Pamela had brought an enormous amount of stuff, all of it hanging from her bicycle. Jason was dumbfounded the moment he opened the door. "How the hell did you ride that thing over here? Did you train with a circus?"
"Why do you think I didn't drive?" Pamela tossed her hair back and strode into the house. Instead of sitting on the couch, she rushed into the kitchen first, gulped down two huge glasses of water, and said, "Do you know how high those damned gas prices have gotten?! If you know anyone in the circus, introduce me to a part-time job. I'm about to max out all my cards!"
"You made a very bad investment decision." Schiller sounded somewhat displeased. "From the day the stock market crashed, you should have stopped paying the bank, instead of clinging to that house. Even Selene is doing much better than you."
Pamela stood blankly before the kitchen island. "I just wanted a house."
"That's rather rare." Schiller said, "Western culture generally does not regard renting as particularly shameful. East Asian cultures do have such customs; they believe it means constantly giving money to someone else."
"Isn't that exactly what it is?"
"Whenever you buy any product, you are giving money to someone else. Does that mean you do not use what you buy?"
Pamela let out a long sigh. "It's too late to say that now. The sunk cost is too high. I have to make more money. I won't let the bank take my house."
"How is that cleaning equipment project you and Victor were developing?"
"You mean the cleaning robot? Research was never the main issue. Commercialization is the hard part."
"What about all those functional plants?"
At that, Pamela's expression looked as though she had eaten shit. "My entire