The Son's Gambit

In a quiet suburban house hundreds of miles from Leo's warehouse, a young man named David was going through his heartbreaking daily ritual. He was making breakfast for his father, a brilliant former history professor whose mind was being slowly and cruelly erased by Alzheimer's.

"Good morning, Dad," David said cheerfully, placing a plate of scrambled eggs on the table.

His father, a kind man with vacant, confused eyes, just stared at him. "And you are?" he asked, the question a familiar knife in David's heart.

David had been following the strange saga of Clarity online. He'd seen Kyle's streams and read the anecdotal reports of "mental fog" lifting. Desperate for any glimmer of hope, he'd started ordering the water for his father a week ago. There had been small, promising changes. His father seemed more present, more aware of his surroundings, less prone to agitation. He still didn't know who David was, but the spark of his personality was faintly returning. David then started adding the produce—a crushed tomato in his juice, a blended lettuce leaf in his smoothie. More small improvements. But it wasn't enough.

Then, he saw the new product appear on the Clarity website: the "Fruit of Enlightenment." An eighty-dollar apple. The price was obscene. David was a schoolteacher, and his father's medical bills were already astronomical. Eighty dollars for a single apple was financial insanity.

But the description—a catalyst for cognition, clears mental fog, enhances memory—was like a siren's song. What was eighty dollars compared to the hope of hearing his father say his name just one more time?

With a trembling hand, he placed an order for a single apple. It felt like buying the world's most expensive lottery ticket.

When the precious, carefully-packaged apple arrived two days later, David handled it like it was the Holy Grail. He sliced it into small, manageable pieces and offered them to his father. "Here, Dad. Try this. It's a new kind of apple."

His father, docile as always, accepted the slice and ate it. Then another. Then another. When he had finished the last piece, he looked at David. For the first time in over a year, there was a flicker of genuine recognition in his eyes.

He frowned, a look of immense effort on his face, as if trying to piece together a shattered photograph in his mind.

"...You," his father whispered, his voice raspy from disuse. He pointed a shaky finger at David. "...You belong to me. My... boy."

Tears streamed down David's face, hot and silent. It wasn't his name. It wasn't everything. But it was something. It was the most beautiful something he had heard in years. "Yes, Dad," David choked out. "I'm your boy."

Overwhelmed with a gratitude so immense it felt explosive, David did the only thing he could think to do. He pulled out his phone, recorded a short, tearful video, his voice thick with emotion. He didn't show his face or his father's. He just showed the empty apple core and the simple Clarity box it came in.

"I don't know who makes this," he said to the camera, his voice breaking. "But my father, who has severe Alzheimer's, just recognized me as his son for the first time in a year after eating one of these apples. One apple. Thank you. Whoever you are, thank you."

He posted the video to a small social media account.

He didn't know the video would be picked up by a major news aggregator. He didn't know it would be shared by support groups for caregivers of Alzheimer's patients. He didn't know that within six hours, it would be viewed over a million times.

The effect on the Clarity website was immediate and cataclysmic.

A tidal wave of desperate, hopeful people slammed into the online store. Students cramming for exams, programmers fighting brain fog, and, most powerfully, thousands of people like David, willing to pay any price for a sliver of hope for a loved one.

The apples—all fifty that Leo had stocked—sold out in less than ten minutes. The carrots vanished five minutes after that. The tomatoes and lettuce were gone before the hour was up. Even the water, which Leo had thought he had a massive backstock of, was completely depleted.

Over on his livestream, Kyle "Kylo-Bites" Jensen was getting ready to place his weekly bulk order, his Michelin-star-soup video still trending.

"Alright, Chat, let's load up the cart!" he announced cheerfully. He clicked on the "Apples" page.

SOLD OUT.

"What?!" Kyle yelled. He frantically clicked on the carrots. SOLD OUT. Tomatoes. Lettuce. Water. SOLD OUT. SOLD OUT. SOLD OUT.

"NOOOOO!" he cried out in genuine anguish, his face a mask of comedic despair for his viewers. "Chat! They're out of everything! The company went viral without us! Some kid's dad with Alzheimer's... the video is everywhere!"

Kyle stared at his screen, a sudden, horrifying realization dawning on him. His precious, life-altering supply of magical food and water had been discovered by the rest of the world. He was no longer just an early adopter.

He was now in competition with everyone else. And the demand was infinitely greater than the supply.