Xun thumbed through the first few pages of the dossier on his desk, looking it over with an uncharacteristic level of enthusiasm. His virtual workspace was decorated much more elaborately now, with several large modernist art pieces adorning the walls. In front of him were six screens displaying the faces of Dòngnéng project managers.
“Well,” he said flipping to the fourth page, “this is a good start, but we’ll need to do some retooling of the server structure. Parallel obviously has the resources to fully host this, but we want to keep as much of our product and data under our roof.”
“We suspected that might be the case, Mr. Xun,” replied a woman in a business suit, “but we wanted to defer to your expertise, as it will considerably increase our operating costs.”
“How so? How is it that using our current hardware will-”
“I apologize, Mr. Xun, I misspoke. We collectively decided that we would defer to your expertise on the server details, as continuing to use our current resources will not reduce operating costs.”
“Understood.” He set the stack of papers neatly in front of him on the desk. “Did Zhou have any concerns regarding the quarterly report?”
“None sir.”
“I’m glad to hear tha-” Xun felt a momentary sense of vertigo that stopped him mid-sentence.
“Mr. Xun, is everything all right?”
“Yes, Ms. Chen.” He rubbed his head. “We’ll continue this discussion tomorrow morning – I’d like to provide the team with some more specific direction.”
“Very good, sir.”
The screens vanished, and Xun spun his chair around. He leaned back, looked up at one of the paintings… and smiled.