The Weapon - Apocalypse - part 7
By Diana the Valkyrie
Happy Birthday, Wendy


Duncan:

She got back three days late. The ship-haul was on schedule, the problem was
the swindle that our customer had just pulled on us. It took her longer than
she'd thought to make the crude oil, and then they wasted more time checking
it, because they obviously didn't really believe the lie that she'd found it
in a corner of the ship. But it really was identical to West Texas, and to
save face, they pretended to believe it, and she finally got out of Yokohama.
She wrapped the babies up very carefully in her cape, and pulling no more than
2Gs, she took the suborb route back home, door to door in 85 minutes.

"Duncan, baby!" "Wendy!"

The conversation didn't make much sense after that, for quite a long time.
People do say such silly things to each other in this situation. When she
finally let me come up for air, so she could check on the babies, I felt a lot
better. An hour with Wendy can erase a lot of frustration, and we'd gotten
most of the silly stuff said. It was time to tell Wendy about her new job.

"Would you like to guess what Pretty Flamingo will be doing instead of ship
haulage?" "Duncan, I don't care, as long as it doesn't involve me travelling
for weeks around the world. Phone sex lines?"

I'd forgotten about that one. "Um, no. If this works out, you'll never have
phone sex again, including with me. Oh, I nearly forgot."

I brought out the cake; one candle. "Happy Birthday!" "Oh. A cake?" I lit the
candle. "Now you blow it out." "So why did you light it?" "Uh, it's
traditional. You blow it out, and then you make a wish." She blew out the
candle. "OK, I made the wish, now what?" "What was the wish?" "I wished that
my dear brave Milly was still alive."

Um. I suppose I should have seen that coming. "We don't always get what we
wish for," I explained, and I put my arms round her for a big hug. And a kiss.
A big one. "I miss her too," I whispered, "but we have to take care of the
living, the dead have to fend for themselves. Tell you what, though, we'll
light a candle for her on her anniversary too, and we'll remember her, and
she'll live in our memories." "Yes" "And now we eat the cake!"

"So what's my new job," said Wendy as she cheerfully consumed her part of the
cake. I wonder what she does with it? "Wendy, you're going to be ... an oil
well." "Well well well," she said, drawing on her extensive reserves of
humour. I groaned, the only correct response to an excruciating pun, and
explained. "It's what you did in Yokohama, but more so. You make oil, we sell
it." "How is that different from me making gold or diamonds, which you already
ruled out?" "Because the main value of gold and diamonds is their scarcity,
and when you start churning out tons of the stuff, that no longer exists. But
the main value of oil is the energy value. We can sell quite a lot of it on
the world markets without having much of a depressing effect on the price. And
since one of your great strengths is your ability to convert mass into energy
at a very high efficiency, it's playing to our comparative advantage."

"So I keep filling up a tanker?"

"No. Here's the plan. I'd rather people didn't realise where the oil was
coming from, there's no need for us to tell people you're making it, and if
they think it's just coming out of the ground like everyone else gets it,
they'll treat us like everyone else. So, my idea is, we buy an oil field that
has been pumped dry. A big one. Then you fill it up, then we announce, hey,
lookee here, we found more in the field, aren't we the lucky ones. We produce
at a rate of 0.1 million barrels per day, that's a drop in the ocean compared
with world production, but if we can get, oh, $25 per barrel, that's $2.5
million per day, nearly a billion per year."

"Wow," replied Wendy, "a million babies!" "Well, no, not quite, we'll have to
pay taxes, and there will be some costs of production, but certainly half a
million." "And how much time will I have to spend in this oil well?" "Oil
field. As much as you like; as long as you're making the stuff faster than
we're producing it, it doesn't matter. I don't know how fast you can do this
hydrocarbon synthesis, but the great thing about having a big empty field, is
that you can add to it whenever you like, and we can pump from it 24 hours per
day." "So who does the pumping?" she asked, lewdly.

I counted on my fingers. "We'll need to start hiring. Pretty Flamingo is about
to expand in staff numbers. We'll need someone to oversee the production,
we'll need someone to organise the sales and marketing of the oil, and with
all that extra income, we'll be running a lot more baby rescue centers. It
won't be just Bombay and Delhi any more, we'll be all over the place. So I
also want to hire someone to be full time in charge of the baby rescues."

"Three people?"

"Uh, no. Wendy, if we have half a million babies, then that's got to be at
least ten, twenty thousand adults to care for them. The oil production will
need a bunch of experienced engineers and roustabouts, even the sales and
marketing will need at least a few people. Then we have to have accountants,
so we can work out how much tax we owe, and not pay more than we really have
to, and someone to do personnel stuff, and they'll all need computers, so
we'll need an IT department ... "

"Hey, Napoleon, want an empire?"

"Yes, I know. No, I never wanted to do this, but when you start a crusade,
things happen you didn't expect."

"Duncan, is all that really necessary?"

"No. We can do it all ourselves. How many babies do you think you can actually
care for yourself, personally?"

"Point taken. But you're talking about, well, a pretty big company."

"Pretty Big Flamingo. Look, we've got enough money in hand to be able to start
hiring and start the oil flowing; once it's estabished, it should be pretty
much self-running." I decided not to tell her about my idea for a second oil
field once the first was in action.

"And we could do a second oil field, financed from the first," she suggested.
Damn. Was that her idea, or did she get it from me? It's so hard to know what
she's capable of. So I asked her. "Oh, Duncan, please. It isn't exactly the
most ingenious suggestion in the world to suggest that if it works once, it'll
probably work a second time." Which wasn't actually what I'd asked, but let's
leave this for now. I know she can pick up electric currents via induction. I
know that brains have a lot of electrical activity. So can she ...

"So what do we do first, I start making oil?"

"Not yet, love. We don't have anywhere to put it." "We could charter a ship."
"Yes, but how do we explain the source of the oil?" "Our oilfield?" "We don't
have it yet." "They don't know that. And if I start on the synthesising
process now, I'll have it practiced by the time we get the field, and the
money from selling that oil will help to finance this mass-hiring and
equipment-buying you're about to splurge out on."

"True. OK, tomorrow I'll charter a tanker, off Amsterdam, you can go play with
it any time. And it's close enough so you can commute, you won't have to stay
away from home. And I'll start putting up job ads in the Telegraph."