FLIGHT P47193

STEM

The white ceiling drew shapes that made Kojo's head twirl. They were supposed to have block patterns that were perfect squares, but for some reason, the middle part of the ceiling had funny sided rectangles. His mind was playing tricks on him. 

Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and brought his face back to the laptop on his lap as he sat on the cold tiles in his self-contain apartment. He had been working on his pet project for a little over two years and for the first time in two years, it looked pitchable. 

He called the Dapp 'Neutra,'  it was supposed to be a game-changer built on the EOS platform, enabling its users to have access to buy, sell, convert and store cryptocurrency with extreme security. 

The rumbling sound his stomach made reminded him that all work and no eat will leave Kojo a dead man. He looked towards his mini office table, there were a few slices of bread left on it. He got up, grabbed it, got a hold of his chocolate spread, opened his mini-fridge and retrieved a cold drink and settled for his almost perfect everyday meal. 

The thought crossed his mind to just enter the kitchen and make an actual meal, but he considered the time it would take him to cook or microwave food, and decided the bread was healthier. 

Settling back on the floor, he smiled at the front end of Neutra, it had a light pink theme with characters that made you feel so much at home, all that was left was to fix the smart contract and test run it. He figured it'll take him another five hours to have all that set and still make it to church early enough for midweek service.

Most times he regretted being a young single bachelor, his room was always quiet. It afforded him the opportunity to constructively create, but he felt it encouraged him to lose people skills. Being alone for almost eighteen hours every day can mess your mind up, he always thought. 

His phone vibrated and his sister's face filled the screen. 

"Hey big sis," he said as he saved his progress and closed his MacBook. It was one of those really long calls he always looked forward to every day. She was a doctor and knew how important it was for her kid bro to talk to another real human being, plus she missed him a lot, ever since he left their family house and wanted to start on his entrepreneurial journey. 

"Guess what?" she beamed over the phone. 

Kojo rolled his eyes, he obviously knew what followed the guess what games. Dad had either bought her something new or she maybe had one funny family gist for him. He decided to play along. 

"What?" he asked and waited for her cheerful reply. 

"Dad got me the Lexus ES 350," she screamed into the phone excitedly. 

"He did?" Kojo asked with real excitement and surprise. "But it's meant to be a 2020 model, how did he even-" he stopped himself short, his father was always full of surprises and loved his prized medical doctor a lot.

They talked for over thirty minutes before Funke informed him that she had to get back into the hospital or risk her senior colleague telling on her. The call dropped and Kojo was back in his empty world. 

Finishing up with the smart contract, he ran a few tests and Neutra was good to go. Then came the big part, pitching. He had prepared the perfect slide for the zoom presentation since the lockdown kicked off in February, he couldn't physically just travel everywhere then, so he gave it all he had. He mailed it out to a few Blockchain startups but was particularly mindful of STEM; the fastest growing blockchain company in all of Nigeria.

He kept Neutra a secret from his entire family. He wanted to let the Dapp speak for itself. It wasn't like they understood the blockchain technology anyway. To them, bitcoin and friends were a bunch of scams. 

"Dear God, this one is in your hands," was all he said as he closed his laptop and got off the floor and into his bathroom.