Sunday, September 29, 1991, afternoon.
The town hall conference room at the end of the second-floor corridor was packed with people, all quietly watching Satsuki, who was the only one seated in the room.
Ray stood at the corner of the table, not daring to make a sound, and unnaturally tugged at the cuff of his suit.
It had been almost ten minutes since everyone crammed into this room.
When the inspection ended, Satsuki stood outside the barbed wire fence on the north side of the base and asked Ray to find a place with "a table large enough to spread out the blueprints."
So he brought this growing inspection team right here to the town hall—and then he regretted it.
Looking at the roomful of impeccably dressed people crammed into the conference room, Ray suddenly realized how shabby this place really was.
He had held meetings in this conference room more than a hundred times, argued over the school district budget and main street parking spaces, and had never felt there was anything wrong with it.
But now, as he swept his gaze across the room, nothing looked right.
The two long tables pushed together in the middle of the room—one wooden, one with iron-wrapped edges—had a height difference of nearly half a finger, and the edges of the tape at the seams were curling up.
Eden's blueprints were spread across them, right over that seam, and the metal weights at the four corners were uneven.
Six folding chairs were stacked against the wall, but in the end, only one was pulled out. The table was too small, and the blueprints covered the entire tabletop so that anyone who sat down could only see the edge of the table, leaving everyone else standing.
In one corner of the ceiling was a yellowish-brown water stain from a leak during the rainy season last year, which they hadn't gotten around to fixing.
Had he known it would be like this, he might as well have brought everyone straight back to the resort. The conference hall there at least had carpets and decent chairs.
But at the time, Satsuki asked for the nearest table, and the first place that popped into his head was right here.
Ray tugged at his cuff once more.
The dark blue suit he was wearing was the best one in his wardrobe, bought specially before going to Sacramento to attend an investment promotion conference the year before last.
When he went out this morning, he even checked himself in the mirror and thought he looked quite presentable.
But standing in this room, compared to the people beside him, it was a completely different story.
The people from the state had come after all.
With the eldest miss of the Saionji Family personally arriving in town, a matter like this couldn't be kept under wraps anyway. Ever since those faxes were sent out on Friday, calls from Sacramento had kept pouring in.
Then Warren Keane from the governor's office drove south before dawn today, catching up with the inspection team at the base entrance in the morning, followed by a young man from the state department of commerce.
The young man carried a brand-new briefcase in his hand and had hardly spoken the entire way.
Keane stood in front of the cork bulletin board, the shoulder lines of his dark gray suit fitting impeccably, the fabric gleaming under the lights with a subtle sheen.
The meeting notice from the town council last year behind him had turned yellow from the sun, and one corner was grazed down by his shoulder, hanging right beside his collar.
Not to mention the people from Saionji's side.
They had come along with Miss Saionji, sitting in those cars trailing behind since yesterday evening, and had stayed behind the team all morning while rarely speaking. Only now did Ray have the time to look at them clearly one by one.
Lawyer Marcus Lane stood by the window, wearing a pair of silver cufflinks, with a subdued tie color that clearly wasn't merchandise stocked by the town's local menswear store.
The other three were Saionji's investment team from New York; their three suits had completely different cuts, and while Ray didn't know the brands, he knew for sure he couldn't afford them.
There was also a Japanese engineer named Otsuki whose face was deeply tanned and whose attire was rather plain. He carried a blueprint tube a size thicker than Eden's on his shoulder, standing among the crowd without looking out of place at all.
By the door stood Colonel Reeves in his Army service uniform, his military cap tucked under his arm, standing straight. Ms. Benson held those two thick folders, looked around, and finding nowhere to put them down, had no choice but to keep holding them.
Then, coming to the town's side, it suddenly turned into an "American country comedy" style.
Winslow hadn't even taken off his old tweed jacket, and chunks of dry mud from the edge of his boots had rubbed off onto the carpet.
Glenn stood by the door. Brennan, the county's legal counsel, had been called over by Ray with a single phone call straight from his own backyard, and his shirt collar still had a bit of grass clippings on it.
With so many people crammed into one room, it should have been very noisy.
But ever since Eden spread out the blueprints and Satsuki sat down in that chair, no one in the room had spoken a word.
She kept her head down looking at the blueprints and didn't utter a sound.
Since she didn't speak, no one else dared to speak first. At first, a few people lowered their voices to exchange a couple of words, but later even that little noise disappeared.
Thus, in the entire room, only the air conditioner on the windowsill was still running.
It hummed and vibrated incessantly, blowing out a dusty smell from the vent, while the coolness was slow to arrive.
Ray had reported this air conditioner for repairs twice last month, but still no one had come to fix it. Fortunately, during ordinary meetings, the human voices would cover it up, and no one would pay attention to it at all.
It was just that now its sound was loud enough for the whole room to hear.
Lane was closest to it, and the breeze was blowing directly against his back. He moved half a step to the side, only to be blocked by the corner of the table, and in the end had to stand still.
Ray's back also began to sweat.
He really wanted to walk over and turn off the air conditioner. But the room was so quiet that the click of shutting it down would probably be even more jarring than its current humming.
He had no choice but to continue standing at the corner of the table, watching the girl in the light-colored cotton shirt in the middle of the table, just like everyone else.
—Satsuki's brows had been furrowed for quite a while.
The blueprint was still the same one from New York, except there were a few new pencil annotations along the edge, the ink lighter than the rest. That was probably the result of Eden working on modifications until dawn that night.
Her finger slowly moved from Phase I's plot to the gentle slope in the north, paused, and then moved back.
The places they walked through this morning were found one by one on the blueprint.
The main street in the lower left corner of the blueprint—she had walked from one end to the other this morning. The wall panels of the wooden houses on both sides were peeling outward piece by piece, and in one family's backyard, rusted cast iron water pipes were directly exposed above the ground, their joints wrapped in multiple layers of rubber and wire.
That section of the bay on the north shore was where Eden had specifically made the car stop. She stood on the shore looking down, and the water color there was much darker than in the south.
For the square marked "Repair Shop" within the red line, Ms. Benson had someone pull open the rolling shutter door. The overhead crane could still move, and the railway tracks ran all the way from the factory building to the edge of the dock.
Also, the vacant warehouse area of Phase I and the R&D slope to the north were separated by no more than two fingers' width on the map, but driving over there this morning took more than ten minutes.
There was nothing wrong with the drawing.
Precisely because there was nothing wrong with it, the more she looked, the more unnatural it felt.
According to Eden's plan, light industry and warehousing were placed by the highway, R&D on the scenic slope, and housing and schools scheduled for the third phase.
Each section minded its own business, separated in the middle by wide roads and large lawns, with engineers driving in in the morning and driving away at night.
It seemed completely unproblematic; after all, Americans had been using this setup for forty years.
In the 1950s, Stanford leased the open land next to the school to enterprises, building America's first research park.
A few years later, North Carolina carved out a large pine forest among three universities to build the Research Triangle Park.
Later, those low-rise R&D buildings, sprawling parking lots, and neatly trimmed lawns in Silicon Valley were all built according to this model.
By today, this had become the consensus of developers across America. Not a single part of Eden's map broke the rules; instead, it took these rules to the finest detail.
But the industrial parks in Satsuki's memories were not like this.
In her past life, she had walked through quite a few industrial parks with clients.
She remembered that right downstairs from the R&D building was the production line; engineers holding coffee could go downstairs and stand right beside the machines they designed.
She remembered that the parks still had people even at night, with the restaurants downstairs filled with young people wearing work badges.
She remembered that once the roads in those parks were paved, they were never dug up again; when new enterprises moved in, running cables and connecting pipes were all completed underground.
She also remembered that the end of some parks was a dock, where containers coming off the production line could be directly loaded onto ships.
From the perspective of development, the industrial park planning in Satsuki's memory was definitely much better.
But as for how these things were specifically achieved, how thick the pipes needed to be, how the buildings should be constructed, or how the regulations should be changed, she couldn't say a single thing about it.
After all, she wasn't a professional; she could only be said to have this impression.
But fortunately...
Satsuki raised her head and glanced around at the people gathered around the table.
Developers, county officials, Army real estate experts, state personnel, lawyers, and engineers from Saionji Construction.
It didn't matter if she didn't understand.
In this room, there were plenty of people who did understand.
And most importantly, she was the client now—it was completely normal for a client to offer opinions like "I think we should do it this way."
"Mr. Eden."
Eden was standing right to her right, and upon hearing this, he immediately leaned over.
"Please go ahead."
"I want to make some changes to this blueprint."
Eden's gaze dropped down, lingering for a brief moment on the frayed blueprint.
"How would you like to change it?"
"Um... major changes. And there might be quite a lot of them."
Satsuki glanced around at the people surrounding her again, and finally returned her gaze to the blueprint.
"I don't quite understand it myself, but I have some ideas for improvement. All of you help me make a note of them and see how we can actually implement these changes."
The room fell silent for two seconds.
Among those present, no one had ever heard that Saionji Satsuki understood urban planning.
What she had done on Wall Street and in Tokyo had been written about extensively in newspapers, but not a single report ever mentioned that she had drawn a planning map.
But who made her the most important person on site?
The room fell silent for an instant, immediately followed by a chorus of rustling sounds.
Suit inner pockets, briefcases, jacket pockets, folders—a dozen people moved almost simultaneously.
Notebooks, notepads, county government letterhead—they had it all. Some uncapped their pens, others tore open the plastic packaging of their notebooks, and those who could not find paper had to borrow a sheet from the person next to them.
Winslow fumbled in his coat pocket, finally pulled out the folded document, flipped it over to the blank side, and pressed it against the wall.
Within seconds, a dozen pens were poised over the paper, all waiting for her to speak.
Satsuki blinked.
She had originally only intended for Eden and Otsuki to take some notes.
"Um, Mr. Otsuki, do you have any tracing paper?"
"Yes."
Otsuki took the blueprint tube off his shoulder, pulled out a roll of translucent tracing paper, tore off a large sheet, and handed it over.
Satsuki took the paper, first removed the weights Eden had used one by one, placed the tracing paper over his drawing, aligned the edges, and then put the weights back one by one.
Eden watched her hands without saying a word.
The lines and pencil writing on the original drawing could be seen clearly through the thin paper.
Otsuki handed over a red pencil.
Satsuki held the pencil, tapped the gentle slope to the north, then tapped the Phase I plot to the south, and drew an arrow between them.
"First, here. The R&D zone and Phase I—don't separate these two."
Eden looked down at the arrow.
"Are you saying to move the R&D zone next to Phase I?"
"Yes."
"But Miss Saionji, that slope to the north has the best view in the entire project."
Eden tapped his finger gently on the gentle slope.
"I've talked to several R&D companies. Engineers like ocean views, they like quiet, and they like to be away from factory noise and trucks. These are the things they value most when choosing a location."
"They can have the ocean view."
Satsuki drew a circle next to the arrow.
"But I think engineers would prefer to have the drawings they revised in the afternoon ready to be built downstairs the next day."
"My research institute director was touring the U.S. a few days ago, and he told me over the phone that the most convenient thing about doing research here is that when you run into a problem, you can just walk a few steps or make a phone call to find someone."
"If you're missing a chip, someone in the north of the city can make it."
She looked up.
"But according to the plan on this map, if the people in the R&D building want to see if their things have been made, the first thing they have to do is go to the parking lot and get their car."
Eden listened without refuting.
They had already driven that distance when they inspected it this morning, and no one wanted to waste a dozen minutes of driving time on the road.
Otsuki's pen tip stopped on his notebook, and he looked up at her.
"Miss, how close exactly?"
Satsuki thought for a moment.
"Hmm... let's keep the walk from the lab to the production line within ten minutes."
"I don't know exactly how to build it. But that's the general idea."
Otsuki nodded, wrote down "ten minutes," drew a small cross-section next to it, and turned to Eden.
"Mr. Eden, this could be a mixed-use factory building. The bottom two floors for the pilot production line, and the upper floors for R&D. There are a few supporting buildings in Odaiba that are arranged just like that."
Eden thought about it, but his brows didn't unfurl.
"But... what about the trucks? The pilot line needs to bring in materials and ship out goods, and the R&D building has people walking in and out all day."
"If both sides are squeezed onto the same road, at eight o'clock in the morning, you can forget about using that road."
"We can design it so that cargo goes through the back and people go through the front, separating the two routes."
"Then we'll have to build two sets of roads."
Eden's pen also moved, quickly drawing two lines on his notebook, one thick and one thin.
"The main road can be built to freight standards, and we can build another set of internal roads for people and small cars between the buildings. That way, the plots will have to be cut smaller than they are now..."
Ray, listening from the other end of the table, couldn't help but interject.
"Thomas, don't be in such a hurry to cut up the plots."
He tapped the paper with his pen.
"According to the county's zoning ordinances, industrial land and R&D land are two different categories. If you really want to build it that way, you'll have to create a separate special plan within the development zone to mix the uses. In that case, the supervisory board will have to vote on it again."
Winslow kept his hand on the paper on the wall without looking up.
"Leave the voting to me. You just focus on drawing."
Satsuki didn't wait for them to finish discussing; the red pencil had already moved south.
The tip of the pencil landed on the town.
She drew a large circle along the edge of the town. The main street, the wooden houses on both sides of the main street, the school, and that motel with the missing letters were all circled in.
"The second thing is this town. I want to rebuild the whole thing."
This time, more than half the pens in the room stopped.
Ray looked up, looked at the red circle, and then looked at her.
"Uh... Miss Saionji, by rebuilding, do you mean...?"
"Just tear it all down and re-plan it."
Satsuki's pencil tip tapped inside the circle.
"I walked down the main street this morning. Those houses are really too old; several households have water pipes exposed in their backyards, and the joints are still wrapped in rubber."
"If we turn it into part of the park, the money spent on repairs will still result in old houses and old pipes in the end. It's better to just do it right once."
"Mr. Eden's Phase III—the housing, school, hospital, and commercial street—I want to move it all here. And don't put it at the end; start it at the same time as Phase I."
Eden was stunned for a moment.
"Start building living amenities in Phase I?"
"Didn't you say it yourself when you were in New York, Mr. Eden? To get engineers willing to move here, you have to make their wives willing to come, and have schools for their children."
Eden opened his mouth, but didn't have a response.
Satsuki put down the pen, her finger pressing on the red circle.
"There's a place in Japan called Tsukuba. The government built dozens of research institutes there and moved researchers from Tokyo in batches. The buildings were very beautiful, but once work was over, there was nothing around."
"You couldn't even find a place to eat, family members couldn't find work, and the children's schools weren't great. As a result, those researchers ran back to Tokyo whenever they had the chance."
"So, whether an engineer is willing to stay in a place depends on where they go after work, where their children go to school, and where their wives can shop on weekends."
"These things can't wait until Phase III."
Eden looked down at the area on his drawing marked "Phase III" and gently crossed it out with his pen.
Winslow took down the paper he had been pressing against the wall.
"Miss Saionji, if I may speak out of turn."
The old man's voice was low.
"In the circle you drew, there are thousands of people living there. Some families have lived there since the base was first built, and three generations haven't moved. The houses might be a bit old, but they are their own homes after all."
Satsuki nodded, not avoiding his gaze.
"I know. That's why we have to build the new ones first, and then tear down the old ones."
"The new houses will be built right next door, and the families in the circle will have priority to move in—house for house. The schools, hospitals, and shops will be the same; once the new ones open, the old ones will close."
"Mr. Winslow, no one will be thrown out onto the street; I can guarantee that."
Winslow looked at her for a few seconds, then turned his head to look at Brennan by the door.
"Jack, what do you think? Is this procedurally feasible?"
Brennan looked at the drawings and thought for a while.
"It's feasible. We can use the Community Redevelopment Act."
"The county and the town can jointly establish a redevelopment agency to first designate this area as a blighted area. Given the current state of the town..."
He paused and gave a dry cough.
"It shouldn't be too difficult to designate."
"After the designation, the additional property tax from that area can be set aside to build roads, replace water pipes, and build schools. The taxes collected in the future will first be used to pay off this money."
Ray was already writing on his notebook while listening.
"I'll add one point: regarding expropriation and relocation, we must follow the state's relocation assistance law. Every household's assessment, compensation, and moving expenses must have written procedures; we can't skip a single step."
He looked up at the red circle.
"However, if Saionji puts up the money to build the new houses first, and then signs an agreement with the redevelopment agency to use the houses as a replacement for cash compensation, as long as the residents agree, it will be much smoother than forced expropriation."
Eden lifted his briefcase onto the table, pulled out a dog-eared roster, and placed it next to the tracing paper.
"I can talk to the residents."
"I've been to every plot of land and every house owner in town over the last six months. How many people are in each family, whose house is still under mortgage, whose children are studying away—it's all recorded in here."
Satsuki glanced at the roster. There was a coffee stain on the cover, and the edges of the pages were filled with pencil writing, the same handwriting as on his drawing.
"Then I'll leave this matter to you, Mr. Eden."
"Leave it to me."
Eden pulled the roster toward himself and pressed his palm down on it.
"I know everyone in town. If I explain clearly to them that they'll get new houses before they move, most people won't have any objections. For the few stubborn ones, I'll just go knock on their doors one by one."
Satsuki nodded and didn't ask any more questions.