Chapter 33: Approaching
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
While it seemed like everything was within Adrian’s control since he knew the specific time of the United States Army’s attack, and that he used his old-fashioned uncle’s name to convince Claude who was talented and skillful, the deal was still a gamble.
At most, it was a gamble with a high success rate because Adrian had no idea if he caused any butterfly effect due to his rebirth. Perhaps when he strolled on New York’s streets, he accidentally kicked a stone that should have tripped a woman who would have knocked her head, causing her husband, who was a general, to be in an angry mood. Consequently, the Department of Defense would be forced to replace this general who was supposed to go to Kuwait, and after multiple adjustments, the attack might be delayed to the 20th or brought forward to the 15th.
From a normal person’s perspective, Claude was undoubtedly right that the 50 million dollars were enough for an entrepreneurship’s development. However, Adrian was not a normal person, and he was extremely ambitious. He became further encouraged when his first film succeeded, and when Claude did a remarkable job in meeting his requests.
Nevertheless, Adrian was not dumb, and he had been revising his plan repeatedly from the start. The main problem was that he required a lot of money even though there were plenty of opportunities in the ’90s and the only way to minimize the time needed to realize his plan was to gamble on highly profitable but highly risky things like futures.
Adrian did complain that he would be in a much better situation if he was reborn 5 years prior. Putting aside cheap stocks such as Microsoft and Cisco, 1987’s stock disaster and 1989’s economic breakdown in Japan would be sufficient for him to gain enough funds—if Claude would help him too.
He eventually got rid of that thought, because he knew that he was already lucky enough to have been reborn in 1990. It was more important for him to hold onto his present.
All in all, he needed to take the gamble. If he won, he would acquire a huge amount of circulating funds—he made a preliminary estimation that it would be increased by at least three to four times, which would be over 200 million dollars! If he lost, he would simply start again. In any case, he still had an estate in both Marbury and Orange County, as well as the one he was living in, thus he had enough to protect his film company.
After spending a great Christmas at his godfather’s place, and after getting Claude’s promise, Adrian rested at home for a few days. He wrote some novels, strengthened his body, and occasionally strolled on the streets. Before New Year arrived, he flew to London.
Even though they had only been separated for less than a month, Kate was elated by his presence. After all, women in love would love to spend every day with their lover. Kate initially invited Adrian to stay at her place, but he rejected the offer. Nonetheless, it was a must for him to visit her family.
Other than her mother and her stepfather, Kate also had an older half-sister and two older brothers with different blood relations. While she and her sister were not very fond of their stepfather, they were very close to their brothers.
Since Kate previously told Adrian about her family background, he was well-prepared when he visited her family. During dinner, he left a good impression for them due to his manners and humor.
“He’s quite nice. Unlike usual Americans who are rude, he has good manners and is humorous, he’s just like a British gentleman.” This was the comment from Robert, Kate’s stepfather.
“He’s not extremely handsome, but quite attractive. There’s something about him that makes him an approachable person.” This was how Samantha, Kate’s older sister, felt.
Even Kate’s mom, who had been worried, admitted that Adrian was quite outstanding.
In terms of this, Kate was happy but frustrated at the same time. She was happy because her family members liked her partner, but was frustrated because… Her family was so fond of Adrian that they brought up a number of her embarrassing moments. For instance, she did not like to wear loose shorts, she had a hot temper and was uncommunicative for a long period of time, she had the nickname “Geek No. 6” in school, and so on. Kate rolled her eyes at her family numerous times that night, but nobody bothered.
“It’s really nothing,” Adrian comforted her afterward, “Everyone did something silly that they wish nobody will find out when they’re older. You don’t have to care so much, it’s all part of growing. If you really think that it was unfair, I can also tell you some of the silly things I did when I was younger.”
It was worth noting that Adrian was an expert in soothing women, but it was ineffective this time. This was because Kate responded by grabbing his collar. “Unless I reveal them myself, I won’t forgive anyone who talks about them!”
She carried an even more imposing manner than when she provoked Adrian when they first met, because being in love made her bolder than ever. Unfortunately, the present and past were different. Soon enough, she was leaning over the hotel window as she moaned due to pleasure.
Adrian left after staying in London for three days. Though he was reluctant to, only a quarter of the post-production work for ‘Memento’ was done, thus he needed to work faster if he wanted to participate in the Berlin Film Festival. Besides, he had to make a trip to New York—since it was New Year, it was only right that he visited his uncle, who was also his “source”.
Nonetheless, he was also tight on schedule because he kept thinking about the film’s scenes during the production period, thus he began editing them according to the playing order. The peculiarity and the attraction of the film were the chronological and the reverse orders that were played parallelly that alternated every 5 minutes. If Adrian were to edit the scene according to this order, it would be extremely troublesome.
By the time Adrian realized that something was off, he had wasted four days. Supposedly, he only needed to edit one sequence at a time from its beginning till the end, split them into sections of 5 minutes, then alternate them according to order. He had complicated things inadvertently.
Fortunately, it was not too late to mend things, and he had enough funds to let professionals handle other matters, hence he only needed to work on the editing part. As such, he finished a quarter of his work before Christmas and New Year. In spite of that, it was insufficient work, so he quickly returned to his film company’s studio after visiting his uncle.
Perhaps because Adrian had enough rest during the holidays, and that he became more familiar with the editing work, he was very efficient. Since he had a good understanding of the film and had completely merged his experience from his past life after working on ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’, he progressed very quickly.
When he was finally satisfied with his editing progress, he spared time to work on other things such as novels, scripts, and so on. It was time for him to put the adapted script of Stephen King’s novel on his schedule.
‘I hate the word ‘accumulate’!’ He always said to himself.
Other than that, he also spent time editing the scenes from Sarah’s parts, so as to not let them go to waste. In fact, the moment he decided to compensate her by giving her a role, he decided to utilize her shots for editing practices.
Scenes that were related to Sarah amounted to roughly 20 minutes. Adrian could either edit them casually, shorten them to a 5-minutes scene, use 20 minutes to present her character’s personality, or edit them into a short story that was completely unrelated to ‘Memento’.
Back then, he was able to replicate ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ successfully because of his memory that was out of the world. As such, it was not helpful toward his techniques and qualities in film production. While he had plenty of films that he could replicate, it did not mean that he should neglect those aspects.
The problem was that Adrian always had a very tight schedule during his productions. He forced himself to maintain the film wastage rate below 30% by relying on his memory, and the shots that ended up not being used were quite scattered, so he could not have practiced his editing skills even if he wanted to.
Since Sarah’s scenes were 20 minutes long and were not too closely related to ‘Memento’s original plot, it would not affect anything if Adrian used them for practice. Although it was not very effective, it was better than nothing.
As time passed, ‘Memento’ was near to being completed. If everything went smoothly, it was even possible to complete it in advance. Before long, Adrian received a piece of good news, which was that Congress officially gave the President authorization to utilize military measures for the Gulf crisis if necessary!
The announcement instantly caused a huge uproar and more people objected than supported. After all, the Vietnam War had only ended less than 20 years ago and nobody knew if another one would happen again. Furthermore, the conflict occurred in the Persian Gulf, which was one of the main places for the trial of strength between parties.
That being said, Adrian was unbothered because he knew what the result was and he did not think that he could have caused a butterfly effect that would make Saddam (TN: Iraq’s fifth president) win the war. The only thing he cared about was after the news was announced, as long as the higher management of big companies and big foundations were not fools, and that they knew that the Persian Gulf’s local war was inevitable, they would naturally transfer their funds into the market. With that, whoever knew the specific date of the United States Army’s attack would get the biggest share of the cake.
Although Congress indeed announced the authorization on January 13th, Adrian was only half-assured, because it did not mean that the army would definitely attack on the 17th.
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