Dell stepped into her office, panting hard. "Safe!" She said, collapsing onto a chair.
William, who had been passing by, stopped and approached her door. "Good morning, Dell."
"Oh, hi, Will."
"Your secretary has been trying to get in touch with you. Something about your eight o'clock canceling."
"What?" Dell took out her phone and saw three missed calls. She looked at William. "Do you know how many red lights I had to beat just to get here on time?"
William smiled. "Who sets meetings at eight in the morning, anyway?"
"Traditional Chinese businessmen who want to meet before their shops open."
Just then, her phone gave a small beep. It was a text notification. Dell looked at it and couldn't help but smile.
"Your traditional Chinese businessman?" William asked.
It was from Sean: Hope you made it in time, dear. Looking forward to our first date on Saturday. "Nah. It's my boyfriend."
---
Raph arrived at exactly 10:00. To Dell's dismay, Bianca was with him. But this was still business so she put on her best Vice President smile and led the pair into her office.
"You didn't stay very long at the event," Raph said to her. "I was looking for you."
"Ah, yes... I had other engagements."
Raph nodded. "I can understand how busy you are."
Dell hooked her hair behind her ear. "Um, so, how can I help you?"
"Right," Raph said brightly, leaning back on the chair. "We need a loan, Dell."
Bianca leaned forward conspiratorially. "You know ElemTech's strength, right? We're in predictive systems. What if we told you that we've predicted what the top 100 products that are going to dominate this Christmas season are?"
"I'm listening."
"A lof of the info we've predicted are still hush-hush but let me tell you one thing: It's not going to go by our current trend."
"What do you need the loan for?"
"We're building an e-commerce site just for those top products," Raph explained. "To launch in time for the season."
"Under ElemTech?"
"No. We're setting that up as a separate entity."
"Isn't that going to conflict with the interests of your investors?"
"Actually…" Raph hesitated before continuing. He looked at Bianca, who had shot him a look that said whatever he was thinking was a bad idea.
Dell looked flatly at Raph and Bianca in turns.
Raph finally spoke. "Our investors didn't believe us."
Dell raised an eyebrow in surprise. "But they invested in you because they were supposed to believe you."
"In the original system, yes. But our team thought the current margin of error in our system was still a little high so, we sought to correct that. Short-term predictions using the new and old system didn't give a lot of difference. But predictions beyond three months gave significantly different results."
"And the new system has a smaller margin of error than the original system?"
"Significantly," Bianca replied.
"So why wouldn't they believe you?"
Bianca and Raph looked at each other.
Bianca was the one who explained this time. "Because of the factor that we added."
"Which is?"
"Natural phenomenon. Basically we were saying that the temperature, the tidal forces, solar flares, earth tremors no matter how small, the number of trees in the world, and the size of the holes in the ozone contribute to the overall consumer behavior of people."
"They felt we were implying that we didn't really have free will," Raph added. "And that our decisions are really just based on certain triggers in our world."
"That's interesting," Dell said cordially.
"Look, the numbers all line up. Plus the gut feel is there. The system is correct. This will work!"
"When we brought up the e-commerce system," Bianca continued. "They said they don't want ElemTech to do it. And if we wanted to do it, we could do it outside of ElemTech. And so that's what we're doing."
Dell nodded.
"You're skeptical," Raph observed with a smile. "But I like challenges."
Dell had to smile inwardly. She liked being thought of as a challenge. And she liked that he liked it. "We were classmates back in college, Raph, I acknowledge that as something. But I still need proof that the money I'm loaning you is going to bring my bank returns."
"I acknowledge and respect that as well. So how about we do a little test."
"I'm listening."
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