On a wet November night in 2026, the rain hit Alex’s office windows so hard it blurred the city lights into a smear of white and gold. He should have gone home hours ago. Instead he sat at his desk, tie loose, cursor blinking on a half-written email to a $40 million prospect—a business owner who had said, very politely: “Honestly, you all sound the same.” Alex leaned back and stared at those words. Fifteen years building an RIA. CFA. CFP. Carefully crafted “holistic planning” language. A respectable book of business. And still, to the people who mattered most, he sounded like everybody else. His phone buzzed. A text from Jenna, his operations lead: Did you send the follow-up? This guy could make our year. Alex didn’t answer. He closed the email instead and stood up, restless. The office smelled faintly of coffee and printer ink. He wandered into the small conference room where the shelves were lined with old books—a design choice from the previous tenant. One spine caught his eye. An American Dictionary of the English Language – Noah Webster. He pulled it down. The book was ridiculously heavy, the leather cracked, the pages thin and yellow. “Who still uses this?” he muttered. “It decided how you spell your own name.” Alex nearly dropped the dictionary. An older man stood in the doorway, umbrella dripping against his coat, hair gray at the temples. It was Tom, the building’s landlord—retired lawyer, occasional late-night visitor, and collector of trivia. “Didn’t mean to spook you,” Tom said. “You looked like you’d seen a ghost.” “I might prefer a ghost to this prospect email,” Alex said. “What do you mean it decided how I spell my name?” Tom stepped in, shut the door, and tapped the cover of the dictionary. “You see Webster there?” he said. “There was a time when this wasn’t just a book. It was a weapon. And it won a war.” “A war,” Alex repeated. “About… spelling?” “About who gets to define reality,” Tom said. “Sit. I’ll tell you a story. Might even help you close that prospect of yours—and a whole lot of CPAs and associations while you’re at it.”

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