Struggling with Self-Doubt

  The dim glow of one desk lamp casts long shadows across the cluttered workbench. A faint hum of machinery fills the air, but Max Cole never even hears it. His gaze is fixed on the journal before him, a well-worn, leather-bound volume filled with complicated equations, sketches, and scrawls. He reads slowly, his hands shaking as they touch the pages of his father's work.

  Dr. Alexander Cole. The name stirs something in Max—pride, guilt, and a sense of crushing inadequacy all at once. "Can I really do this?" he mocks himself. The words echo in the stillness of the workshop.

  His father's brilliance had been unchallenged. Dr. Alexander Cole had been a name that had been uttered in reverence by scientific circles. He'd been the brains behind so many breakthroughs, his research paving the way for technology that still sounded like something out of science fiction. But Max… Max was a fake, an ordinary man trying to fill shoes much too large.

  Max's gaze remains fixed on one particular diagram: a powered suit, meticulously designed to harness the energy unleashed by the meteorite. The journal was supposed to be a map, a blueprint to the future, but it was now more like a brick wall that could not be scaled. His head reeled as he gazed at the notes, the equations, the sheer scale of the research. His fingers were pressed at the edges of the journal, the weight bearing down.

  "Can I measure up to what he started? Can I actually finish what he began?" The question teases him, buzzing in his head like a pesky fly. Max shifts in his seat, glancing around the room. He looks at the creased photo of his father sitting on the mantle, a younger Dr. Alexander Cole proudly standing beside his inventions. Max's eyes melt, and a heavy sigh escapes his mouth. "Why couldn't you be like me, Dad?"

  A flood of memories engulfs him.

  He's ten once more, watching from the corner of his father's workshop as Dr. Alexander Cole fiddles with a complex machine. Ten-year-old Max had been fascinated, watching the man who seemed to be capable of anything. But even then, there had ever been a distance between them—his father lost in his head, obsessed with his project, and Max sitting quietly in the background, yearning for a moment of contact.

  "Dad, I can do it?" little Max had asked once, hoping to show that he could handle it.

  Dr. Cole had only looked up, his focus never breaking. "Not now, Max. Go play outside," he had answered, his voice cool, though love for his son was there in the way he just kept on working, always with the hope that Max would finally get it.

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  Max, dreamy and optimistic kid that he was, had nodded obediently and staggered away, though that moment remained with him, shaping the way he would come to live his life. He never quite managed to match up to his father's ambitions, always falling just behind in a futile attempt to match his father's unreachable ideals.

  The gap now was as sharp as it was wide. Max was grown now, and the distance felt sharper. "I could never be like him," he laments, running a hand through his hair. The image of his father's giant intellect is overwhelming. No matter how hard he tries, Max never manages to catch up. His inventions fall apart more frequently than they work, his dreams are stars on the horizon, too far away to reach. And now, standing at the gate of his father's hidden research, Max wonders if he's even able to complete what his father started.

  His head is spinning. What if he does fail? What if he lets down not just his father's memory but the world that held its breath for him to succeed? The meteorite, the technology, the potential it holds, all weigh upon him. "I'm not cut out for this. I'm just. a kid pretending to be a genius."

  Max gets up abruptly, walking back and forth in the small workshop. The walls bear down on him, the ceiling is too low, the workbench too cluttered. His father's reputation looms over each square inch of space. There is nowhere to hide from it. He is under pressure from the expectations he has inherited, from a legacy that no longer feels his own.

  "What if I'm not that smart? What if I ruin it all?" The self-doubt rages in his chest, closing tighter with each breath.

  He pauses in front of the workbench and gazes down at the powered suit schematics once more. A mixture of terror and excitement runs through his chest. The suit could do it all, but it could also kill him. And if he does fail… the effects could be a lot more than he can manage.

  Max reaches for a pen and writes down some hasty notes on the pad next to him, but his mind remains elsewhere. "I'm not him," he tells himself in a voice that sounds like a stuck record running in his mind. "I'm not my dad. I don't know if I can do this."

  Max freezes for an instant, gazing down at the jumble of papers on the desk, not knowing which way to go. The world outside the confines of his cramped apartment is so much vaster than the thin line he's trying to stay on. The expectations, the dangers, the unknowns—they all close in around him, and the task before him seems to be too great. But deep within him, a small voice speaks, a whisper of hope.

  "But what if you can?"

  Max swallows hard, trying to suppress the doubt. "What if I don't try?"

  He gazes at his father's journal one last time, the words on the page growing fuzzy. Max breathes deeply. He's always feared that he won't measure up, that he won't be enough. But if there's anything that his father's work has ever taught him, it's that nothing of any real worth is ever done without taking risks. Perhaps this isn't about living up to his father's legacy, then. Perhaps it's about making his own.

  With newfound determination, Max sets the journal down carefully. His hands tremble, but not with fear. With determination.

  "I'll do it. I'll finish what you began, Dad."