With a blonde loli following behind him, Jiang Chen walked into the lobby of Future Building and he seemed to realize that he was becoming the focal point.
Although the eyes of his employees were usually focused on him with his arrival regardless.
But today, he felt that in everyone’s eyes, in addition to the usual respect, there were some strange emotions… or rather, the desire for gossip?
After all, Jiang Chen’s romantic affairs were not news in Xin or even the rest of the world. And the employees of Future Group were accustomed to the fact. It was just the fact the girl following behind him, seemed too young to be a mistress?
Could it be…
An illegitimate daughter?!!
The passion for gossip ignited in the eyes of the two beauties at the front desk. They simultaneously exchanged eye contact and began to whisper.
In less than half a minute, the blond loli’s story was created. She was a mistake from Jiang Chen’s younger days and there was a plot twist even more interesting than a Korean drama. As for the flaw in their logic, they chose to selectively ignore the facts.
For example, Jiang Chen was only in his twenties now…
Fortunately, it was not the peak time in the lobby, and there were not a lot of people here.
With the urge to facepalm, Jiang Chen brought Lilith into the elevator and he finally felt relieved from escaping those odd looks.
He looked over to Lilith and her expression remained unchanged, as if those looks did not bother her at all.
After they got into the elevator, her eyes stayed on the scene outside the floor-to-ceiling window of the elevator, she gazed at the outline of Coro City in the distance.
The elevator rose, and the view outside the window became more and more open.
She suddenly said.
“What a beautiful city.”
Slightly shocked by what she said, Jiang Chen looked at her.
Lilith noticed his sight, then sighed, as if she had already guessed his thought.
“You don’t have to think of me as a monster, I still have things like aesthetics.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Jiang Chen smiled. “I just feel a little surprised.”
Lilith did not respond, she just looked at the outline of Coro quietly.
After a while, she didn’t speak until the elevator stopped on the top floor.
“I understand your surprise.”
…
The first meeting was the reporting of all departments of Celestial Trade, as well as budget. As in the past, everyone received only ten minutes to speak, and everyone removed the unnecessary formality in their speech based on Jiang Chen’s request. They tried to be as concise as possible in the report.
Different from Future Group, in addition to the three major projects, space elevator, quantum communication satellites, and global power grids that could report a stellar financial performance, all other projects were either losing money or barely breaking even.
But money wasn’t important.
After all, Jiang Chen’s positioning of Celestial Trade was not to generate profit, and he never used KPIs as a criterion for evaluating the work of departments. For most of the non-profit sectors of Celestial Trade, compared with a good-looking financial reports, he valued other achievements.
The second meeting was a seminar on the development planning of the Mars colony. The attendees of the meeting were mainly executives of the Celestial Trade Space Department, especially those leading the Mars project.
The reason why the meetings were arranged together was to make traveling easier for executives like Kelvin, who was stationed in Celestial City.
At the meeting, the expansion plan and space elevator were discussed as key topics.
However, after the meeting, Jiang Chen added a provisional item in front of these two topics to be discussed.
That was…
“… establish an Earth civilization monument and school in the colony? I’m not doubting whether this is necessary, but I think it’s too early …” After Kelvin listened to the president’s speech, he was confused by Jiang Chen as to why he brought up this seemingly trivial matter to discuss.
“It’s not too early,” When he looked around around at the Mars project executives present, Jiang Chen said in a serious tone, “To strengthen the cultural bond between the colony and mainstream society, we must lay the foundation from the beginning, otherwise, there may be hidden dangers buried.”
The executives of the Mars project all looked at each other in shock and confusion.
No doubt, from their perspective, the president’s words were undoubtedly alarmist.
Jiang Chen was not surprised by their reaction.
After all, they didn’t possess his ability to travel to another world, and they naturally would feel confused about the problems he brought up.
The reason why Celestial Trade’s development was compared to standing on the shoulders of a giant was not simply because the company possessed technology from the 22nd century. In addition to science, the mistakes made by that world’s superpowers in their explorations were also great assets for Jiang Chen.
He didn’t intend to explain anything. As the president of Celestial Trade, he had the highest decision-making power. Whenever he would issue an order, there was no need to vote at all. Others could only make suggestions.
The proposal was passed directly, and the next step was to discuss how to implement it.
According to Jiang Chen’s proposal, the Mars Project Department would budget 2 billion Xin New Dollars to build an Earth civilization monument, elementary and high schools in the Mars colony. At the same time, in the next batch of colonists, forty teachers and 200 students of different age groups would also be brought on board.
“Does it make sense to send teachers and students to the colony?” One of the executives asked, “and how can we convince parents to send their children to Mars?”
“In order to prevent age gaps in the colony, we need a relatively smooth and stable population age distribution curve to stabilize the social structure of our colony. They don’t need to do anything there, they just need to stay there to finish their studies, then decide whether to stay in the colony or return to Earth. ”
After highlighting this problem, Jiang Chen continued, “As for the latter problem, this is also very easy to solve. Going to high school in the colony can provide students with additional points during the college entrance examination. I believe there will be many families willing to send their children there.”As long as Celestial Trade reimbursed the cost of the tickets, perhaps even the entire family would move to Mars.
“In the next year, we will open flights to and from Mars and increase the population limit of the colony to 5,000. Compared with the current population size, this number indeed is several times larger. For the future development of the colony, I hope you will pay attention to the issues I have just emphasized. ”
Jiang Chen was pleased as he saw all the executives’ expressions begin to turn serious. Then he nodded.
After a pause, he continued.
“The next topic is the space elevator.”
“To turn Mars into our heavy industry base, a convenient means of transportation is essential. I believe that you have more intuitive data than I do, so I won’t emphasize this again.”
“I just need one thing. With the flight to Mars taking off by next year. Before November, I hope you can put the Mars Space Elevator Program into action.”
“You must guarantee quality while also ensure efficiency!”
