The meeting with Al Gore lasted one hour. At two thirty, the senator hurriedly left to return to Washington.
After seeing Gore off, Simon and James Rebould returned to the meeting room they had just used and sat down again. Once the secretary had changed the coffee and left, James said, "According to American presidential election tradition, the candidate and running mate should come from different regions, one from the North and one from the South, and their ages should also complement each other. Both Arkansas and Tennessee are in the South and even border each other. Clinton and Gore are also both very young. Do you really plan to do this?"
Simon picked up his coffee and took a sip. He had quit for a while because Janet wanted a child, but now there was no need for that anymore.
Setting the cup down, Simon replied, "Traditions are meant to be broken. After so many years of the same pattern, the public should want to see something new. Besides, in my view, the key to winning or losing this election does not lie with Clinton himself."
George Bush's advantages in next year's presidential election were simply too overwhelming.
Coming from a century-old political family, with deep governing experience, and the immense public prestige from the decisive victory in the Gulf War, all of these were far beyond what Clinton, who came from a humble background and whose own record was far from clean, could match.
To win such an election, they could only succeed by doing the unexpected.
Having Ross Perot, who belonged to the same conservative camp, run as a third-party candidate to siphon votes from George Bush was the real key to Bill Clinton's victory in the 1992 presidential election.
James understood what Simon was referring to and said, "Perot has recently established the Reform Party and has been continuously building momentum for himself in the media. However, the results from Joseph's team show that the public's reaction to his potential run next year is not particularly enthusiastic."
"That's only temporary. Right now, Bush's popularity is still at its peak because of the war victory earlier this year, and the Democratic candidates haven't emerged yet. If Bush's war halo starts to fade next year and the Democratic candidates fail to generate public excitement, Perot's candidacy could gain support from a large number of people."
Simon thought for a moment and added, "For now, let's not focus too much on Perot. The priority before next year is to help Clinton clean up as many of his messes as possible."
"Clinton is still holding back from us and does not fully trust us. However, Hillary has been very cooperative. She probably senses our sincerity in this bet. With her assistance, Joseph has already secured three confidentiality agreements and resolved one instance of disguised cash transfer through live cattle futures." James could not help shaking his head as he spoke. "You don't like Rudy Giuliani, right? I think this guy is actually even worse than Giuliani."
"He's someone who can get things done, and these flaws of his give us more room to operate. If it were someone like Jimmy Carter, do you think we would gain much even if we helped him into the White House?"
Jimmy Carter, who served from 1977 to 1981, left most people with an impression of mediocrity and inaction. This president also cared greatly about his reputation, which made him even more cautious and hesitant. In his four years in office he produced almost no notable achievements, and he ultimately lost his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan, an actor with shallow political experience.
James nodded in agreement. At their current position, if they still had overly strong moral scruples, they really would not be able to do anything at all.
After finishing the work here, Simon went to Daenerys Entertainment's East Coast headquarters in Greenwich to handle some matters. By evening he set off back to the West Coast.
He had left after dinner yesterday and arrived in Los Angeles. Now today's dinner was just being prepared.
Upon returning to the Point Dume estate, C-girl Claire Grey was waiting for him.
Because of iCam's success, Claire had to devote most of her energy to the company. These days she needed to work more than ten hours every day.
Simon was not the type to force people. Since his maid's career was on the right track, he had generously let her go. Claire would head to San Francisco tomorrow to begin her full-time job officially.
Janet had been chatting with the C-girl. When she saw Simon return, she came over to kiss her husband, said she would check on dinner preparations, and left the living room.
Simon sat down on the sofa. Looking at the girl who was still wearing the OL uniform he liked, he smiled and said, "You're about to escape the Westeros devil's clutches. How does it feel?"
The C-girl poured Simon a glass of water and handed it to him. She sat down beside her boss, leaning her body slightly as she looked at him with bright eyes. "I haven't officially resigned yet. I'll still receive my salary for the next few years. Whenever the boss needs me, I can come back anytime."
"Even if it means giving up Tinkerbell?"
The C-girl answered without hesitation, "Of course. It was all given to me by the boss anyway. It doesn't matter if I give it up."
Simon studied Claire's delicate face and breathed in her pleasant scent. "Suddenly I feel like rewarding you."
Claire's eyes sparkled as she glanced at Simon. Her fair little hand, emerging from the sleeve of her black suit, lightly stroked her tight skirt in an obviously teasing manner. "I'll remember that. But not here. Madam will get angry."
Simon looked at the girl's expression and said, "Did you misunderstand something?"
Claire nodded confidently. "No, I didn't. Boss, you're just too hard to handle. So for me, certain things count as rewards."
"And then? Won't that give birth to some greater ambitions?"
"I've had those for a long time. However, in front of Madam, I think staying alive is the most important thing."
Simon thought about it and felt that it was actually quite possible.
Since their marriage last year, the outside world had been constantly guessing whether the two of them had signed a prenuptial agreement and what its contents were.
They had signed one.
Janet had asked for nothing in the agreement, giving off the impression that she would leave with nothing if they ever divorced. But Simon knew that the word "divorce" simply did not exist in their dictionary.
If there was anything at all.
Perhaps.
Only widowhood.
At his core, Simon's attitude toward this world was one of detachment and indifference. Beneath Janet's unrestrained, childlike personality hid a kind of madness that could ignore all rules at any moment. When the woman once said her dream was to destroy the world, she had not been joking.
People with sharper instincts would probably sense, after spending enough time around her, the hysteria that Janet could unleash at any time.
The C-girl had clearly sensed it, which was why she never entertained any thoughts of replacing her.
Simon chatted and laughed with Claire for a while before turning to business matters.
Tinkerbell's starting point could be said to be both very low and very high.
It was low because, compared to the camera industry giants with decades of technological accumulation, Tinkerbell was like a newborn with nothing, completely without foundation.
It was high because the company had the entire Westeros system behind it.
For a company like this, if managed well, growth would be extremely rapid. If it failed to control the situation, it could end up as nothing but a grand dream.
The C-girl faced many challenges: handling the explosive market demand, increasing iCam production capacity, continuously investing in research and development, establishing retail channels, perfecting after-sales service, and so on. It was an overwhelming number of issues. Passing this test meant becoming a success. Failing it naturally meant failure.
Simon had also been thinking about the company's issues recently.
Although if Tinkerbell could not make it, he would quickly bring in other camera giants to join the competition, if it could be kept in-house, he naturally preferred to keep it that way.
"For the production capacity issue, since this camera is targeted at internet users, we can try an online reservation model. Users obtain a purchase quota through the official website's reservation page, then pick up the product at offline retail stores using their voucher. This approach can maintain iCam's popularity for a long time while also avoiding the disappointment of customers constantly finding products out of stock at retail locations."
This was essentially the hunger marketing Simon remembered from his past life.
However, since online shopping had not yet taken off, they could only make some adjustments: obtain quotas online and pick up offline.
Claire maintained a somewhat seductive posture as she listened seriously to Simon finish speaking. "For at least the next two months, we can only supply two thousand units per week. Developing an entire online reservation system just for these two thousand units, wouldn't that be a bit wasteful? Even without the reservation system, our official website has already crashed several times recently due to increased traffic."
Tinkerbell's official website was hosted on servers operated by Ygritte.
Because cloud computing technology was still under development, current server leasing followed the traditional non-elastic model. The allocated space was fixed. Leasing many times more server capacity than usual just to handle data peaks during certain periods would indeed be quite uneconomical.
Simon thought for a moment and said, "Then continue cooperating with Ygritte. The Ygritte portal has the capacity to handle this kind of data traffic. It's a win-win situation."
Claire nodded. "I'll discuss it with Mr. Bezos when I go to San Francisco tomorrow. But boss, you need to put in a word for me first."
The two continued discussing various other details. Before they knew it, it was already dinner time.
Janet did not allow the maids to sit at the table, so only she and Simon ate together. A, B, C, and D could only eat after the couple had finished.
The time after dinner was naturally not shared with the little vixens around them.
The couple watched television for a while. Close to nine o'clock, they headed to the bedroom as usual.
After showering together and changing into pajamas, they sat on the large bed. Janet took out a thick folder from the bedside table and brought up a recent matter. "Our investigation team found the guy who caused the Ygritte portal to crash the other day. Guess who it is?"
"Your brother?"
"…"
"Alright, I'm joking."
Janet rolled her eyes at Simon, pulled out a photo from the folder, and handed it to him. "It's a little girl from Rhode Island. Her name is Maya Dorrant. She's only sixteen this year. Single-parent family, but the family conditions are quite good. Her mother has a family trust worth about eight million dollars. If nothing goes wrong, it's enough for the mother and daughter to live comfortably for the rest of their lives."
Simon took the photo and glanced at it.
It was clearly a secretly taken picture. The photo showed a quiet, gentle-looking girl. She was not tall, around five foot three, with a slender figure. She wore a very ordinary T-shirt and jeans and had neat, ear-length short hair. Looking at her profile, she could probably be considered a budding beauty.
For some reason, seeing this photo suddenly reminded Simon of something else.
"By the way, at the Dark Knight premiere in June, what was the deal with that girl?"
Janet had not expected Simon to suddenly mention it. She blinked twice and said, "You mean Jenny?"
Simon said helplessly, "Yes, Jenny."
Another Jenny.
The woman showed no sign of guilt at all. "She admires you so much. Of course I had to make her wish come true."
"Hmm?"
"Jenny [Jennifer] can't possibly stay by your side forever, right? So this Jenny can serve as a backup. She's already been accepted to Stanford and will start school soon. I plan to arrange some extra training for her. She definitely won't be any worse than the current Jenny."
"Does she herself want to?"
"Why wouldn't she? Even her parents would probably cry and beg to send their daughter to you."
"Are you sure there are parents like that?"
"They're just ordinary people. I gave them one million dollars, and that took care of it."
"Alright. Just don't cause any trouble."
Janet said confidently, "Of course I won't."
Simon directly moved past the matter. After thinking about it, he indeed still needed a personal assistant. The female assistant also had plans to have a child in a few years, so a replacement was even more necessary. Since it was a girl personally trained by Janet, Simon felt at ease.
He turned back to the previous topic and gestured at the photo. "What do you plan to do with this girl?"
"The investigation team already obtained direct evidence from the girl's computer. I plan to have someone confront the mother and daughter soon. Either we file a lawsuit and make them go bankrupt, or the girl must come work for us."
Simon did not pursue how the investigation team had "obtained direct evidence" and instead asked, "Isn't she only sixteen?"
Janet clearly saw no issue with it. "Yes, but sixteen is already quite old. Many girls have children at sixteen. Besides, as long as she works for us, I won't restrict her life at all. I'll even make sure she lives better."
If she refused, the mother and daughter's trust fund would probably be wiped out.
Eight million dollars was an enormous sum that many ordinary people could live on for a lifetime.
However, if they pursued the twenty-minute crash of the Ygritte portal a while ago to the fullest extent, eight million dollars would not be nearly enough to compensate.
Simon considered it for a moment and nodded. He added, "If she's truly talented enough, don't assign her to Ygritte. Put her directly into our investigation team. She can help find other people in the future."
"That's exactly what I was thinking," Janet said. She flipped further through the folder and continued, "There's one more thing. The investigation team that found Maya Dorrant recently reported to me that their team leader feels like someone is watching us."
Simon's eyes narrowed. He took the handwritten report Janet handed over, looked at it, and asked, "Can't Neil and the others usually detect something like this?"
Janet shook her head. "Neil and the others are just bodyguards. They can help you dodge paparazzi when you're sneaking around, but they're not professional agents after all. There are some things they naturally can't detect." [TL/N: HAHAHAHAHAHA]