rested his old laptop, freshly reformatted. But she wasn't the one who was going to process what was on his mind.
It was him.
The interface appeared as soon as he thought of her.
[Gaia – Core Core in preparation]
Available submodules:
– Artemis (biological and social analysis)
– Apollo (energy management and automation)
– Minerva (knowledge systems and cybersecurity)
– Poseidon (physical infrastructure and logistics)
"Do you wish to initiate a conceptual integration sequence?"
Damian took a deep breath.
"Yes."
The interface split. Each submodule opened its own space in his mind: blueprints, network schematics, living algorithms, constantly changing data maps. He didn't see with his eyes, but with something deeper, as if his brain were visualizing in three dimensions.
It wasn't a hallucination. It was pure mental architecture.
Gaia wasn't just an AI. It was a floating digital city, and he was its only inhabitant.
"Recommendation: Start from Minerva. Security takes priority over functions."
"Makes sense," he murmured.
He began to "put it together," so to speak. He defined nodes, hierarchies, access logic. He imagined servers that didn't yet exist, data centers he would one day build, firewalls to protect his future company's network.
Hours passed. Or maybe minutes. Time didn't work the same in there. Outside, his mother was watching a soap opera with the volume turned up. A motorcycle sped by. A rooster crowed, even though it wasn't dawn.
But inside Damián, all was silence and code.
In his old high school notebook, he tore out a page. He began writing things by hand, in tight handwriting:
Gaia = total management.
Minerva module: initial priority.
Connect development to independent local network.
Simulation prototype = 2 months (ideal).
Protect brain structure: system limits?
Scaling plan: country/region?
When he finished the page, he smiled.
He had never been one to write by hand. But that sheet of paper now seemed like the first sacred document of his new life.
Suddenly, Gaia spoke. Her voice was calm, like an assistant who already knew him.
"The base node is under construction. It requires a physical environment to begin real execution. Simulation available."
"Where will you locate it?"
Damián stared at the curtain moving in the air.
The question was simple.
And so was the answer.
"Here."
The afternoon heat was thick, almost solid. Outside, the streets were silent except for the occasional creak of dry branches and the steady hum of fans slowly turning in each house. Inside, the kitchen smelled of coffee with cinnamon and toast.
Damián sat at the table with his mother and his uncle Gabriel. The conversation drifted along familiar paths: the price of tortillas, the blackouts, the infernal heat, the "the aid never arrives."
But then, his uncle blurted out something different while sipping from his blue plastic cup:
"They say they're going to build a large plant down there along the Isthmus corridor. That they're already buying land near Matías Romero."
Damián looked up.
"What kind of plant?"
"Technology, they say. Or factories. I'm not sure. The government is working on this development hub. That there will be jobs. That they'll bring in investment." You see how promising they are.
"And what do people say?" Damián asked.
"Well... some get excited, others don't believe a thing. But if it's true, it's the first thing that's happened here since... I don't know, since they opened the Aurrerá," he laughed.
"But what they say is it's so we don't have to leave. So there's work here."
Doña Carmela nodded silently, wiping the table with a damp cloth.
"If something like this had happened when you left, son... maybe you wouldn't have left," she said, without looking directly at Damián.
He tightened his grip on the cup. He felt something like guilt... but not exactly. It was something else. Something more like determination.
Gaia activated a mental notification:
"Selected region: Isthmus of Tehuantepec."
"Infrastructure under development detected. Favorable logistical conditions. Geopolitical risk: medium. Growth potential: high."
Damián looked back at his mother.
"What do you think, Mom? Do you think this will change anything?"
She shrugged.
"That depends on who comes. If the same old people come, no. But if someone comes with a real desire to do something... who knows?"
The phrase hit him like an activation code.
"Someone with a real desire to do something."
Damián knew that person could be him.
Not with speeches. Not with promises.
With technology. With systems. With a real future.
He got up from the table, fetched his notebook, and sat back down in silence. His uncle and mother watched him in silence, without interrupting. He opened the previous page and began to write a new one:
Initial location: Isthmus / Juchitán
Modular, scalable factory
National processors. Own architecture. Low external dependence.
Alternative energy infrastructure: panels + batteries
AI base = Gaia / production optimized by Poseidon module.
He wrote in larger letters:
Project: NovaCore
And below, underlined:
"Let no one have to leave in order to live well."
Damián was back in his room, surrounded by warmth and silence. Only now, his mind worked at the speed of someone with centuries of knowledge behind him.
The interface floated in front of him, like a futuristic chessboard. Every move was a decision. Every tab, a possible branching path.
"Activating business planning module."
"Initial corporate design in progress."
"Do you wish to keep the name 'NovaCore' as your official identity?"
"Yes," he thought.
"Name registered in the system. Domain available. Preliminary logo design generated."
In one of the mental windows, a simple logo appeared: a circle divided into four symmetrical sections with a glowing core in the center. Damián nodded. It wasn't perfect, but it was a start.
"Primary area of operation: design and manufacturing of advanced processors. Secondary: development of graphics cards. Confirm."
"Confirmed."
The system displayed a logistics map of Mexico. The Isthmus region appeared highlighted, with points of interest: Matías Romero, Salina Cruz, Ixtepec. Railroads. Ports. Electrical substations. Everything was there.
"Recommended location: industrial park assigned by a federal Isthmus development project. Expanding infrastructure. Active tax incentives. Political risk: intermediate. Seismic risk: high, but tolerable with a modular structure."
Damián made a mental note: build with flexibility. Nothing fixed. Nothing that could collapse in an earthquake.
"Do you want to start a business structure simulation?"
"Yes. Microenterprise level."
"Starting a simulation of a S.A.P.I. de C.V.-type company with a technological innovation structure."
The information began to flow: organizational charts, bylaws, legal requirements, initial investment models, key departments. Everything that would take a lawyer, an accountant, and a project engineer weeks to prepare… Damián absorbed it in minutes.
"Recommended initial capital: 20 million MXN. Set aside 4 million for testing, 5 million for personnel, and 11 million for basic installation authorization."
"Suggested confidentiality level: 85%. Technologies classified as internal development. Patents pending through phase two."
Damián paused for a moment.
"And the government? Won't they ask questions?"
"Not if the technical language is disguised. The system can generate documentation that looks conventional."
"And the employees?"
"Initially, you can hire operators and engineers without revealing the origin of the design. Use the role of integrator, not inventor."
He wrote it all down.
On paper. By hand.
Not out of necessity. Out of ceremony.
He was building something that didn't exist. Not just a company.
A point of origin. A node.
A Mexican structure, created in Oaxaca, powered by knowledge the world wasn't yet ready to understand.
And he did it all from a rickety chair, in a room that smelled of old wood and dust.
The sky over Juchitán had changed to a deep dark blue, pierced by scattered stars. The heat still clung to the ground, but at least the air felt less dense. From the open window, Damián heard the chirping of crickets and the hum of distant motorcycles. Inside, only the old fan complained.
His mother was watching a soap opera. His uncle was asleep in the hammock in the living room. Everything seemed calm.
But in his room, something was growing.
The laptop was running out of steam. It squealed every time he opened a diagram or ran a neural network simulation. So Damián connected a small server he'd put together with secondhand parts, bought months earlier for school projects. Nothing impressive: a mini CPU, a couple of recycled hard drives, RAM from previous generations.
But it didn't matter.
It was his initial node.
The interface unfolded like a dome over the server:
"Unit connected. Node 1 registered: Damián_LocalHost."
"Limited execution capacity. System operating in simulation mode."
Damián leaned over the screen.
"Gaia status?"
"Minerva module active. Systems under test. Resources available at 14%."
Models, maps of logical relationships, decision schemes appeared. Like a brain under construction. Every connection Damián mentally conceived, the system suggested it in code. He didn't write it; he thought. And the machine responded.
It was like building a city with his mind.
"Start partial simulation?"
"Start."
The server's fans sped up.
The air grew warmer.
On the screen, data lines began to run.
Gaia / Simulation Level 1: Local Social Pattern Recognition
Parameters: rural setting, Mixtec language, demographic behavior.
Initial analysis: activated.
Damian watched. Silently. His eyes fixed on the screen.
He didn't blink.
Outside, the city slept as usual.
Inside, an artificial intelligence was awakening.
He stood up. He walked to the door. He locked it. Then he returned to the desk. He turned off the light. Only the glow of the server gave life to the room.
"Actual development estimate: 6 months."
Do you want to project a timeline?
Damian nodded.
Phase 1 (60 days): Base infrastructure / GAIA Core V1.0
Phase 2 (120 days): NovaCore legal foundation / land acquisition
Phase 3 (180 days): Modular plant construction / first chip assembly
Projected start: today.
Damian read it three times.
Today.
Nothing more symbolic. Nothing more definitive.
There was no going back.
I didn't even want her.