The Door of Unmade Choices: Chapter 13

 

Chapter 13 — The Startup Door from 1998

After Dr. Calico Verde gave me the lowdown on the paradox of choice, I was about to high-tail it to Frank’s house when he called me in a panic. His voice was overcome with fear and awe. A door had popped up between a nail salon and a tax place that still advertises Rapid Refunds! and he was fighting the temptation to cross through. When I found him in the alley, he was frozen in front of the door. I was the same as the others. Same benign look that masked a nefarious. Like it knew it belonged wherever it decided to stand.

“This one’s loud,” he said. “It’s pulling me like a magnet.”

“Or a moth to a bug zapper,” I said.

I listened top to the door’s humming. It was not the low ache of grief, not the soft pull of nostalgia. This was more of restless, weird buzz. The sound of caffeine and ambition grinding their teeth together. Franks stepped to the door and squeezed the handle.

“You don’t want to—” I started.

“I do,” Frank said. “This is the one.”

He opened it.

*

The scene was a nondescript floor in a nondescript office building in 1998. The air smelled like too much cologne. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Beige carpet covered the floors, already stained by soda and bad decisions. Rows of desks jammed together like they were arranged by someone who heard the phrase open office once and misunderstood it on purpose.

CRT monitors glowed. Windows 95 boot chimes echoed like a choir of promise and opportunity. Whiteboards were everywhere covered in arrows, boxes, exclamation points, and words like SYNERGY, SCALABILITY, and FIRST-MOVER ADVANTAGE (that one underlined three times for emphasis and maybe prayer).

Frank—other Frank—paced barefoot in Dockers and a wrinkled button-down, which had to have been a clear OSHA violation. His hair was longer. His laugh came easier. He was pitching something with wild-eyed conviction to a group of people who looked exhausted but grateful to be exhausted together.

“…and if we move fast enough,” Startup Frank said with the fiery passion of an evangelist, “we don’t just disrupt the market—we redefine it.”

They clapped. Not because they understood, but because it felt like momentum.

Frank watched himself like he was staring through glass at a museum exhibit labeled Frank’s Life That Might Have Been.

“He looks happy,” he said. “I look happy.”

“He looks busy,” I say.

Startup Frank’s phone rang—one of those classic flip phones of the era that looked so hipn. He answered and spun away, nodding, grinning, saying Absolutely and We’re ready and This changes everything.

Behind him, the whiteboard erased itself a little at a time. Marker dust ghosted away. Plans were rewritten before they could dry. The office grew bigger without getting warmer. More desks. More people. Fewer windows.

Time jumped. Same office, upgraded furniture. Sleeker computers. The buzz was sharper, tighter. Laughter still existed but felt rationed. Someone microwaved fish and was silently hated for it.

Startup Frank sat alone in a glass-walled office behind his immaculate desk. Framed magazine covers lined the walls: 30 Under 30, Innovators to Watch, The Future Is Now. His face still had energy, but the lines of age and stress had started to etch around his eyes and mouth.

His phone rang again. This time it looked like he was using a Blackberry. He answered. Listened. His smile held, then slipped just a fraction.

“I understand,” he said. “No, I get it. It’s just… yes. Yes, we’ll pivot.”

He hung up. The glass walls didn’t protect him. They displayed him.

Frank swallowed. “That’s… that’s when it worked.”

I didn’t offer a response. This was Frank’s moment. He didn’t need my cynical commentary forged by years of seeing this shit over and over to derail any insights he might gain.

Startup Frank rubbed his temples. He stared at the whiteboard where a single word was written now in block letters:

EXIT

He erased it. Wrote it again. The office lights flickered.

For the first time since we stepped through, the door hum changed to a stuttering whirr. A hairline crack ran halfway across the glass wall of Startup Frank’s office kike a thought he didn’t finish.

Frank stepped closer.

“He did everything right,” he said, quieter now. “I could’ve done that. I should’ve done that.”

Startup Frank looked up suddenly. Not at us—never at us—but at his own reflection in the glass. For a moment, he doesn’t recognize himself. Neither did Frank.

The office froze mid-keystroke, mid-sip, mid-walk and talk. The door behind us creaed. Frank didn’t turn around. Instead, he looked at me.

“Silas,” he asked, voice thin but steady, “when you look through these doors…” He hesitated. “…what do you see?”

The stuttering whirr upgraded to and hum dropped an octave. And somewhere, something that had been listening leaned in closer.

*****

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