[2 Broke Girls] Ch: 351 & 352 [Time Skip] (Patreon)

[AN: I had to do a time skip to move things forward. But I've covered the major point in small parts with dates to let you all know what happened during the skip.

[April 10, 2009] [Titan Technology Day] [New York]

Titan Technology Day began before sunrise.

By eight in the morning, nearly one hundred and forty invited guests had passed through security at Titan’s New York headquarters and entered the restricted technology floors. The group included hardware journalists, game developers, graphics engineers, university researchers, financial analysts, software architects, and representatives from several major studios.

Rachel watched from the upper observation level while the first demonstrations started below. The event had been deliberately divided into smaller groups so nobody spent the day watching carefully prepared presentations from a distance. Every guest received access to live systems, engineering staff, development tools, and performance monitors.

Priya Raman stood beside the first demonstration station where Mass Effect was running across a Titan Vision prototype.

Several journalists immediately crowded around the display.

One of them leaned closer to the screen while Shepard walked through the Citadel. “You’re actually rendering this at 3840 by 2160?”

Priya pointed toward the telemetry panel beside the monitor. “Native resolution throughout the demonstration. We’re also running the current ray-tracing implementation with reflections, dynamic shadows, and our first production global illumination pass.”

The journalist studied the numbers for several seconds before asking whether the footage had been prepared specifically for the event.

Priya smiled slightly and handed him the controller. “Walk wherever you want.”

He took control of Shepard and immediately started doing exactly what Titan had expected.

Instead of following the intended route, he ran backward through the environment, rotated the camera rapidly, walked into darker areas, stared at reflective surfaces, and stopped beside several large windows. Another journalist began watching the performance readout while a graphics researcher stepped closer to inspect reflections around moving NPCs.

The frame rate barely moved.

Across the room, another group had become more aggressive.

A rendering engineer changed the lighting inside a development build while Noah Bennett explained the software stack. The engineer shifted the position of a light source, increased its intensity, then dragged it through the environment while watching shadows respond across furniture, walls, and characters.

“You’re recalculating all of this live?” he asked.

Noah nodded while opening another developer panel. “The engine submits the scene through our ray API, then the Aegis hardware handles the intersection workload. Developers still decide how they want to use the result. We aren’t forcing one rendering model.”

He switched to a debugging view showing rays, material responses, and performance costs across the scene.

Several developers moved closer.

One of them asked whether Titan intended to keep the API proprietary.

Noah shook his head. “Documentation will be public. Studios using our hardware can build directly around it, and we’re developing export paths where practical because I’d rather convince developers with performance than trap them inside an ecosystem.”

That answer traveled through the room almost as quickly as the benchmark numbers.

On another floor, Maya Chen demonstrated Titan Flash storage by loading enormous development scenes repeatedly while attendees timed the results themselves. Nearby, Victor Salazar had opened part of a prototype cooling assembly so several engineers could inspect heat pipes, airflow channels, fan control, and thermal sensors.

Victor spent almost twenty minutes arguing happily with a thermal engineer from California who kept asking increasingly specific questions about sustained loads.

“If you push maximum ray tracing for six hours, what happens to clock stability?” the engineer asked.

Victor brought up a long-duration stress test from the previous evening. “You lose a little boost depending on ambient temperature, although the card stays inside the designed thermal envelope. We’d rather sacrifice three percent of peak frequency than pretend physics doesn’t exist.”

The engineer smiled while studying the graph. “That answer makes me trust you more than a perfect line would.”

By midday, skepticism had changed into something more complicated.

Nobody inside the building had received final prices, retail specifications, or complete product names. Titan had given them enough information to understand that the March teaser hadn’t been a trick.

One journalist stood beside Rachel near the refreshment area and looked back toward the crowded engineering stations. “Half the internet is going to accuse us of being paid when we write what we saw.”

Rachel took a sip of coffee. “Then tell them exactly what happened and let them argue with the measurements.”

He glanced toward her. “You’re really comfortable letting people publish all of this before the full reveal?”

Rachel looked through the glass toward another group testing Mass Effect. “That’s why they’re here.”

By late afternoon, attendees were photographing benchmark screens, comparing handwritten notes, and quietly calling editors.

Alex appeared only briefly near the end of the event.

He walked through several stations, spoke with a few developers, and listened while Priya answered questions about Aegis. Nobody needed him to explain what his own engineers already understood better.

When one reporter finally caught him near the exit and asked whether Titan Technology Day had achieved what he wanted, Alex glanced toward the packed demonstration floor.

“I wanted people to stop arguing about whether the technology exists and start arguing about what it means,” he said. “Judging by the noise in this building, I think we’re there.”

That evening, technology sites began publishing their first reports.

The headlines were cautious at first.

Then the videos appeared.

Journalists uploaded footage of themselves controlling Mass Effect while live telemetry remained visible beside the screen. Developers described moving light sources through real-time scenes. Hardware specialists posted photographs of prototype systems and admitted they couldn’t reproduce what they had witnessed with anything currently available on the market.

The argument surrounding Project Aegis changed overnight.

People were no longer asking whether Titan had faked the March trailer.

They were asking what Titan planned to sell.

[April 17, 2009] [Titan World Reveal] [New York]

One week later, Titan answered them.

The Titan World presentation opened with Priya standing beneath a massive display showing a simplified graphics pipeline.

Behind her, the words AEGIS ARCHITECTURE appeared across the screen.

She spent twenty minutes explaining the basic philosophy behind the design before revealing the first three product families.

Aegis 60 would target mainstream gaming systems.

Aegis 70 would sit above it as the high-performance option.

Aegis 90 would target enthusiasts, creators, scientific workloads, and professional rendering.

Priya moved carefully through the presentation, avoiding impossible marketing claims while showing real demonstrations from the same systems journalists had tested the week before.

“The hardware inside every Aegis card includes dedicated acceleration for ray intersection workloads,” she explained while the screen changed to an architectural diagram. “Internally we call that hardware the Aegis Ray Engine. Developers can access it through Titan Ray API or supported graphics layers.”

The next section belonged to Noah.

He introduced Titan Control Center and the larger software environment surrounding Aegis. Driver management, performance monitoring, cooling control, storage diagnostics, game profiles, developer tools, and system optimization all lived inside the same interface.

Then a Windows logo appeared beside Titan’s.

Noah let the audience reaction settle before continuing. “Microsoft has been working with us on platform certification, driver support, Windows compatibility, DirectX integration, and the transition toward Windows 7.”

The screen changed again.

MICROSOFT WINDOWS CERTIFIED TITAN PLATFORM.

Across the technology press section, people immediately started typing.

Elias Mercer took the stage next.

A black rectangular console appeared behind him.

TITAN NOVA.

The audience reacted much louder than they had during the earlier architecture discussion.

Elias walked across the stage while a rotating render showed Nova’s exterior, internal cooling layout, controller, and motherboard.

“Nova shares significant architectural concepts with our PC platform, which means developers don’t need to treat console and PC development like two completely different planets,” he said. “The toolchain, profiling environment, asset systems, and much of the optimization workflow remain familiar across both.”

A Mass Effect development window appeared behind him.

The same project was shown running through both Nova and PC targets.

Several developers in the audience immediately began talking among themselves.

That was the moment many of them understood Titan World.

The graphics cards were only one part of the strategy.

Maya Chen followed with Titan Memory, Titan Flash SSDs, and Titan Coreboards. Victor introduced Titan Power and Titan Frost cooling. A prototype Titan Vision 32 display appeared later in the presentation running Mass Effect at native 4K, followed by the larger Titan Cinema concept intended for living rooms.

Then the Intel logo appeared.

A senior Intel representative joined the stage beside Titan’s processor team as the Apex platform was introduced publicly for the first time.

Apex 5.

Apex 7.

Apex 9.

The representative explained that Intel would handle fabrication, validation, packaging, and manufacturing scale while Titan contributed architecture work involving cache design, memory control, power behavior, and future platform planning.

The reaction inside the auditorium became noticeably more serious.

Titan wasn’t merely entering graphics.

It was entering processors, storage, memory, motherboards, displays, cooling, consoles, and software while partnering with two of the largest technology companies in the world.

Rachel watched from backstage as financial networks began updating their coverage in real time.

One analyst on a nearby monitor stared at the product map before telling his audience, “This is either one of the most ambitious hardware strategies we’ve seen in years or one of the most expensive corporate mistakes imaginable.”

Rachel smiled faintly. “At least he understands the scale.”

Alex finally took the stage near the end.

Behind him, every division appeared together beneath a single logo.

TITAN WORLD.

He looked across the crowd before speaking.

Cameras flashed throughout the auditorium.

Alex looked toward the dates and smiled.

“Now you know what Project Aegis was leading toward. I hope this will somewhat reduce some of the criticism and negative views. Now the biggest question... How much do these things cost? Well, we'll let you know 1 week before the launch.”

By the time the presentation ended, the technology industry had stopped treating Titan as an entertainment company experimenting with hardware. Titan had just announced that it intended to compete across almost the entire consumer performance ecosystem. And for the first time, the companies already occupying that world had seen enough working technology to understand that the threat was real.

...

[Late April 2009] [After Titan World]

The week following Titan World changed the way the technology industry looked at Titan.

Until April, most companies had treated Alex’s hardware division as an expensive side project attached to an entertainment empire. That attitude disappeared once journalists published their Technology Day testing, followed by the full Titan World presentation on April 17.

Developers began requesting SDK access almost immediately. Hardware manufacturers wanted meetings about certification, retailers wanted allocation estimates, and analysts began revising projections after realizing Titan intended to compete across several major product categories at once.

The strongest reaction came from the gaming industry.

Studios that had previously approached Titan only because of its publishing money now wanted development kits. The promise of a shared workflow between PC and Nova attracted teams tired of rebuilding large portions of their pipelines every time a project moved between platforms.

Noah Bennett’s department became overwhelmed with requests for early access to Titan’s development environment. Qualified studios received free software packages for the first year, while smaller independent developers were offered reduced certification fees and engineering support.

Priya Raman’s team faced a different problem.

Every graphics publication wanted benchmark access.

Titan refused to provide carefully selected benchmark numbers without context. Reviewers would receive retail-equivalent hardware closer to launch, along with updated drivers and permission to test whatever games or workloads they wanted.

Rachel considered that approach more dangerous in the short term and more valuable in the long term.

If Titan was going to claim superior hardware, independent reviewers needed enough freedom to prove it themselves.

Competitors began responding through pricing rumors, roadmap leaks, and statements reminding consumers that Titan had never shipped a consumer graphics architecture before.

Rachel welcomed the skepticism.

Every argument kept Titan World in the headlines. 

...

[Late April] [X-Men Pre-Production]

Alex spent less than fifteen minutes at the first complete X-Men cast meeting.

The gathering was held inside one of Titan’s larger rehearsal spaces, where Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Jensen Ackles, Emily Blunt, Kelsey Grammer, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, David Tennant, Zac Efron, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Romijn, Charlize Theron, and the rest of the ensemble met properly for the first time.

Alex welcomed everyone, reminded them that X-Men: Protocol Zero depended on the team functioning as an ensemble rather than orbiting a single character, and wished Joe and Anthony Russo luck before leaving.

From that point onward, the Russos controlled the room.

Table reads began, physical training schedules were established, costume fittings continued, and the directors started working closely with the cast on the relationships underneath the larger mutant conflict.

Jensen trained heavily for Scott’s physical discipline and command presence. Emily spent time with Patrick developing Jean’s early telepathic relationship with Xavier. Halle worked with the stunt and visual-effects departments on Storm’s movement so Ororo never appeared to struggle against the scale of her own powers.

Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine preparation remained separate from much of the central group because Logan entered the story from a very different place.

Alex reviewed reports occasionally and otherwise stayed out of the way.

He had already chosen his directors.

Now he expected them to direct.

...

[May 1, 2009] [Ben 10 Season Two]

Ben 10 returned at the beginning of May and immediately became one of Titan Youth’s strongest programs.

The second-season premiere climbed to the top of youth television charts during its opening weekend, while repeat broadcasts remained unusually strong throughout the following week.

Reviews praised the larger mythology surrounding the Omnitrix, the improved action sequences, and the decision to let Ben gradually mature without stripping away the personality that had made the first season popular.

The introduction of additional alien transformations generated exactly the reaction Alex had expected. Within hours of the premiere, fan sites were cataloguing abilities, arguing over power levels, and trying to predict which forms would become permanent parts of Ben’s rotation.

Vilgax also received stronger material, becoming less of a distant threat and more of a looming presence across the season.

...

[May] [DC: Gods & Wonders]

By the middle of May, DC: Gods & Wonders entered full production under Guillermo del Toro.

Alex had wanted Guillermo from the beginning. After the massive success of Maleficent, he trusted him with the mythological scale, strange creatures, ancient gods, and darker corners of Diana’s world. Guillermo also understood that the series couldn’t survive on spectacle alone. Paradise Island needed to feel like a real civilization with history, traditions, political disagreements, and relationships that existed long before Diana became Wonder Woman.

For Guillermo, the project offered a much larger canvas than Maleficent. He worked closely with Titan’s production designers to give Themyscira its own architecture and culture rather than treating it as another polished fantasy kingdom. Practical sets were mixed with enormous environmental extensions, while creatures and ancient beings were developed through the same combination of prosthetics, animatronics, and visual effects he preferred whenever possible.

Angelina Jolie’s schedule became brutal almost immediately.

The twelve-episode production demanded far more from her than a normal feature film. Early filming concentrated heavily on Diana’s life among the Amazons, her relationship with her mother, her training, the politics surrounding the old gods, and the gradual development of the woman audiences would eventually recognize as Wonder Woman.

Angelina spent hours each week training with swords, shields, spears, horseback combat, wire rigs, and choreographed hand-to-hand sequences. Guillermo also pushed the quieter material hard, particularly scenes exploring Diana’s compassion and her growing curiosity about the world beyond Themyscira.

The Golden Eagle Armor sequence shown during Titan’s annual presentation represented only a fraction of what was being built.

Guillermo had already begun preparing ancient battlefields, mythological creatures, ruined temples, and environments connected to the gods themselves. Several episodes required feature-film-scale production work, which was exactly why Alex had approved the series without imposing a conventional television budget.

By the end of May, Angelina was spending most of her days moving between costume fittings, stunt rehearsals, soundstages, location work, and performance sessions with Guillermo.

Between Gods & Wonders, her responsibilities at Titan, family life, and the attention still surrounding Maleficent and her Oscar victory, Angelina had become one of the busiest people in the household.

...

[May] [Gordon Ramsay Holdings]

Rachel and Jane handled the Ramsay deal without needing Alex involved beyond final approval.

Titan’s financial team completed a detailed review of Gordon Ramsay Holdings, including outstanding loans, restaurant performance, liabilities, licensing arrangements, expansion commitments, and the financial pressure created by the recession.

The company had problems, although the core business remained valuable.

Rachel approved the acquisition structure after renegotiating several protections around future borrowing and major expansion spending.

Titan acquired forty percent of Gordon Ramsay Holdings and provided enough capital to stabilize the immediate financial pressure while restructuring several obligations on more manageable terms.

The new restaurant and media venture remained separate.

Titan and Ramsay Holdings formed a fifty-fifty company responsible for future restaurants, television formats, publishing projects, and international hospitality concepts developed together.

Los Angeles became the first planned location.

Jane began early development work on The Pressure Test at the same time, although no announcement was made. Producers started quietly approaching potential contestants while Gordon’s team developed the competition format and training structure.

...

[May] [Angela and Jennifer]

Alex’s personal life kept moving alongside everything else.

He went on two more dates with Angela White after their first late-night dinner in Los Angeles.

Neither date involved cameras, corporate meetings, or modeling work. One remained deliberately simple, with dinner followed by a walk along the beach. The other became a quiet evening built around food, music, and conversation.

Alex didn’t rush anything.

Angela became increasingly comfortable around him once she stopped treating every interaction like an impossible career milestone.

The attraction remained obvious, although the relationship developed slowly enough for both of them to understand what existed beyond it.

Jennifer Lopez also spent more time around Alex during May.

Titan scheduled four separate photoshoots involving both of them, ranging from fashion material to promotional work connected with music and Titan lifestyle campaigns.

Outside those shoots, they had several casual outings together. Sometimes they ate after work, sometimes they attended small industry functions, and on a few occasions they simply escaped the attention surrounding Titan and spent time talking privately.

Alex noticed the interest.

He also noticed that neither Jennifer nor Angela seemed interested in being treated like another addition to an expanding household.

That suited him.

Anything serious would have to grow naturally.

Alex also wrapped up Ironman filming by the end of May and thus began the editing and all. Scarlett also wrapped up Alien 2 filming, and Hobbit 2 shooting was far from over. Due to a sudden weather change, the shoot got a little delayed.

...

[June 1, 2009] [Man of Steel]

Man of Steel opened worldwide on June 1.

The response was immediately strong.

Critics praised Henry Cavill’s performance, Zack Snyder’s scale, the film’s visual identity, and the decision to let Clark Kent feel uncertain and human even while presenting Superman as something almost mythological.

Rotten Tomatoes settled around 87 percent during the first week. IMDb audience ratings averaged approximately 8.3 out of 10, while Metacritic reached 79.

Reviews weren’t universally enthusiastic. Some critics considered sections of the film too serious, while others questioned the scale of the destruction during its largest sequences. Then everyone loved Alex's cameo as Bruce Wayne in the movie, which they shot a few weeks before the final editing.

He had 2 cameos. The first one was Bruce witnessing Superman fight Zod while causing massive destruction while saving as many civilians as possible. The second one was Bruce training in the Batcave while the Batcomputer tracked Superman. Alexis also had a small cameo after Zod's fight that connects Superman to the Supergirl film, showing what he was doing and why he failed to assist Kara during her fight.

The overall response remained clearly positive.

The box office reflected that enthusiasm.

Within its first seven days, Man of Steel earned roughly $375 million to $380 million worldwide.

Titan considered the result excellent.

Supergirl had established the first pieces of the live-action DC universe, and Man of Steel proved audiences were willing to follow another branch of it immediately.

Henry Cavill’s public profile changed almost overnight.

By the second weekend, Superman, Supergirl and Batman merchandise was disappearing from stores almost as quickly as Titan could replace it.

Zack moved directly into post-release meetings concerning the next phase of the DC universe, although Justice League: Doomsday remained some distance away.

...

[June 12] [Titan Hardware Expansion]

Titan’s second hardware wave launched eleven days after Man of Steel.

Titan Memory, Titan Flash SSDs, Coreboards, Titan Power supplies, Frost cooling products, and the Titan Vision display entered retail together.

Pricing once again became the center of discussion.

Titan had deliberately positioned the products aggressively against existing competitors, offering unusually strong performance for the cost while still maintaining profitable margins.

The strategy worked almost too well.

Retail inventory disappeared within hours in several major markets.

Online stores shifted rapidly into preorder systems, while Titan opened additional manufacturing allocation to meet demand.

Scalping appeared almost immediately.

Titan responded aggressively through purchase limits, retailer agreements, suspicious-order reviews, and legal action against organized groups attempting to circumvent quantity restrictions through fraudulent accounts or coordinated bulk buying.

Individual customers were limited in how many high-demand units they could purchase during the first release window.

Rachel had no interest in watching Titan hardware become inaccessible because resellers had cleared warehouses before ordinary buyers had a chance.

By late June, preorder queues stretched across several regions.

The larger concern had already shifted toward July.

Nova was next.

...

[July 3]

Titan’s first console arrived in the market.

The Titan Nova officially launched alongside Mass Effect.

Retail stores across North America, Europe, and parts of Asia opened for midnight events while Titan’s online infrastructure handled the largest simultaneous consumer launch the company’s technology division had attempted.

Nova boxes disappeared from shelves almost immediately.

Most launch locations had already distributed reserved inventory through controlled preorder systems, although lines still formed hours before stores opened.

Inside Titan headquarters, engineering teams watched server traffic, activation numbers, account creation, downloads, and hardware telemetry climb across enormous monitoring walls.

Then Mass Effect unlocked.

Players saw the Normandy.

They created Commander Shepard.

They stepped into the galaxy Titan had spent months using to demonstrate impossible-looking technology.

For the first time, nobody was watching Mass Effect through a technology presentation, trailer, journalist recording, or carefully controlled demonstration.

Millions of people could finally play it themselves.

Next: Titan Realms: The testing begins