After Christmas came the New Year.
Gilbert attended the annual meeting of the Fruit Company one after another, then inspected the Banana Company and the Watermelon Company—assets impressive enough to make anyone jealous.
He also checked on NVIDIA's development in gaming graphics cards. This company selling gaming GPUs was still not remarkable yet, but in the future, with the hype around AI computing power, it would surely thrive.
Jensen Huang was still NVIDIA's CEO, but through various funds, the Fruit Group had already become its largest shareholder.
Gilbert also chatted with Jeff Bezos, discussing ideas about online shopping. Turning an online bookstore into a full online shopping mall—that was Jeff Bezos's goal for Amazon.
Within Apple, the concept of the smartphone was becoming clearer. According to Jobs's plan, the next-generation Apple phone would be released in 2009.
And this next-generation Apple phone would be the ideal smartphone in Jobs's mind—destined to become a legendary Apple device.
Meanwhile, the medical center jointly developed by Jobs and Gilbert had opened its fifth location in North America despite the constant suppression from medical capital.
At the same time, medical centers were opened in Tokyo, London, Paris, and other cities.
The medical capital groups used every tactic—media smears, lobbying Washington for restrictions, poaching talent—but achieved little.
This medical center had never been intended for the poor anyway. It was created to earn money from the wealthy. After several years of operation, many wealthy people around the world became regular visitors of the center—many were even lifetime members.
The reason required no explanation: the treatment worked.
If medical capital had crushed the center with overwhelming force and taken all the medical technology for themselves, the wealthy wouldn't react.
But years had passed, and the medical center was still standing strong.
To protect their own lives, the wealthy naturally became defenders of the medical center. As this medical network spread globally, it was forming an enormous web of human connections.
Perhaps this was why Wall Street capital, medical capital, and the old financial families united to try to eliminate Gilbert.
Everyone knew that once Gilbert's arrangements were complete, no one would be able to touch him.
To put it bluntly—who could guarantee they would never get sick? And even if they didn't, who wouldn't want to live longer? In this decaying upper-class society, status, wealth, and power were intoxicating. No one would willingly let go.
As long as they could continue enjoying life, no one would wish to die. The capital forces attacking Gilbert were the same. If they failed to kill him, they would end up begging him instead.
Living well, enjoying life, and then pursuing even higher status, more wealth, and greater power—that was every ruler's pursuit.
Sometimes Gilbert thought to himself, no wonder the protagonists of early urban novels always had miraculous medical skills. The authors back then already understood that life equaled money.
Later, Gilbert had another talk with Elon Musk. Musk's Tesla was continuing to develop, though electric vehicles were still immature and not reliable enough for ordinary consumers.
Another matter Gilbert cared about was Space Exploration Technologies. Ever since the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster shocked the world, discussions about the shuttle's safety hazards had never ceased.
NASA's earliest idea was to replace spacecraft with space shuttles, since shuttles could be reused and thus reduce launch costs.
But later NASA realized the shuttles not only had safety risks—the imagined cost-saving never materialized. Each launch was extremely expensive, and maintenance costs were enormous.
Because of this, NASA had decided last year to gradually retire all space shuttles, officially ending the space-shuttle era.
Of course, a deeper reason was the lack of competitors. Washington believed there was no need to invest heavily in space exploration, and NASA's budget was shrinking year by year.
As for the emerging CNSA—although they had achieved manned spaceflight—Washington did not consider them a real competitor.
If they could foresee what would happen later, Washington would probably regret it. But at this moment, cutting NASA's budget seemed perfectly reasonable.
With reduced funding, NASA began laying off employees, and a large number of specialists suddenly became jobless.
But for Space Exploration Technologies, this was an opportunity. After consulting Gilbert, its major shareholder, Musk brought all those laid-off NASA professionals into his company.
These unemployed workers had originally prepared to leave the space-exploration field altogether, so when they suddenly heard that a private aerospace company wanted to hire them, they were surprised and overjoyed.
In order to support their families, most of them accepted Space Exploration Technologies' offer.
Inside the company's office, Gilbert and Musk were chatting.
Gilbert pointed at the model of the Space Shuttle Discovery and said to Musk, "Without a doubt, the route of reusability isn't wrong.
But I think NASA made a mistake in direction. They shouldn't have poured resources into expensive shuttles—the focus should have been on rockets."
Musk agreed. "Your thinking is the same as mine. I plan to develop reusable rockets, but without your financial support, it would be extremely hard to accomplish."
Gilbert laughed. "Now we have money and people. We can roll up our sleeves and get moving.
Tell those rocket experts not to be afraid of blowing up rockets. If we keep blowing them up, eventually we'll figure out how to make the technology work. The point is—we're loaded, so we can experiment.
And at the very least, we can enjoy the fireworks!"
If Ivanka heard this, she would definitely scold Gilbert for being a spendthrift. As the household's finance keeper, she kept a very tight grip on money.
But to Gilbert, there was a saying that fit perfectly: You can't buy my willingness with money.
In essence, Space Exploration Technologies was Gilbert's toy—just a very expensive one that normal people couldn't afford to play with.
Musk asked with excitement, "Gilbert, do you think one day we might set foot on Mars?"
"We probably will," Gilbert said with a smile. "Landing on Mars isn't the real problem. The problem is how to survive there.
Once we manage to plant vegetation there, Mars becomes our colony."
"Governor of Mars?"
"Exactly, Elon. I'll appoint you as the Chief Administrator."
Musk laughed. "I'll be happy to accept the position, Governor."
Of course, this was only a joke. In reality, with today's technological level, human colonization of Mars was still basically impossible.
But the world was fascinating precisely because it was always changing. Once some revolutionary technology appeared, it could push humanity's entire technological level forward.
If one took good care of oneself, living to ninety or a hundred wouldn't be difficult.
Perhaps in his lifetime, Gilbert might really see humans land on Mars.
...
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