Álvaro clenched his fists beneath the table but kept his voice steady. “It’s a hydraulic pumping system that works without electricity. It uses differential pressure.”
“Differential pressure?” Mauricio mocked, nudging the table with his foot. “Sounds like you’re too poor to buy batteries. My dad donated a $50,000 robot that’s over there. And you bring… garbage.”
He grabbed one of the bottles from the project and lifted it like it was contaminated.
“Look at this. The janitor’s son brought the trash his dad collects so he could pretend to be a scientist.”
Álvaro felt heat rush to his face. Not because of the insult to his invention—but because of the insult to his father.
“Put it down,” Álvaro said, his voice trembling with contained anger.
“Or what? Are you going to call your dad to clean my shoes?” Mauricio laughed.
Then, with pure contempt, he dropped the piece onto the floor. The plastic cracked loudly.
The sound echoed through the silent warehouse.
Álvaro looked at the broken piece. Then he looked back at Mauricio. Something inside him changed. The fear was gone. The shame too. What remained was a cold, steady resolve—the kind that comes when you have nothing left to lose.
What Mauricio didn’t realize was that his cruelty hadn’t crushed Álvaro’s spirit.
It had ignited it.
And he certainly had no idea that, within moments, one of the most respected engineers in the country would step through that door and deliver the most humiliating lesson of his life.
Mauricio’s laughter suddenly stopped when a deep voice echoed from the entrance.
“Is there a problem here?”
Everyone turned.
It wasn’t the principal or a teacher standing there.
It was engineer Rómulo Vázquez.
He was a legend—an elderly man with white hair, dressed simply but carrying an authority that filled the entire room. Vázquez was the honored guest and the chief judge of the science fair, famous for bringing clean water to the most remote communities in the country decades earlier.
He had grown tired of the flashy robots and expensive 3D printers in the main hall.
So he had decided to walk around.
Mauricio turned pale but quickly tried to recover his confident smile. “No, Mr. Vázquez. We were just… we were just checking out these interesting projects. We were actually about to leave for my presentation; my robot is the star.”
Vázquez paid him no attention. Instead, he walked straight toward Álvaro. His experienced eyes didn’t focus on the boy—they studied the device lying on the floor. Slowly, he bent down, his knees creaking, and picked up the piece Mauricio had tossed aside. He examined it with a kind of respect that left the room completely silent.
“Half-inch pipe reduced to a quarter… vacuum chamber built from a PET bottle…” the old engineer murmured. Then he lifted his gaze to Álvaro. “Did you make this?”
“Yes, sir,” Álvaro answered steadily. “It’s a Venturi system. My grandfather showed me how it works.”
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