Forest Hills, Aunt Sarah's house.
The apartment kitchen, originally converted into a laboratory, had now evolved into a chaotic chemical plant.
Dozens of huge Curacao aloe leaves were stacked in layers on the cutting board and draining basket, looking like the dismembered corpses of green alien creatures.
These were the spoils Sarah had hauled back after driving to the Chinese agricultural wholesale market in Flushing after work and haggling with the owner for half an hour.
In the sink, under the murky dish soap bubbles, forty or fifty brown glass bottles urgently ordered from Amazon were soaking.
Since there was no professional bottle washer, Sarah had to clean them one by one manually with a baby bottle brush; her fingers had turned white and wrinkled from being soaked in alkaline water for so long.
There was even less room to step on the floor.
Two 20-liter drums of pharmaceutical-grade glycerin and several huge polypropylene plastic buckets occupied all the walkways, labeled as flammable and chemical raw materials, creating an extremely absurd contrast with the cozy floral curtains nearby.
"I can't do it anymore, Alice, there's really no more room."
Aunt Sarah clutched a silicone spatula covered in thick liquid, her voice carrying a hint of a sob on the verge of collapse.
"Buzz—Buzz buzz—Sizzle—"
That Hamilton Beach household blender bought from Walmart was now letting out a death rattle.
Its rated power was only 400 watts, designed to crush strawberries and bananas, not to stir such high-viscosity oil-water mixtures.
"Alice, it's smoking." Sarah pointed in terror at the base of the blender, where a thin wisp of black smoke was rising, "I just bought this last month."
Alice Mason sat at the dining table, holding a heavy copy of "Principles of Chemical Engineering (Fourth Edition)".
The other half of the dining table had also been requisitioned, covered with printed formula sheets, pH test strips, and several simple electronic scales.
She looked up, her icy blue eyes peering through her falling bangs, as calm as a precision scanner.
"Turn it off, Aunt Sarah. The motor's carbon brushes have worn to their limit. In another ten seconds, the coils will burn out, triggering a short circuit, and might even ignite the alcohol nearby."
Aunt Sarah hurriedly pulled the plug.
The kitchen fell silent instantly, leaving only the dull hum of the refrigerator compressor and Sarah's heavy breathing.
"I stayed up until three in the morning yesterday, and my fingers are about to break, just to barely emulsify twenty bottles."
Sarah pointed to the pitifully small amount of finished product on the counter, her dark circles making her look like a panda that had tried to commit suicide by staying up late.
However, those twenty small bottles with hand-written labels looked as crude as a primary schooler's handicraft homework.
"But as soon as I got to the hospital this morning, those guys from the ER snatched them all up. Do you know? David, the anesthesiologist next door who has severe neurodermatitis, even blocked me at the door of the women's locker room and threatened me. He said if I don't save two bottles for him tomorrow, he'll go to HR and complain about me doing private work during office hours."
Sarah scratched her originally well-groomed blonde hair, which was now also smeared with aloe vera gel.
"An order for five hundred bottles, Alice, five hundred whole bottles. At the current rate, I'd have to work for three days without eating, drinking, or sleeping. This isn't a job for a human."
Alice closed the book, her fingers lightly tapping the cover.
"It's not just a production capacity issue, Aunt Sarah."
"The biggest problem with manual stirring is insufficient shear force. The speed of a household blender is too low to completely break down the oil and water phases to the micron level. This means that after sitting for 48 hours, our product will suffer from severe de-emulsification—a layer of oil on top and a layer of water on the bottom."
She stood up, walked to the counter, and wiped a bit of residual aloe vera gel with her fingertip.
"Even more fatal is microbial control, because this is a kitchen, not a sterile workshop. Yeast, mold, and E. coli from the sewers are floating in the air. Producing skincare products with extremely high water content in such an open environment is practically like raising venomous insects in a bottle."
Alice turned around, looked Sarah in the eye, and her tone grew heavier.
"If we continue like this, within two weeks, this batch of hand cream will become a bacterial culture medium. Once someone uses it and gets a Staphylococcus aureus infection, leading to folliculitis or even sepsis, FDA (Food and Drug Administration) investigators will swarm in like sharks smelling blood. By then, we might face prison time."
"Prison time?" Sarah was so frightened she dropped her spatula. "My God, Alice, I just wanted to make some extra cash, not go to a women's prison to sew clothes."
"So, the home workshop model must end."
Alice took a black folder from her backpack and slid it across the smooth tabletop to Sarah.
"What's this?" Sarah opened it in confusion.
The first page that met her eyes was a highly designed logo.
A red and white octagon, like an open umbrella, gave a sense of security while also carrying an indescribable strictness and pressure.
Below the logo was a line of bold, black serif font.
[Umbrella Bio-Tech (Umbrella Biotech)]
"I've already registered the company in Delaware through an agent using an offshore holding structure, which offers high privacy protection and tax advantages."
Alice pointed to a lease agreement tucked under the documents.
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