The e-bike hit me at 3 PM on a Wednesday, and for a second, I thought about how unfair it was that I was going to die because some tourist couldn't read a stop sign.

Then everything went white, and when I opened my eyes, I was standing on a street corner in 2014 Manhattan, and my phone was ringing, and I knew—with absolute certainty—that I had fallen ten years into the past.

Marcus, you okay? my delivery partner Joey asked, helping me up. You look like you've seen a ghost.

I looked at my phone. The date read June 15, 2014. Ten years. I had ten years to get everything right this time.

The seven ais lived in a walk-up in Flushing, seven women who had come from different parts of China and ended up sharing an apartment because sharing is how you survive in a city that doesn't want you.

Marcus, said Auntie Lin, handing me a bowl of congee, you need to eat something. You look terrible.

But I wasn't hungry. I was thinking about what I knew—about which stocks would rise, which companies would change the world, which neighborhoods would gentrify and which would decay.

Richard Walsh wanted me to marry his daughter. Jessica Walsh was twenty-six, smart, ambitious, and the daughter of one of Manhattan's most powerful real estate developers. Her father was also the man who was going to buy my building in 2016 and evict all the tenants.

Marry my daughter, Richard Walsh told me over lunch at a restaurant that cost more than my monthly rent. You'll get the shop on Canal Street. The one you've been dreaming about.

I knew about the shop. In my first life, I had dreamed about it for years, worked myself to the bone to save enough money, and never got it. Walsh had bought the building and raised the rent until I couldn't afford it.

What about Jessica? I asked.

She's a good girl, Walsh said. Hardworking. Ambitious. Like her father.

Like her father. The words hung in the air like smoke.

I began growing vegetables on the rooftop of my building in Brooklyn every weekend. It started with tomatoes—cheap seedlings from a nursery in Queens—and grew into something more. By summer, the rooftop was a small garden, with tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and even a small apple tree.

As I watered the plants and watched them grow, I thought about the future. I knew about smartphones, about social media, about companies that would revolutionize the way we live. I knew everything, and I knew that knowing wouldn't save me.

Because the truth was, I didn't want to be a billionaire. I didn't want to invest in the next Facebook or Google or whatever came next. I wanted to grow tomatoes on a rooftop in Brooklyn and have a shop on Canal Street and make a life with a woman who didn't care about my father's money.

But the world doesn't work like that. The world is built by men like Richard Walsh, men who see everything as a transaction, including people.

Jessica came to see me on the rooftop one afternoon. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and her hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and she looked more beautiful to me than any woman I had ever seen.

You're growing vegetables? she said, looking around at the rooftop garden with something between amusement and admiration.

Tomatoes, peppers, basil, I said. And this is an apple tree. It's going to take a few years to bear fruit.

She smiled. You know, most guys I date buy me dinner and flowers. You grow me tomatoes.

Is that bad?

No, she said. It's...honest.

I knew then that I loved her. Not because she was beautiful or smart or ambitious, but because she saw something in me that I hadn't even seen in myself.

The confrontation with Walsh came in October 2016, when he bought my building and raised the rent by 300 percent. I stood in his office on the 40th floor and looked out at the city I had lived in for ten years, and I made my decision.

I'm not paying, I said.

Walsh smiled. You don't have a choice, Marcus.

I do, I said. I have a choice to stand up for what's right, even when it's hard. Even when it costs me everything.

I left his office and went back to the rooftop and watered the tomatoes. They were ripening, turning from green to red, and the basil smelled strong and sweet in the summer air.

Jessica was waiting for me. She had packed a bag and she was going to stay with me, whatever happened.

We sat on the rooftop and watched the sunset over Manhattan, and I thought about the future—our future, the future of a city that was changing faster than any of us could keep up with.

I couldn't stop the change. I couldn't save everyone. But I could grow tomatoes, and I could love a woman who saw me for who I was, and I could try to make a life that was honest.

And maybe that was enough.