From New York to London and back to New York, a continuous sixteen-hour journey. Alice Ferguson carefully arranged her time.
Six hours of rest, four hours serving her boss, and the final six hours dedicated to work.
The Ygritte Online App Store project she was responsible for had already entered internal testing. As a simple software download and sales platform, development itself was actually quite easy. However, successfully operating it and building a complete business model was far from simple. Countless issues in every aspect needed to be resolved.
The project team was currently working with the online payment team to develop specialized security software for protecting online transactions.
Ever since the Morris worm virus incident three years ago, hackers and viruses seemed to have become increasingly prevalent in recent years.
As the most successful website currently in existence, the Ygritte portal was undoubtedly a prime target for hackers wanting to show off their skills. Just last month, the site had suffered a twenty-minute outage due to a hacker attack. Fortunately, it had occurred in the middle of the night and caused no major damage.
If online payments were not involved, such incidents would only cause headaches for the website without leading to serious consequences.
Now, things were clearly different.
If users were to make purchases over the internet, payment security had to be the top priority.
Recognizing the seriousness of the issue, Ygritte was now rapidly expanding its security team. While attacks were inevitable, it was still possible to minimize risks through a strong technical team and proper response strategies.
Her boss's intention was to develop a free security software.
Of course, some people had recognized the business opportunity and suggested charging for it.
However, Simon's words had dispelled that idea for many: once it became a paid product and spawned an entire security software industry, the internet would likely suffer large-scale virus outbreaks every few years.
After thinking it through, even Alice herself had to admit that the man was right.
Just like the world they lived in. Because the interests involved in the military-industrial complex were simply too vast, war was inevitable.
When the Boeing 767 landed once more on the runway at New York's Kennedy International Airport, the housekeeper walked to the door of a guest room in the mid-cabin and knocked. Once the door opened, she said in a cool tone, "Ms. Jenner, a car has been arranged outside. The driver will take you back to Manhattan."
Throughout the journey, Kris Jenner had tried to build a good relationship with Simon's housekeeper but received no response and eventually gave up. She simply nodded, picked up her handbag, and headed out.
Alice followed beside her to see her off the plane. Noticing that even after more than ten hours, the woman's gait was still somewhat unnatural, she frowned slightly.
It was a faint look of concern.
During the more than ten-hour journey, the woman had only spent a little over an hour in the forward cabin before being sent out. During that time, the housekeeper had been called in by that detestable guy to deliver something and had naturally witnessed certain scenes she should not have seen.
The memory was vivid.
Because of it, she felt that if that guy ever dared do something like that to her, she would definitely resist.
Definitely.
After seeing off the outsider, Alice and the other three girls tidied up the cabin. She personally supervised the plane being stored in the hangar before finally leaving Kennedy International Airport.
Another week of work began.
First came the routine cleaning of several properties owned by her boss in the New York area.
As Simon's property portfolio continued to grow, the maid team had also been expanding. Alice now managed a team of over thirty people.
However, many of the girls had now been assigned to the cities where the properties were located. Usually working in pairs, they were no longer full-time like the first batch. Instead, they spent one or two days a week performing routine cleaning and received very good compensation.
Alice had realized that her boss had initially made them travel between cities themselves only because he worried that handing the properties over to outsiders might lead to them being used for other purposes.
Over the past six months, with the rise of the internet, all of Simon's scattered properties had been equipped with 24-hour video surveillance systems. Cameras covered both the exterior and interior of the villas. Interior monitoring was only removed when someone was staying there.
Current average user network speeds might only be 56K or 128K, but that was naturally not an issue for Simon. All connected properties used direct 5M fiber access, with monitoring terminals located at the Dume Point estate.
One of the core team's current responsibilities was to check via video whether the maids in distant cities like Seattle or Miami were performing their duties properly and whether they were doing anything they should not.
Some girls had been warned in advance about the surveillance inside the villas, yet still behaved inappropriately.
Some used their high salaries to hire others to help clean. Some secretly used the master bedroom bathroom to shower. Some tried to slack off and do a sloppy job. Others even planned to throw parties in Simon's villas.
Not only were these people all fired, they were also hit with punitive compensation claims according to their contracts.
Because of this, even Alice had roughly come to understand her boss's strong primitive sense of territorial ownership.
The few properties on the East and West Coasts where Simon stayed regularly were still personally managed by Alice and her core team. As a result, the girls had to fly between the two coasts at least once a week.
At first, having their own private jet had excited the girls quite a bit.
After getting used to it, it simply became normal.
However, Alice had also noticed that her companions now displayed a very obvious sense of superiority in front of ordinary people.
She herself was probably the same.
Well.
Of course, except toward that one man whom they could only look up to.
From Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday morning, after finishing cleaning the properties in Manhattan and Greenwich, Alice and several girls boarded their Gulfstream IV and returned to the West Coast.
After spending another day taking care of several properties in Los Angeles, most of the girls' weekly work was basically complete.
Therefore, describing that guy as someone who simply spent money keeping vases was the most fitting description.
Janet had once privately told the housekeeper and the others in a half-joking tone that they were precisely the vases Simon Westeros kept.
However, most of the girls were quite willing to be such exceptionally well-treated vases.
Even with the one-million-dollar vase fund available, many girls who had grown accustomed to this life of luxury had little interest in doing other things.
Janet had already promised that as long as they performed well enough, they could continue working until age thirty instead of being limited to the original five-year contract.
Most people worked hard their entire lives and could never earn a million dollars.
By age thirty, with several million dollars saved, they could basically retire directly. After that, they could do whatever they wanted. Why make life so difficult?
Moreover, that one-million-dollar vase fund was genuinely not easy to obtain.
Alice, of course, had no such thoughts.
If she had not wanted to achieve something meaningful, she would never have accepted her current job in the first place.
She had always been diligent and responsible in her "main job" as housekeeper. However, she had not wasted any of her extra time and had used it all on matters at Ygritte Company.
Privately, she was also figuring out how to claim her share of the one-million-dollar vase fund.
The treatment she deserved naturally could not be wasted.
She had zero intention of saving money for a certain guy.
Additionally, she harbored some competitive feelings toward another "vase."
When she had first joined, she had been tricked by the C girl beside Simon.
Women held grudges.
The C girl Claire Grey's card camera project, along with Simon's seemingly preferential support, gave the housekeeper a faint sense of threat.
Ygritte Company had officially purchased the first batch of one thousand iCam 10 units from Tinkerbell and conducted free trials for blog users in June. The response during this period had been extremely strong.
To promote the iCam, the blog team had also specially developed a web interface.
All users who sent pictures via iCam would have a "Picture From iCam" prompt attached to their web posts. This text would also directly link to Tinkerbell Company's official website.
As the first product, the iCam inevitably had some minor issues. However, in the face of its extremely high cost-performance ratio, other professional digital cameras costing thousands of dollars at the time had no competitiveness whatsoever.
Moreover, it enjoyed comprehensive official support from Egret.
During this period, driven by the photo-sharing trend on the Ygritte blog, many users began asking where they could buy such a camera.
Sharp-eyed North American retailers naturally could not ignore such an opportunity.
As of early July, Tinkerbell had already received order inquiries for more than one hundred thousand units from electronics retailers across North America.
Fulfilling such a large order in a short time was obviously impossible, but it was undoubtedly an excellent start.
In early discussions with Simon, the C girl had also considered remote internet sales similar to current TV shopping if a smooth retail channel could not be established.
Now, thanks to the iCam's popularity, many things had fallen into place naturally.
Of course, competition was inevitable.
Simon had warned the C girl in advance that many powerful electronics manufacturers, such as Sony and Panasonic, could probably launch such a simple card camera in just one month if they wanted to.
However, Tinkerbell's advantages thanks to Ygritte's support were actually very obvious.
Besides the most obvious time advantage, photos taken with the iCam were directly saved in the GIF image format developed by Ygritte Company. Photoshop software also provided significant added value, along with official technical and promotional support from Ygritte.
With such clear advantages, if they still could not succeed, Simon would have no choice but to allow other electronics manufacturers to enter the market. According to the previously set development plan, enriching internet platform content as quickly as possible remained the top priority no matter what.
While Simon was personally overseeing the filming of Wonder Woman in the UK, the summer season in North America continued.
From June 28 to July 4, Terminator 2 opened with a first-week box office of $56.93 million.
This result obviously could not compare to Batman: The Dark Knight. However, the $56.93 million opening also exceeded most people's expectations, and Fox breathed a sigh of relief.
An opening of $56.93 million meant that Terminator 2's North American box office reaching $200 million was still very secure.
A $200 million domestic gross would basically allow the film to recoup all previous production and marketing costs.
As Hollywood film production costs continued to rise, and with overseas markets, home video channels, and television platforms continuing to expand, North American domestic box office for Hollywood films was becoming less and less crucial.
Everyone increasingly used domestic box office as a measure of a film's ultimate commercial potential.
Many films with budgets of fifty million dollars or more could not even recoup costs relying solely on domestic box office.
For a film like Terminator 2, with total production and marketing costs reaching one hundred million dollars, being able to recoup costs just through North American theatrical release was already quite remarkable.
With domestic box office able to reach $200 million, the film's overseas market potential would be similarly strong, possibly even higher.
Adding subsequent home video and television broadcast revenue, the project's net profit over the next three years would basically reach around $200 million.
The profit scale of the two major DC Movie Universe films could only be described as miraculous and was simply incomparable. Projects like Terminator 2, with expected earnings of $200 million, were exactly what every Hollywood studio pursued.
Additionally, during the week of June 28 to July 4, Batman: The Dark Knight saw a 23% drop, earning another $34.77 million for a cumulative total of $242.05 million.
The film's weekly gross had fallen back into the $30-40 million range and would basically no longer have a major impact on other summer films.
According to the current box office trend, it would take at most another three weeks for Batman: The Dark Knight to break $300 million in North America. As for whether it could challenge $400 million, that would depend on subsequent market performance.
Thanks to strong overseas box office and merchandise sales, Batman: The Dark Knight had already recouped all its production and marketing costs on paper by its second week of release. At this point, the blockbuster was steadily generating profits for both Daenerys and Time Warner.
On July 5, as the atmosphere of America's Independence Day holiday had not yet faded, three new films opened in North American theaters.
They were the comedy Problem Child 2 from Universal Pictures (now under Daenerys Entertainment), Disney's re-release of the classic 2D animation 101 Dalmatians, and Paramount Pictures' drama Regarding Henry.
Since they were scheduled in the summer season, all three films were considered key projects by their respective studios.
However, their market performance turned out to be quite average.
The best performer was actually Disney's re-release of 101 Dalmatians, which earned $16.86 million in its first seven days. Michael Douglas and Annette Bening's Regarding Henry opened with only $10.91 million. Universal Pictures had clearly tried to ride the wave of last year's Home Alone with Problem Child 2, but it only managed $10.29 million in its opening week.
Therefore, during the week of July 5 to July 11, the North American film market continued to be led by Terminator 2 and Batman: The Dark Knight.
In its second week, Terminator 2 dropped 37% from its opening week. This decline was actually better than Batman: The Dark Knight's. Of course, the two films' opening scales could not be directly compared.
Still, the second-week gross of $41.33 million pushed Terminator 2's North American total to $98.26 million.
It had essentially broken $100 million in just two weeks.
Hollywood studios also realized that the era of dense, saturated wide releases had officially arrived with the release of Batman: The Dark Knight and Terminator 2.