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"Henry."
"Yes, my dear. What's up—calling me at this hour?"
For convenience, Stark Pictures had issued the latest mobile phones to its executives. As CEO, Henry naturally had one as well.
But at the moment, very few people actually had his number.
Within the same social circles, most people were still observing—waiting to see just how much value this man truly had before deciding their attitude toward him.
Although the plan to digitize movie cameras had already spread like wildfire, the majority still believed that the real mastermind was the genius heir of the Stark family, while Henry Brown was merely a figurehead.
Because of that, not many people had his number, and even fewer would actually call it. Charlize Theron was, without a doubt, one of them.
But she wouldn't call without a reason. At the very least, the two of them didn't do long, idle phone chats just to talk about trivial household matters.
So in her very next sentence, Charlize went straight to the point.
"Would it be alright if Jane came over to our place today to watch our acting training?"
"Why invite her all of a sudden?"
"She thinks I should enroll in a formal acting school. But honestly, what I learned from Salvador before wasn't nearly as much as what I've learned from you, so I declined. Her idea is that she wants to see how we actually train."
"If she wants to come, I don't mind at all. Don't worry about Katie—if I'm here, that little kitty won't hurt anyone."
"It's just…" Charlize hesitated on the other end of the line.
"My dear, if you have something to say, just say it."
"Actually, Jane didn't say it outright, but I can tell… she's a bit worried about our relationship."
"Worried how?" Henry asked, genuinely puzzled. Guessing someone else's thoughts blindly wasn't easy.
"I think she hopes you can play a role in my acting career, but at the same time she doesn't want our relationship to become a hindrance. Would that… be a bad thing?"
Henry reassured her,
"Why would it be bad? From an agent's perspective, if she didn't think like that, I'd actually question her professionalism.
"But don't worry, my dear. We have plenty of time together, but success is something you have to seize early. You focus on what you think you need to do—I'll support you, always."
"Thank you, sweetheart. I love you," Charlize said softly.
"Love you too, my dear."
Affection needed reciprocity. Since she'd expressed her feelings, Henry wasn't about to revert to his pre-transmigration habit of being cautious with those words.
And after living in the West for four or five years, what had once been an act—pretending to fit into this world—had long since become natural.
Now, he no longer behaved like his pre-transmigration self at all. He'd grown accustomed to Western ways of doing things.
Environment really did shape people. No wonder Mencius's mother had moved three times.
Still, some habits slipped out instinctively. Like now, when Henry casually asked,
"Will you be back for dinner?"
On the other end, Charlize replied,
"We still have an audition this afternoon, and I don't know how late it'll run. I won't skip tonight's acting practice, but I'll probably eat out with Jane before coming home."
"That's fine. I'll feed Katie first and let her lie down to digest. You know that little kitty—when she's hungry, she's always extra energetic."
"Is that what you call energetic? More than once I've felt like Katie was looking at me and drooling. Alright, enough chatting. I need to get going too. See you tonight."
"See you tonight."
Henry hung up the phone and turned around. A group of people were installing a massive, specialized computer in the large room behind him.
This was the West Coast supercomputer promised by Tony Stark, built by Stark Industries' computer division.
In terms of theoretical computing power, it was the most powerful supercomputer in the world at present—being brand new—but its lead over second place wasn't enormous. That was because its primary focus wasn't raw computation, but image processing.
Although many of its components were custom-made, they were still within Stark Industries' manufacturing capabilities. Whenever specifications exceeded the norm, Tony Stark—still on the East Coast—would personally research solutions.
This was Tony Stark's greatest value within Stark Industries right now: leading research teams to overcome manufacturing bottlenecks.
Whether it was materials failing to meet standards or performance falling short, nothing seemed unsolvable before his genius mind. With just a bit of guidance from Tony, teams could produce qualified components.
From a certain perspective, difficulties that stumped others posed no real challenge to Tony Stark at all. Recently, the only project that had genuinely taken up his time was the supercomputer design proposal Henry had submitted.
Even then, there weren't many points Tony could criticize. Some of the challenges felt less like flaws and more like deliberate tests of Stark Industries' manufacturing limits.
So Tony Stark effectively had only two choices.
One was to modify the design—accepting reduced performance in exchange for manufacturability.
The other was to push Stark Industries to upgrade itself and produce exactly what the blueprints demanded.
Henry wasn't trying to make things difficult for the sake of it. His designs all stayed within reasonable bounds, or were based on documented concepts and papers. They weren't some miraculous, out-of-nowhere black technology.
And he wasn't idle on the West Coast either. Newly recruited programmers were split into groups. One group focused on upgrading the digital encoding system.
Their first task was to fully digest Henry's 1080p encoder–decoder, then push toward 2K, 4K, and even 8K.
Another group worked on improving post-production software—editing, color grading, sound adjustment, mixing, and effects. Here, "effects" didn't mean CGI animation, but post-production additions like subtitles.
During this development phase, they naturally used the most advanced commercial computers Stark Industries could provide. Tony Stark had even given special instructions to send the old i486 to a museum—don't keep using it. It was too embarrassing.
Beyond software, Henry also had to oversee the assembly of the supercomputer components shipped from the East Coast.
Stark Industries engineers assisted with assembly, along with newly hired Stark Pictures hardware engineers. But the overall responsibility still fell on one of the designers—Henry Brown.
Tony Stark shipped only components that had already passed testing. If assembly failed on the Los Angeles side, Henry could easily imagine the level of mockery he'd face.
All in all, it felt like two genius minds deliberately making life difficult for each other.
Yet neither of them backed down.
They had no interest in deliberately setting traps or obstacles for the other. But if either failed to keep up with the other's thinking, they'd have to swallow their pride, make a call for help, endure a verbal dressing-down—and then receive instruction.
Still, in this silent East Coast–West Coast contest, Henry did have a slight advantage.
He mainly had to monitor assembly progress and keep an eye on the encoder–decoder and software development.
After all, the design was his. Taking a bit of advantage afterward was only fair.
So before the workday even ended, this CEO slipped out early—finally living out a dream from his wage-slave days.
After all, he still had other things to do tonight.
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