SWNOVELXO Chapter 132: Building the Neural Net
It was the next day already.
The basement office of NeuraNest smelled of stale coffee and solder, light flickered from the single bulb that buzzed like a trapped fly. The monitors gave everywhere bluish light, and on the tables were pizza boxes and tangled cables.
Darren Steele stood at the room's center, hands in his pockets, scanning the setup, calm but piercing, like a hawk circling prey. Beside him, Amelia clutched her leather notebook, her hazel eyes locked on the duo across from them.
Evan Kimura and Lila Torres.
They were both finishing up on their demo, faces painted with nervous and wary expressions.
"Alright, I think that's enough time," Darren said with finality. "You got my attention yesterday, not necessarily my patience. Now show me why I'm here. Run the demo — the full breakdown with no fluff."
Lila nodded, her fingers dancing over the keys, pulling up a dashboard on a scratched monitor.
"It's ready."
She picked up the laptop and brought it closer to them. "This is our core model," she said, keeping her voice steady despite the shadows under her eyes. "It's a basic neural net, trained on small-business data — inventory, sales, customer patterns. Watch this."
The screen shifted, showing a mock bakery: graphs flagged overstocked croissants, predicted a 15% sales spike for muffins by Friday, and suggested cutting flour orders. It was clunky, the UI was stuttering at times, but the numbers still held.
She'd done a great job. It was tight, logical, almost alive.
Amelia scribbled furiously, her pen scratching. "That is precise," she murmured, glancing at Darren. "They're using backpropagation, aren't they? For a dataset that small, it's impressive."
Evan jumped in, his grin widening. "Yeah, exactly. I built the architecture myself—layered it to optimize for retail. Took months to get it this clean."
A faint chime echoed in Darren's mind from the system.
Ding!
He looked at Evan, but kept his face neutral. He then looked at Lila. Her fingers paused, her jaw twitched, but she said nothing, eyes glued to the screen.
"Eh, even if that was the case. I'm the one who decides if it's impressive or not." Darren said flatly. "Walk me through the training data. What's feeding this beast?"
Lila leaned forward, her voice warming with passion. "We scraped public sales logs, that is local shops, mostly. Cafes, bookstores, a deli two blocks over. About 10,000 transactions, and we cleaned it by hand. I wrote a script to filter noise, then we ran it through a custom loss function to prioritize accuracy over speed."
Evan cut in, gesturing grandly. "That was my idea, to focus on accuracy. I figured small businesses need trust, not flash. My blueprint works perfectly."
Ding! The notification hit again, and Darren's eyes narrowed a fraction. He ignored it once more and continued "Well, keep it going. Data's only half the story. How's it scale?"
Lila blinked, catching his shift to her, and pushed on. "Right now, it's capped at 50,000 transactions, hardware limits."
Evan jumped in. "But the model's modular. New servers could push it to millions, maybe handle chains or franchises. I told Lila to make a roadmap—"
Lila tapped a folder, pages dog-eared and inked with notes.
"Which I also helped draft," Evan added, leaning closer to the monitor. "Laid out the whole scaling plan. It's why we're a team."
Ding!
"Show me the code," Darren said, stepping closer, his voice dropping to a challenge. "Raw logic. I want to see what's under the hood."
Evan hesitated, his grin faltering, but Lila was already clicking, pulling up a wall of Python— clean loops, tight functions, comments in her hurried scrawl. "Here's the training module," she said, scrolling. "It's a three-layer net, ReLU activation for speed, dropout to avoid overfitting. I tuned the weights myself — took three all-nighters."
Amelia leaned in, her eyes scanning. "Well done. You're avoiding gradient vanishing without bloating the model. Most startups would overcomplicate this."
Lila's lips twitched and broke into a shy smile. "Thanks. I kept it lean because small businesses can't afford lag."
Evan coughed, pointing at a random line. "Yeah, I told her to strip it down. It's best to keep it practical, you know?"
"Practical's good," Darren agreed. "Okay then. I agree that I'm thoroughly interested and impressed. So let's talk numbers. You asked $75,000 yesterday. What's it buy, and what do I get?"
Lila exhaled, glancing at Evan, who nodded too eagerly. "$75,000 gets us two servers, a UI coder, and four months," she said. "We'll deliver a stable build for retail, 95% accuracy, ready to beta in three weeks. You'd get 12% equity."
Evan jumped in, his voice loud. "And I'll make sure it's market-ready. My vision's to take this nationwide. You know, like Walmart, not just delis."
"The extra ten thousand is only necessary if server costs were still affected by the electric fluctuations from last month. They're not anymore," Darren said, crossing his arms. "I'll do $65,000. But you'll get 30% today, rest when we sign tomorrow. You'll give me 15% equity, and I want weekly code audits. All of this is of course... non-negotiable."
Amelia's pen froze, her eyes wide, she hadn't expected him to push so hard. Lila bit her lip, calculating, then looked at Evan.
"I think 65 is fair.,"
Evan grinned, too quick. "Alright! Alright! You got a deal, man— sir. You're getting a steal."
Darren ignored it, pulling a check of $30,000 from his jacket with Steele Investments' logo bold.
He handed it to Lila, not Evan, his gaze locking on hers. "Don't disappoint me," he said, his tone soft but steel-edged. "I've got other work to do now. Noon tomorrow, my office— bring the contract."
Lila clutched the check, her eyes shining with something like hope. "We'll be there," she said with promise.
Evan took the check from her. "Noon it is."
Darren turned, nodding to Amelia, who followed, her heels clicking up the mildew-slick stairs.
Outside, a wiry man in a cheap leather jacket appeared behind Darren's car, camera in hand.
His face was shadowed by a baseball cap and he wore gloves. Gingerly, he raised the camera and took pictures: the Aston Martin's plates, NeuraNest's crumbling facade, and when he heard footsteps, he hid behind a building and took more pictures of who came out.
Darren and Amelia as they entered the car together.
---
Miles away, in the glass tower that belonged to Moon Wealth Management Offices, Ryan Anders leaned back in his chair, his handsome grin splitting his angular face.
The images taken by his hired secret cameraman glowed on his monitor.
For a moment, the grin disappeared as he saw how close it seemed Darren was getting with Amelia. Then he shook his head and chuckled, spinning a pen between his fingers.
"Well done, Van," he muttered to himself. "I only wanted to keep an eye on my Amelia, but it seems little Darren Steele's already making moves, eh?"
His grin widened. "NeuraNest. I remembered you."
He picked up his phone and dialed Tamara Johnstone. The interim CEO of Horizon Strategies and Investments picked up on the second ring, and with a clipper voice, she spoke:
"Ryan. It's never a good day when you call me. What's this about?" Papers could be heard shuffling in the background.
"Tamara, darling," Anders purred, leaning forward. "Remember that NeuraNest pitch you laughed out of your office last spring? Two kids, neural nets, small-business nonsense?"
A pause. "I? You told me to refuse and I did. I remember it vaguely. Why bring it up now?"
Anders tapped the photo of Darren and Amelia, his eyes glinting. "Because your former school mate, Darren Steele, is chasing it now. Sniffed it out like a dog with a bone. You see, Tammy, Mr. Steele has an eye for profitable assets, I'll give him that. So I think that this is an opportunity for you... and for me. I say we take it from him — snatch his little toy before he can play with it."
Tamara's breath caught, regardless of her ambition, she had to be careful here. "Steal it? Ryan, my board's breathing down my neck. I need a win to lock this CEO gig."
"Exactly," Anders said, voice smooth as venom. "Steele's playing in our scraps. We move fast, we own NeuraNest, and he's left with nothing but his ego. I know you're friends but you should know that he's now a rival company that could overtake yours. Imagine what the news would say. New investment company finds success in a startup that was abandoned by Horizon. Not good is it? So... crush him, Tamara, and your board'll kiss your feet."
She hesitated, then hardened. "Alright. I'm in. What do we do?"
Anders smirked, zooming in on NeuraNest's door. "Whatever Darren has offered them, let's offer even more."