But none of that was a problem for Killian right now.
A single controlled fusion reactor could keep one mech running for centuries. Even if it had to maintain an energy shield at full output, it could still last for years, even decades. For planetary surface warfare, that was more than enough.
He just had not told Otto about that part yet.
After all, Otto was already responsible for building the Jaeger itself. Just fully digesting the technologies involved would take him a very long time. Giving him energy-shield development now would not help. It would only add dozens more unfinished tasks to the dozens he already had.
"All right. I accept your explanation, boss."
"But I'm still keeping my reservations."
After hearing Killian out, Otto nodded to show he understood.
Under his own assumptions, a mech like this would have had, at most, some deterrent value in surface warfare. But if you redefined it as infantry equipment for interstellar war, then it made much more sense.
A battlefield on a planet was limited. Even if two sides were fighting across an entire continent, that was still not too much space for a mech unit to deploy and fight effectively.
But if you expanded that idea to planetary warfare on a larger scale, then everything changed.
It was like using a ping-pong paddle on a table. Perfectly suitable there. But if you tried to apply the same thing to a soccer field, the difference became obvious.
The same logic applied here. In that context, the role of the mech immediately became clear.
Still, his boss's vision was almost absurdly ahead of its time.
Even the United States was only beginning to think in terms of planetary landings and exploring extraterrestrial civilizations.
And yet Killian had already pushed his thinking all the way to interstellar warfare.
It was like watching two children prepare for a fight. One was still thinking about how to beat the other. The other was already thinking about how to kill him.
Their way of viewing the problem was fundamentally different.
In fact, Otto felt that if the American government ever heard the ideas Killian had just laid out, then no amount of influence would save him from serious trouble.
After all, this touched directly on external contact, and not just with foreign governments.
With extraterrestrial civilizations.
Still, none of that was Otto's main concern.
What excited him most was still the same thing as always, watching these pieces of advanced technology come to life through his own hands.
"Mm. Keep it up."
"Don't worry. Your family is doing well. In a few days, the company will have them brought over. The campus has already prepared a villa for you. If you want, you can live here with them. The company won't force anything on you, of course. But if you do move in, they won't have to travel such a long way just to see you anymore."
After patting Otto on the shoulder, Killian smiled as he spoke.
"Really?!"
The moment he heard that, Otto's whole face lit up.
Even though he spoke with his family by video regularly and saw them every so often, the distance was still a problem. He worked inside the company most of the time, and even the nearest town was far away. There were employee dorms under the base, of course, but that was still not the same as home.
That had always been one of Otto's biggest regrets.
After all, for a man working hard out in the world, what was it really for?
Wasn't it for the time he could spend with his wife and child?
And now, without warning, that regret had been resolved.
"Of course. During the planning stage, the company specifically set aside a villa district to be provided free of charge to senior staff."
"Food, housing, transportation, everything is fully available there. The level of care is comprehensive."
"Children's education, family security, household management, everything is coordinated by Baymax."
"As long as you don't overthink it or feel like the company is using this to hold your family in place, you're welcome to move in anytime."
"And later on, we'll continue improving the福利待遇 for your relatives as well."
Seeing how happy Otto was, Killian smiled and explained further.
To be honest, from the company's perspective, he absolutely did want employees' families living inside the company campus.
But he also understood that employees were still people.
And as long as people were people, they would have desires. They would long for freedom. You could not simply tie them to one place forever.
So the best thing Killian could do was make the campus attractive enough that employees would want to come in on their own, and even compete for the chance.
"Of course I wouldn't feel burdened."
"To be honest, crime in New York has always been outrageously high. At night, it's practically gang territory, and with Hell's Kitchen there too, it's dangerous no matter the hour."
"Leaving my family there is what would really weigh on me."
"We actually wanted to buy a house here in Miami from the beginning and have my wife and son move over."
"It's just that prices around here are going up almost by the day. At this rate, it'll end up more expensive than New York."
"I've been too busy to handle it, and my wife has been tied up with work handovers and our son's school transfer paperwork."
"Boss, the company has basically solved my last real worry."
After hearing how sincerely Killian had spoken, Otto explained everything openly.
After all, he had lived in New York his whole life. Even though most of his own time had been spent teaching at the university, things like street shootings and school shootings were no longer rare at all.
And the crime rate kept rising year after year.
Florida, on the other hand, was much calmer than places like New York, where too many different forces mixed together.
And beyond that, his workplace was here too. The idea of seeing his wife and child every day after work was basically the definition of happiness.
"That's good."
"If there are any formalities afterward, just leave them to Baymax. It'll coordinate everything."
"Keep going. I believe in you."
After hearing Otto out, Killian nodded, gave his shoulder another firm pat, and finally turned to leave.
Now that the company was expanding and more and more top-secret internal projects were coming online, there were many places he needed to personally inspect.
Even though Baymax handled everything in the background, Killian still believed that at the very least, every major project should be personally reviewed.
Because there was a huge difference between a boss showing up to inspect a project and never coming at all.
In the first case, the person in charge felt seen, valued, and motivated. In the second, even if they had no negative feelings, their energy would still never be the same.
After that, once he had reviewed several other company projects, Killian finally wrapped up the day.
...
The next day.
The moment AIM officially announced on its website that the AIM Technology Park was open for business, it triggered another tidal wave of discussion across the globe.
Almost instantly, online conversation about AIM exploded again.
On the very same day, tens of millions of netizens flocked to the news.
Some people, especially those already close to Miami, simply got on planes or drove over in person to see it themselves, turning the park into the hottest destination imaginable.
Because it was AIM's headquarters, many products that had not yet officially launched were available there for early trial experiences.
Some people even spotted VR visor technology.
Compared to holographic projection, it offered an even more immersive and convincing experience.
If holographic projection was about perfectly restoring a person into the real world, then VR visors were about perfectly reconstructing the world inside your own eyes and customizing it however you liked.
And because this was overseas, anyone over eighteen could use the unrestricted version of the technology without issue.
That, combined with the enormous scale of the park itself and the towering AIM headquarters building that seemed to reach into the clouds, instantly made the AIM Innovation Park in Miami the focus of public attention.
By 2 p.m. that afternoon, the entire park was already packed.
Wherever you went, it was wall-to-wall people.
Fortunately, all of that was managed through Baymax's centralized coordination. With the help of on-site robots under Baymax's direction, the entire park was kept in remarkable order.
Visitors were extremely satisfied with the overall experience.
Even though they were only allowed into the showcase zone, the area itself was huge. Add to that the check-in appeal of the office zone, along with the food stalls and bars operated by robots throughout the park, and the whole place felt more like a giant futuristic amusement destination than a normal corporate campus.
In a single day, just the food and beverage sales inside the park brought Killian tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
For a while, Killian found himself sitting in his office just watching the tourists go crazy trying to check in at every corner.
He had to admit it.
Tourism really did have huge profit potential.
If he set an entrance fee at this rate, the whole park would probably pay for itself in just a few months.
Still, Killian chose not to do that.
After all, these people were not entering the company's core zones, and a crowd of only around a hundred thousand still seemed manageable.
There was no need to damage public goodwill over something like that.
Only, a few days later, he was completely proven wrong.
As time went on, more and more tourists came in from all over the world. The first couple of days had only been the warm-up. They had simply announced to AIM that the main wave was still on its way.
Then, all at once, people poured into the showcase zone in swarms.
It got so outrageous that the huge road outside, even though it lay dozens of kilometers away from the nearest city, was jammed end to end with vehicles.
From daylight to late into the night, the traffic never let up.
Revenue over those few days jumped to several times what it had been before.
"Boss, based on current data and the unprecedented level of enthusiasm online, these are the projections."
"At this rate, it'll probably take another two months before public excitement falls back down to the level of the first two days after opening."
Inside Killian's office, a secretary walked up with a report in hand, leaned slightly as she presented it, and spoke.
"..."
"My God. These people are even more insane than I thought."
Even though he had already expected things to get intense, Killian still had not imagined it would become this extreme.
At that moment, even he felt like he had been slapped in the face by reality.
To put it simply, in his previous life, a place like Shanghai Disneyland could pull in around 150,000 visitors on a busy weekend day.
And what AIM was facing now was several times that.
Even the daily transport of food supplies now required cargo aircraft because standard ground logistics could no longer handle the load.
Killian really had not expected the world's tourists to be this passionate.
"All right. Put out a public announcement. Because of the overwhelming number of visitors, AIM can no longer carry this level of foot traffic for free."
"Start charging admission."
At last he gave the order with a headache.
Even Killian had finally given in.
Otherwise, if this continued, the park's ground itself would probably be trampled apart within a few months.
"Understood, boss. What should we set the price at?"
The secretary asked seriously.
"Let's start at one hundred dollars."
That was the highest number Killian could imagine without creating too much backlash.
"Understood."
After that, the secretary turned and left.
Once the matter had been settled, Killian let out a breath of relief.
Surely the crowds would ease off now.
But what he had not expected was that even after the ticket system was announced, visitor enthusiasm barely decreased at all.
In fact, most people thought the new policy was completely reasonable.
After all, during the first two days, almost everything inside the park except food had been free to experience.
To them, that had been too good to make sense. Some were even worried AIM was giving too much away for the public's benefit, to the point of hurting its own profits. And if the company stopped making money, then how would it continue producing even better technology?
Now that AIM had implemented ticketed entry, the overwhelming majority of people supported it without hesitation. Many even immediately booked holiday tickets for themselves and their families just so they could visit the most unprecedented high-tech innovation park in history.
And on the very next day, massive crowds showed up all over again.
The world's media once more found itself at a loss for words.
AIM had again used reality itself to prove its strength.
And at the same time, it proved something else.
Technology that genuinely tried to improve life for everyone could earn real public support.
At this point, because AIM was still developing at the same breakneck pace as ever, professional institutions updated their estimates.
According to the latest financial analysis released in the news, AIM's market valuation had now crossed one trillion dollars.
More precisely, it had reached 1.3 trillion.
What kind of figure was that?
At the time, even Osborn was only worth a few hundred billion.
And Stark Industries, despite being a long-established giant in the arms industry, was only worth a little over one hundred billion, maybe two hundred at the absolute most if things kept trending upward.
The difference was obvious.
Stark was still a titan, but it did not have AIM's overwhelming, cross-era dominance across robotics, energy, and medicine.
Practically every AIM product added hundreds of billions, sometimes even a full trillion, to outside estimates of its value.
Its T-Series antiviral drug line alone, now that more and more people were using it and the results had become undeniable, was already worth nearly five hundred billion by itself.
And if Killian ever actually wanted to sell that division outright, it would probably go even higher.
After all, this was the kind of thing that could dominate the entire medical field like a strategic superweapon.
Any one of these examples was enough to show how much substance there really was behind AIM's trillion-dollar valuation.
And in the year 2000, when essentially every major corporation was still only fighting for the hundred-billion tier, a trillion-dollar company was almost beyond imagination.
It was a number with historic significance.
Before AIM, no company in the entire history of technological development had ever reached that level.
Even Microsoft, the company everyone believed would eventually cross a trillion, was still only at around 530 billion.
And unlike AIM, Microsoft was a publicly traded company, with Bill Gates personally controlling only around twenty percent.
The two simply were not comparable, not in technological weight, not in future growth potential, and certainly not with AIM still being entirely unlisted.
In short, the release of that trillion-dollar valuation estimate stunned the world and made everyone understand what it really meant to be rich enough to rival a nation.
From that day forward, the influence of those three letters, AIM, reached an entirely new height.
Eventually even the word Pioneer itself began to shift into a symbol of quality.
If it came from Pioneer, it was top-tier.
And while the world was still reeling from the scale of AIM's achievement, AIM itself never slowed down for even a second.
In a highly classified valley deep inside a remote area of Australia, within one of AIM's highest-level research bases...
(End of Chapter)
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