America 1982-Chapter 640 - 146: Press Conference_3

Susy, with an increased budget, invited over a thousand media journalists from America to attend. Each journalist who arrived at the venue could take home the Compaq laptop they experienced at the launch event.

A brand-new laptop, far more expensive than the ordinary media advertisement and soft article fee, was said to be such a generous gift that many journalists who hadn’t received an invitation began looking for colleagues, wondering if there were any other arrangements and if they could transfer their invitations to attend.

Sophia went to the event to help Susy with some auxiliary work, while it was only Quinn who specifically came over, saying he wanted to accompany Tommy to watch the launch.

"****! Can you tell your girlfriend to keep it down? Even if you ignore me, the launch is taking place at Stanford University. Show some respect for your alma mater, OK?" Tommy, sitting on the living room sofa with a beer in hand, turned his head towards the bedroom and shouted discontentedly.

Quinn saying he’d come to accompany him seemed more like he didn’t want to pay for a hotel room with his girlfriend and preferred to use Tommy’s spacious ground-floor apartment to enjoy the large hot tub that could fit three people.

By the time the bedroom finally quieted down, the launch event had begun. The venue was pitch-black, with no host or staff on stage. Just as the attendees below were about to ask if there was a power outage, the massive cinema-style screen with Stanford’s patent finally lit up.

The mere lighting up of the screen elicited the first gasp from the audience because the face of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a popular Hollywood star, appeared.

The camera gradually zoomed out. He was standing behind a wheelchair, his hands resting on the shoulders of his wife, Maria Shriver, who was sitting in the wheelchair. The couple quietly gazed into the distance, basking in their affection.

With movie-grade camera work, the scene was as beautiful as a painting, which made even Tommy a bit curious as to who had filmed this short piece for Susy. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

The plot of the movie was simple: the wife, a photographer for VOX, had lost her mobility in an accident and needed a long period of recovery and rehabilitation. She could no longer carry a camera to see the world with her own eyes or take photos that moved people’s hearts. She said nothing, but Arnold knew that his wife wanted to see.

So, Arnold took his wife’s camera, packed his bags, and set off. He visited various places to take photographs and conduct interviews, in Europe, Africa, Asia, snowfields, rainforests, grasslands, deserts...

He captured photo after photo and then opened up the laptop he carried with him, accessed the AmigaOS system, consulted local information with the browser, compiled reports, and wrote emails to his wife sitting in the backyard at home, attaching photo after photo. In every email overflowing with love and warmth, Arnold would write: To the dear Mrs. Shriver, your beloved life assistant, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Miss Amiga.

In the short film’s final scene, Maria, sitting in a wheelchair but confined to her home, received a journalism award. When accepting the award, she gave a speech, eventually thanking the most important people in her life, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Miss Amiga.

The film ended, and the lights came up in the hall. Susy White was already standing on stage in a smart professional dress, smiling as she looked out at all the attendees.

Seeing Susy so blatantly fabricate and deceive during the launch, Tommy felt he had made the right choice in selecting her.

Currently, it was impossible to send attachments with emails, but that didn’t prevent the demonstration from looking as though you could. After all, they were selling AmigaOS. Issues with the email system were for their own professors and Stanford University to worry about; they developed this technology.

Susy began by discussing the development and fashioned herself as the creator of Amiga because she was lonely and longed to connect with more people who were also lonely in their corners. So, she decided to create AmigaOS... It sounded quite touching, as Tommy saw that there were some emotional female reporters in tears when Susy talked about leaving her abusive family at fourteen to come to Los Angeles to trade her body to buy hardware and teach herself computer skills.

The second collective gasp of the audience came when Susy had them open the computers in front of them to enter the system, then enter Stanford University’s developed browser, and join a rudimentary forum, allowing them to instantaneously post and discuss their AmigaOS experiences with other colleagues at the event, anonymously and without any concern for backlash over negative comments.

The attendees tried it out and were amazed to see their posts appear on the page quickly, and the venue was filled with the sound of typing, no one speaking, just continual exclamations, as these wordsmiths firsthand witnessed the convenience of instantly transmitting text. They didn’t have to call colleagues; they could just open their computers, run this program called a browser, and communicate work experiences with over a thousand colleagues, speaking freely.

The third collective gasp came when they were instructed to open the email system. Already preloaded by staff were recognizable email addresses of acquaintances, allowing for instant communication.

Through the camera work at various stations and the large screen display, people could see somebody sending an email to their boss in New York, someone else to their wife and daughters back in their hometown, and another to college friends they hadn’t seen since graduation. Soon after, they quickly received replies.

Those people, watching the launch event from other places on Earth, managed to communicate instantly via email with those at the venue. Distance seemed to no longer exist.