Chapter 24: A Touch of Emotion

"You will never appear in the public eye from start to finish; only I will. As for how you can participate in a legitimate and above-board manner, that requires Blue Origin to take the initiative. We need Blue Origin to fund a joint research project with the Stony Brook branch, similar to a NASA grant project. Then, you can use this as a pretext to visit the Blue Origin offices regularly.

Effectively, from the beginning of the project to its conclusion, you will have no public connection to me. Your relationship with Blue Origin will be strictly limited to the Blue Origin-Stony Brook University joint research project, which will serve to circumvent Section 126.1 of the ITAR and Section 744 of the EAR."

Lin Ran listened, lost in thought.

"There is still a problem with the overall plan: how do we ensure that Blue Origin won't sell us out?"

This was Lin Ran's greatest fear. If he were to be sold out, he would be unable to return to China and could face years, or even decades, of imprisonment. That would truly be a descent into darkness and despair. In prison, he would never dare to activate the portal.

"You can rest easy on that; Blue Origin is incapable of selling us out. I have been synthesizing all the publicly available information lately. Just as you said, NASA does indeed have the intention of subcontracting the return-to-the-moon program to private enterprises.

Currently, several NASA officials and the Vice President have begun to drop hints in unofficial settings. Back in 2014, NASA even attempted to hand the moon-return contract to Boeing. Given the hostile relationship between Bezos and Musk, from Bezos's own perspective, he would undoubtedly be eager to score a victory in the aerospace sector.

If Blue Origin can snatch the NASA contract right out from under SpaceX, it would not only be a massive commercial success, giving Amazon greater potential, but it would also mean besting Musk. They will do everything in their power to keep your secret. Because once the NASA contract is handed to Blue Origin, are they going to voluntarily admit that they had the help of a Chinese national? Then face a re-audit and a re-tendering of the contract? They will never expose you.

However, there are still a significant number of risk factors involved. The first is that you have to convince Blue Origin. This isn't like a traditional transaction where I have powerful patented technology and can shop it around to find a suitable buyer. Here, you only have one target—Blue Origin. You can only negotiate with them from start to finish. If they refuse and you try someone else, like Orbital Sciences, they will sell you out."

"Therefore, you must present sufficiently persuasive evidence from the very beginning, something that can convince Bezos directly. I will help you arrange this. Relying on my Fabian Society badge, I can get a Democratic senator to help provide you and Bezos with a fifteen-minute private conversation opportunity at a campaign fundraising gala he is hosting for the President. I checked the date of the gala; it is in three months. This means you have three months to prepare, which is a month more than the two months you originally mentioned. Is there enough time?"

Lin Ran felt deeply grateful. If anyone else had told him they could return to the moon, he would never have believed them. Yet when he told Li Xiaoman, she actually began making preparations as if he truly had the ability to convince Bezos.

"Sister Xiaoman, if this requires using up your connections, then let's forget it." Lin Ran looked at her refined profile, his voice somewhat hoarse.

Having spent nearly half a year in 1960, he understood the influence of the Frankfurt School. Sixty years had passed since then, and that influence had grown exponentially, becoming a deep-rooted tree in America. The Jewish groups behind it were, in fact, among the actual controllers of the United States. Even if Li Junnan was merely a traveler in history, the connections he left behind could secure a fifteen-minute one-on-one conversation with the world's richest man. But such resources were ultimately finite; they were consumables. The Li family was not some prestigious dynasty; once these resources were spent, they would be gone.

They could have been saved to help her secure a top-tier law firm or a premier job in the financial sector after graduation. Although Lin Ran was fully confident in his own ability to easily become a truly significant figure in both timelines, it was this unconditional trust that moved him. He had proposed such an outrageous request, yet she had been preparing as if he were truly capable of it. While he was working hard in 1960, she hadn't been idle. Getting to a Democratic senator was difficult enough, but arranging it perfectly for three months from now was even harder.

"Randolph, this is a high-stakes gamble, but the cost of this gamble is nowhere near as high as you think," Li Xiaoman said, naturally understanding what Lin Ran was thinking.

She continued, "While it is true that I am consuming the connections accumulated in the past, making it harder to ask for favors in the future, connections are things meant to be used eventually. Even if you fail this time, I can still become a renowned lawyer and rebuild those connections. In America, the process of building and consuming connections is constant; it is not a one-time consumable. You don't need to put too much psychological pressure on yourself.

And if you truly can convince Bezos, then I haven't consumed my connections at all—instead, they will have become even deeper. Next time, I could even ask him for something more difficult. Therefore, the stake I am paying for this gamble is merely a trivial amount of social capital. Whether you can convince Bezos in one go is what truly matters."

Lin Ran nodded silently. "Alright, don't worry, I will definitely convince Bezos."

Li Xiaoman said, "Then there is one last thing I must caution you about. You mentioned earlier that you are going to replicate the Apollo moon landing. From our current perspective, the Apollo mission was somewhat of a fluke; it probably only had a thirty or forty percent success rate, yet America succeeded.

This works in our favor. Have you considered what would happen if you help Blue Origin achieve a return to the moon? Would the White House still have the incentive to push this program? Aside from gaining prestige, would Blue Origin be able to secure a massive contract from NASA? Would they be able to carve out their own piece of the congressional budget? Clearly not. So, you need to use the Apollo mission as a pretext to send robots back to the moon. It would be best if you 'failed' a few times during the process—something like six successes out of ten launches. When you do succeed, the lunar module should contain robots, not humans, which would serve as a perfect advertisement for the robotics company Bezos invests in."

Lin Ran asked after listening, "I have one more question: Blue Origin has had many collaborative projects with NASA in the past. Can a Chinese national like me really participate through their joint research project with the Stony Brook branch? Even if this project is unrelated to sensitive restricted areas? Furthermore, if I participate, will observant people discover the connection between me and Blue Origin’s moon-return project? And in doing so, lead to unnecessary trouble?"