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Time raced to August. Ryan had barely felt its rapid passage.
It wasn't until he got out of bed and happened to see the time on his computer that it suddenly hit him. It had already been half a year since he last went home for the new year.
Over these six months, every day, beyond the Crimson Typhoon project, he'd also had to tend to the artificial intelligence's training, plus the occasional phone call home. Every day he finished his work and dropped straight into sleep.
He suddenly remembered Aaron Holt, who'd asked him to develop the brain-controlled exoskeleton. Six months had passed and the project still hadn't started. But he'd given Holt the warning in advance, so it shouldn't be much of an issue.
He washed up, left his room, grabbed a couple of breakfast sandwiches and a coffee from the cafeteria, and headed toward the new base.
"Morning, Chief Designer."
The road was full of researchers and technicians heading the same way, who all greeted him familiarly when they passed.
"Morning. Go look at the revision notes I sent you yesterday again, and hurry up and finish the changes."
"Will do, will do."
For everyone who greeted him, Ryan returned a warm word of his own.
Watching them scurry off like rabbits with dark circles under their eyes, Ryan dialed Mason at the research center on a whim.
"Ryan, what's up?"
Mason on the other end had clearly been woken by his ringtone, his tone still a little dazed.
"How's the above-knee prosthetic coming along lately?" Ryan asked.
Mason fell silent for a moment. "Not going too smoothly. The progress is at about fifty percent right now."
Ryan wasn't surprised by the pace. He hadn't given them any guidance recently, and relying on their own research naturally made things slower. If anything, he was a little surprised they'd even reached this point.
Hearing Ryan stay silent for a long stretch, Mason assumed he was dissatisfied and quickly added, "We acquired a domestic prosthetics company a month ago and gained their engineers and research team. They have real strength in prosthetic structural design, so we should have a bigger breakthrough soon."
"Good. Keep it up. Also, send me all your current documentation. The damper I mentioned to you before, I'll get the design to you as soon as I can." Ryan smacked his forehead, suddenly remembering the matter.
"If the damper I design doesn't suit your needs, you can also make modifications based on it."
"Got it."
Once Mason finished talking with Ryan, he walked into the work room and woke a colleague who'd fallen asleep slumped over a desk, telling him to go back to his room to sleep.
After the colleague left the work room, Mason looked out the window. On the horizon, the morning sun was rising, the clear sky cloudless for thousands of miles, and beneath the sunlight lay a construction site. That was their new research center and dormitory buildings, still under construction. It would be a while yet.
He started working at his desk. Whenever he thought of his own prospects and the company's, his heart filled with hope.
Prism Sciences' growth over the past six months had been considerable.
After the Winter Paralympics in March, riding on the athletes fitted with Prism Sciences prosthetics, the company successfully built the image of technology used for global good, and the world accepted it.
By that route, Prism Sciences smoothly broke through the suspension order, restored normal sales operations abroad, and opened up markets in several European countries. Over the past six months, it had not only dug deep domestically but established a foothold abroad.
More crucially, Prism Sciences had also built its own dealer network, domestically and internationally.
These dealers bought stock from Prism Sciences, fitted Triton-1 prosthetics for the disabled in their own regions, and provided follow-up after-sales service. As a result, many regions no longer needed company-owned fitting and maintenance centers. On that basis, the previous global maintenance system was declared obsolete.
A Triton-1 previously fitted at a company-owned center could be serviced at a company-owned center, or serviced more conveniently at a local dealer.
The dealer system had its pros and cons. For instance, the Triton-1 units in a dealer's hands carried a higher price, and the service quality might not match a company-owned fitting center. But there was no denying that the system broke through the after-sales limitations of company-owned centers, removing service worries for the many people who didn't have a company center where they lived, letting them get a Triton-1 with peace of mind.
The dealer network had been established for less than half a year, and domestic Triton-1 fittings had already broken thirteen thousand, with revenue exceeding a hundred million dollars.
That the domestic figure could reach so many owed something to the Lotus Initiative announced by the NDAO. The program provided eligible disabled individuals with a one-time installation subsidy or installment-payment assistance, greatly easing the installer's financial burden.
Abroad, the number of fittings had broken the twenty-thousand mark, with revenue exceeding eight hundred million dollars.
In just six months, the global revenue of Prism Sciences, or of Triton-1, had reached a scale in the billions. And the market still wasn't saturated. As the dealer network was built out and refined, new fitting demand would keep climbing fast.
On top of that, dealers everywhere needed to stockpile inventory in advance. Triton-1 shipment volume in the second half of the year was projected to be even more explosive.
In addition, Triton-1's production cost had dropped somewhat.
It was almost funny. Because of Crimson Typhoon, the country was vigorously supporting the high-end titanium alloy industry. The domestic industry had only just begun to lift its head, and the price of the high-end titanium alloy components, which had been the highest cost factor outside the neural control system, fell in response. The worst cases had already been cut in half.
Previously, titanium alloy components had always commanded high prices, because of the difficulty of machining titanium alloy and the small demand from Prism Sciences. But now, with the expansion of Triton-1 production and the decline in material costs, Triton-1's overall production cost had fallen back to around fifty thousand dollars.
Thanks to this, domestic Triton-1 prices even saw a small wave of reductions.
Counting in the overseas figures, the gross profit margin over the past six months was projected to reach fifty percent.
If Helios's prosthetics, with no hope of profit, heard that figure, they'd probably come down with a bad case of envy.
By now, all of Angel's company-owned centers domestically had closed. After opening in a blaze of glory, it had immediately faded into obscurity and died.
The storefronts they'd rented had long since been turned over to new tenants. Maybe a coffee shop opened there, maybe a sandwich place. No one would remember that these now perfectly ordinary storefronts had once been open to the public as showcases of the world's most advanced technology.
The world was about to forget the Angel prosthetic brand entirely.
In the prosthetics field, Prism Sciences' Triton-1 was already the recognized number one in the world: the highest technology content, the best price-to-performance ratio, the best installer experience.
Perhaps it wasn't yet the most profitable company in the prosthetics field, but there was no question it was the company with the most potential, and that it could someday become a hegemon-level presence in the prosthetics field.
Countless investors who recognized this stuffed their bank cards into sacks and rushed to Prism Sciences' headquarters, hoping to discuss investment. In the end, they could only retreat in defeat.