Artemis

Dear Kelvin,

Thanks for helping me earlier. I was in deep shit. Now I’m in slightly shallower shit. Basically, I’m at war with a company called Sanchez Aluminum. I’ll give you the full story later. For now, I need another favor.

Sanchez Aluminum’s smelting facility is in a mini-bubble near the reactors. The reactor/smelter complex is a kilometer from town.

I did some research and found a twenty-year-old article about the “negotiations” between Sanchez and KSC. KSC got really hands-on in the smelter’s design process and Sanchez didn’t like it. They almost went to litigation in Kenyan court.

Sanchez’s argument was “It’s our smelter. We don’t need approval from anyone. Fuck off.”

KSC’s counter was “It’s 200 meters from our reactors. We need to know it won’t blow up. Give us approval rights or we won’t rent you the space, you little shits.”

Ultimately KSC won because they own the mini-bubble. They never sell property—they’re all about rent.

Anyway, the upshot is KSC must have detailed schematics of the Sanchez smelter somewhere. Like… super detailed with every potential failure case analyzed and covered. I need you to get ahold of those documents. I know you work in a totally different part of KSC, but you still have access most people don’t. Feel free to spread some money around in the process. I’ll pay you back.

Dear Jazz,

The plans are enclosed. They were surprisingly easy to get. No part of them was considered a company secret or industrial process. Sanchez kept the exact chemistry in the smelter to themselves, but everything else was right there in the architectural plans.

I have a drinking buddy in the metallurgy lab in Building 27. They’d been consulted as part of the safety overview. He pulled the plans up on his boss’s computer (which has no password protection). All I had to do was buy him a beer.

So the cost was two beers (had to have one myself, of course). Call it 50 slugs.

Dear Kelvin

Thanks, buddy. Make it 75 slugs and have another beer on me.