by Jeff Pollard
“Exactly,” K replies.
“Okay, so that's legal to have on your car...but how did you get a flamethrower in the first place, while we were in America.”
“There are no regulations on flamethrowers in the US. No background check, no permit, you can just buy them online.”
“Those Americans still think they live in the wild west, huh.”
“Well, the wild west was never that wild, that's a Hollywood construction. But yes, they do. I especially like it when people argue that the government won't infringe on their rights as long as they're allowed to own guns. As if that pistol or even an AK-47 knockoff is going to matter to the US government that could just take you out with a drone if you make too much noise about the NSA keeping track of everything you say or do. Then you point out that the free-est and happiest countries are places like Sweden and Iceland where there aren't guns. Then they just mumble something about socialism.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I spend too much time on the internet.”
“Yeah.”
Chapter 10
“You should not be drinking right now,” Brittany says as she enters Kingsley's office.
“I don't come to your office and tell you how to do your job,” K replies before sipping whisky.
“That's because you don't know where my office is,” Hammersmith replies.
“Point still stands,” K replies.
“They're going to hold a vote to fire you and then put me in that chair, you should probably be sober for this.”
“If they replace me with you, why don't you just carry on doing what I would do?”
“Yeah, you're drunk. K! Because if they can fire you from the company you founded, then they certainly can get rid of me.”
“Why are you all dressed up?” K asks.
“They're about to make me president of the company, what'd you expect me to be wearing, yoga pants?”
“You're not about to become president.”
“Kingsley, they wouldn't call the meeting and hold a vote of no-confidence if they didn't think they had the votes. They know they have the votes.”
“How do they know?”
“They called me last night at home to talk about my presidency. They expect you to be booted out of here today.”
“Want a drink?” K asks as he gets up to refill his.
“Kingsley, come on. This is your last shot. It's one thing to get a vote count the night before, but it's another for the board members to actually vote to kick you out. If you can go in this meeting and blow the doors off the place, you might change someone's mind and we'll have a shot of keeping you in charge.”
“Well I have an ace up my sleeve,” Kingsley replies.
“And what's that?”
“I'm a little drunk.”
“That's your ace in the hole?”
“Sleeve.”
“Ms. Hammersmith,” Hannah says, entering the office. “A gift for you.” Hannah holds out a bottle of champagne with a bow on the end. Brittany takes the bottle and finds a note on the side.
“Happy inauguration President Hammersmith,” Brittany reads aloud.
“Who's it from?” K asks sarcastically from his seat. Brittany give him a dirty look.
“Some guy holding a pig just dropped this off,” Hannah replies.
“A live pig?” K asks.
“Well, actually a live pig and also some bacon.”
“What kind of a person carries around both a live pig and pig meat?” K asks.
“I have no idea,” Hannah replies.
“He's messing with you,” Brittany adds.
“What's with the note about you being president?”
“The pig guys own 40% of the company,” Brittany replies. “And today they're holding a vote to fire K and make me President.”
“Doesn't Kingsley own a majority of the company?” Hannah asks.
“25.3%,” Kingsley replies between sips of whiskey.
“So can they do that?” Hannah asks.
“They need a simple majority, over 50%, they own 40%, K owns 25.3%, Caroline owns another 5%, and that just leaves three more investors, Peter Wilke, Charles Harding, and Sergei Kuznetzov who each own 9.9%.”
“Why 9.9%?” Hannah asks.
“Because 9.9 plus 40 is less than 50,” Kingsley says. “They can't do anything unless they have at least two more owners, which means they have to convince two of the three that they'd be better off with me gone, and I don't think they can convince any two out of three people that I'm not a bad ass that should be in charge.”
“But they think they have those two votes because they wouldn't be having the vote unless they knew they could win it,” Brittany adds.
“Or maybe they're just bad at math and think 49.9 rounds up to 50,” Kingsley suggests.
“Should I be worried? I mean, if you get fired, do I have a job?”
“You shouldn't be worried,” K replies. Hannah is not at all comforted by Kingsley's usual casual flippancy.
“Should I be worried?” She asks Brittany.
“Kingsley should be worried,” Brittany replies, “but if I take over, I'm not going to fire you.”
“That's comforting I guess. Maybe K can watch Griffin and be a stay at home dad while I come be your assistant.”
“Watch Griffin?” Brittany asks.
“Yeah.”
“What Griffin?”
“My son,” Hannah replies.
“Riiight,” Brittany says, suddenly feeling very awkward. “I'm gonna go to the meeting now.”
“I'm here,” K says, entering the board room five minutes late.
“Late as usual,” Bob Koke adds while stroking his pet pig. Peter Wilke and Charles Harding are also present, each bringing along a lawyer and an assistant. Sergei Kuznetzov appears on a video screen from his house on Long Island. He's sitting on his patio, sipping on what looks like an actual Long Island Iced Tea, not paying attention and instead reading a worn out copy of Alexander Belyaev's 1925 novel Professor Dowell's Head in the original Russian. The novel had been Sergei's favorite since he first read the short book at the age of twelve and was captivated by the Frankensteinein notion of keeping severed heads alive.
“Let's go ahead and get started,” K says, plopping down in his seat, putting his feet up and sipping on a fresh whisky.
“Caroline is not here yet,” Bob Koke says.
“I know, she said to go ahead without her,” K replies.
“Always late the women are,” Bill Koke adds. Brittany shoots him a look.
“So let's do it. Board meeting. Let's meet this board,” K says, a little drunk.
“Well, I don't think it's any secret why we're here,” Bob Koke says with what K would describe as a “Pig-shit-eating-grin.”
“So let's just go ahead and-” Bill Koke says, but K interrupts.
“Actually, I have a little announcement. We've now got the contract for the ten remaining cargo missions to the ISS. ULA is going to be paying us above and beyond what NASA was paying for them, which means we'll be clearing a solid thirty million in profit per, times ten is how many million, I'm not so good at math.”
“Three hundred million,” Hannah adds.
“That's my assistant, and give her a break sarcasm is her second language.”
“What's your point Kingsley?” Bob asks.
“The point is, we've now got a full manifest for the next two and a half years, which means we easily have the funds now to develop reusability.”
“It's not about money,” Bob replies.
“It's about reckless behavior,” Bill adds.
“It's about things with the SpacEx logo on them exploding on TV.”
“Your brilliant master plan is to go ahead and risk blowing up rockets and ruining consumer confidence?”
“See Hannah, that was sarcasm,” K adds.
“And even if this all wor
ks, and you somehow convince people it's safe to fly on a recycled rocket,” Bill says.
“After they've seen a dozen of 'em explode,” Bob adds.
“We don't have the volume of customers to make it worth while.”
“And the more rockets we launch, the more likely we kill passengers.”
“And that's game over.”
“You guys done with the back and forth? Are you gonna do 'Who's on first?'” K asks.
“Is that all you have to say?” Bob asks, throwing his hands up in the air as if to disregard Kingsley as just a smart-ass with nothing of value to say.
“Well, let's be honest, you guys aren't exactly being...well honest, is what I was going to say. I've had a little too much whiskey.”
“Let's go ahead and vote,” Bill says.
“Let's not,” K says. “This company, this vision for space is and always has been about reusability. If we just wanted to make the cheapest expendable rocket, we could have something cheaper. SpacEx's single goal is to develop a reusable rocket family and thus lower the cost of reaching orbit. Period. And we're doing that with an evolutionary design process. Evolution says that every step has to be advantageous, nature doesn't just produce an eagle's eye out of nowhere, but rather as a series of improvements, and each iteration has to work. That's why you end up with things like a nerve that runs down the giraffe's neck and then all the way back up. Nature can't do a clean-sheet. And while we could have done a clean-sheet, we could have spent a decade and billions developing a reusable rocket that produced no value, no useful launches until it was ready, we didn't do that.
The space shuttle was irreducibly complex. You couldn't launch without the SRBs, or launch the orbiter on top of a different rocket to test it. They spent a decade in which they never launched a thing to develop this. We're not doing it that way. We're making something that's complex, but is a series of improvements, and each iteration is something useful that we can sell. In effect, it's an evolving rocket.
All we had to do was get the ball rolling and from there, each iteration would be useful and would pay for the development of the next iteration until we have a fully reusable family of rockets. And you want to end the evolution now? You want to shut it down when we're a year away from the first production Eagle 9 2.0s. You think we won't have enough customers? Then why are there four start-ups trying to get in on the action? You think there's not going to be an increasing demand for satellites? You think there won't be a market for 10 million dollar tickets to a space station? Are you kidding?
The relatively low demand, the low volume of satellite launches and private passengers is due to the high price. As the price drops, the demand will, pardon the pun, skyrocket. And when that happens, every other rocket company will be scrambling to catch up or else go the way of the dinosaurs. If we don't do it, somebody will do it. My friend Jeff Bezos, Mr. Amazon, is trying to do the same thing. Someone will make this work and it will completely change the game. And we're this close to achieving it, and you want to pull the plug now. That's like when Kodak developed the first digital camera and then the brass buried it, I mean, what are you engineers thinking? We make film, why would we want to make film obsolete.”
“Thanks for the drunk history lesson,” Bob Koke says.
“I'm not a big fan of that show,” K replies.
“What show?” Bob asks.
“Drunk History.”
“There's a television show called Drunk History?”
“Yeah, but whenever I see it on, I just think, why am I not watching the regular History channel. Then I flip over and discover that two history channels are both showing reality shows, one about swamp people and one about truckers. So it just makes me depressed at the state of television.”
“Can we stay on topic,” Bill Koke interrupts.
“I know right?” K says, “I mean, The History Channel is showing made up ahistorical shit like bigfoot and ancient aliens. There should be a law that they have to stay on topic. The other day I watched a show on The Weather Channel about a Roman legion that was slaughtered in Germany while the actual history channel was doing a show about ghosts.”
“What the hell is he on about?” Bob asks.
“When he's drunk he gets really talkative,” Hannah adds. Brittany shakes her head, watching Kingsley lose his grip on things.
“And that's why Drunk History isn't very good, because drunk people just ramble about stupid shit. What they need to make is a show called High Science,” Kingsley says. “Trademark that ASAP,” Kingsley says to a lawyer nearby.
“I don't work for you,” the lawyer replies. Kingsley tosses a couple of hundreds at the lawyer non-chalantly.
“Now you do.”
“Okay, so, time to vote,” Bob says.
“What about Caroline?” Peter Wilke asks.
“I think we all know how she's going to vote,” Bill replies. “Start it,” Bill instructs a lawyer next to him. The lawyer has a stenographer next to him, keeping record.
“Motion for a vote of no-confidence, requiring a simple majority for removal of President Kingsley Pretorius,” the lawyer gets through the legalese. “When your name is called, say yea to vote in the affirmative-”
“Just get on with it,” Bill Koke interrupts.
“Robert Koke,” the lawyer announces, “how do you vote?”
“Yea,” Bob says while staring K down.
“Willia-” the lawyer begins to announce.
“Yea,” Bill interrupts.
“Charles Harding,” the lawyer says. After a pause, he looks up to the English billionaire. “Mr. Harding?”
“Yea,” Harding says.
“What'd they pay you for your vote?” K asks.
“It was brought to my attention that when I witnessed the landing of a spacecraft on the roof of the launch place, that you put my life in serious danger, not only of being crushed or blown up, but that even if the landing was perfect, that rocket used toxic fuels that I inhaled.”
“Oh you're fine,” K says dismissively.
“How much do you think my soul costs Kingsley?” Charles asks. With three votes in, the motion to fire Kingsley was at 49.9% in favor, 0% against. Bob and Bill Koke pull out cigars and light them up together. Kingsley looks to Peter Wilke and over to an uninterested Sergei Kuznetzov on the video screen. Had the Koke's gotten to them?
“Looks like your old lady didn't even show up to back you up, ay Kingsley?” Bob says between puffs on his cigar.
“Kingsley Pretorius.”
“Ye- I mean Nay,” K nearly votes against himself. “Phew, that was a close one,” K says to Hannah at his side. She's not impressed. “Oh come on, that was funny.”
“Shh, remember what I said about you talking too much and too loud when you're drunk,” Hannah whispers.
“Peter Wilke.”
“Nay,” Mr. Wilke says. The stenographer takes down the result as the lawyer oversees. The Kokes are practically giggling, giddy with anticipation.
“Mr. Sergei Kuznetzov. Sergei? Mr. Kuznetzov, how do you vote?” Sergei isn't paying attention to the Skype feed on his laptop.
“God dammit,” Bob says. He grabs a microphone from the center of the table and shouts into it, “Sergei!”
“Sergei votes against,” Sergei says non-chalantly.
“Against Kingsley right? You vote to fire him,” Bob says into the microphone.
“Sergei votes against firing K,” Sergei reiterates. “And stop shouting.”
Bob freezes for a moment, then explodes, slamming the microphone on the table, shouting obscenities and flinging his lit cigar across the room. “We had a deal!” Bill Koke jumps out of his chair, resulting in his pet pig flying onto the conference table with a squeal.
“You had a deal?” K asks like a smart-ass. “Pray tell, what kind of deal.”
Both brothers are livid and come close to throwing their chairs at Kingsley as he sits back with his feet on the
table and sips his whiskey. Kuznetzov simply turns the page on his novel.
“What about the lady Caroline?” The lawyer asks.
“She's with me,” Kingsley says.
“I'm afraid it's not so simple,” the lawyer replies, looking over his glasses at K. “Abstaining parties are not counted in the majority calculation. Unless the lady votes nay, I'm afraid the motion will pass.”
“She's not here! She abstains.”
“We win!”
“You're fired!”
“Hey Caroline!” K shouts toward the door. The door opens and in walks Caroline along with two men. The Koke's roller coaster of emotion de-rails at the top of a loop and sends them plummeting toward the ground. “Honey, would you be a dear and say 'nay,'” K asks. “Wait, is it yea or nay?” he asks Hannah.
“Nay,” Caroline says.
“Who are these assholes?” Bob Koke demands.
“Oh, I suppose you have never been formally introduced,” K says with a big smart-ass smile. “The older, balder one is Walter White, and the young, punky one who says 'bitch' frequently is Jessie Pinkman.”
“He's kidding,” Caroline says.
“Actually the name's Tom Mackey,” the old PI says, “go by Mack.”
“Sam,” the young PI says, “But that was pretty funny.”
“I don't get it,” Tom replies.
“Like we're the guys from Breaking Bad,” Sam says.
“I don't listen to Michael Jackson,” Mack replies.
“Okay, so who are these assholes?” Bob asks again.
“Pinkerman. Pinkman the Pinkerton. Pinkey and the Brain,” K rambles while reaching for his glass. Hannah pushes it out of his reach.
“Private investigators,” Mack says.
“You were never formally introduced, but Mr. Koke, other Mr. Koke, I'd like you to meet the private investigators you hired to stalk me,” Kingsley says. “Mack and Sam, meet uh,” K doesn't know which Koke is which and so he points in their general direction, waving his hand and says, “meet Billy-Bob. Would you Koke-heads mind explaining to the board why it is you hired PIs to stalk me?”
“I didn't hire any private investigator,” Bill says sternly.
“I've never seen these men in my life,” Bob adds.
