Prehistory 101 [TWS]

Your move, buster.

All right... all right.

"Oh? Did he tell you the one about his flight delay?"

Ladies like Ardefine feed off of gossip, and the prospect of a nibble proves too tempting. You quickly spin off a half-remembered story about a nosy anti-oil customs officer and set it free into the world. Hopefully the... the... damn it, why can't you think today?

In any case, THE SHEIK is heading your way.

"Haha! I see you heard!" So your guess was halfway decent after all. The Sheik En Al Binbun seems delighted that someone's paid enough attention to the day-to-day travails of a multibillionaire oil magnate to spread stories about them. "The moron didn't want to let me through! Goddamn greenies. I had him fired, as you say!"

"Very, very good, Khazzie dear! Disrespect is such a terrible trait among the lower classes. Good on you on doing your part to weed it out."

You're beginning to feel very strange.

"Sammy here was just telling us about the Kazakh-Uzbek conflict and the Kyrgyzstani influence..."

"The fuck-ing Kyrgyzstanis!" The Sheik screams, cutting her off. You get the idea he's going to pay for that later. You do not interrupt the Lady Ardefine. "If they'd just fuck-ing stayed out of it, we wouldn't be in this mess!"

"Well, surely the oil sales..."

"Fuck the oil sales!" The Sheik is in hysterics at this point, but he somehow gathers together a calmer facade. "Sorry - sorry, Sam. Forgot you were a steel man. Not really in the energy sector."

"Don't worry about it." Strange feeling is getting stranger. It's like...no, you can't find the words. You don't think that... you know the words.

[Unheard to you, the EduChair begins to rev up some more.]

"The fuck-ing Kazakh-Uzbek thing - well, okay, have mercy on their souls, one-hundred-per-fuck-ing cent casualty rate, whatever, basically put - put - put, fuck, I don't know, something on the order of a million tons of fuel-grade uranium on the market. One and a half? Two million?"

It's starting to come to you. This is what the Organization calls a DIVERGENCE POINT. This is one of several you'll be tested on during this Nexus. Your actions here will almost certainly affect the world-line, which you'll be graded on after the gedankenexperiment ends.

How could you have forgotten all these facts? It's like you've been out for just under three years.

Quickly, you review your options:

Looks like the Sheik is pretty unbalanced right now. He's looking for a savior, or a solution, and he's ready to accept some pretty radical input right now. Not only that, he might just act on it. Price war on oil to keep it the favored energy source? Bidding contest on the ex-Kazakh deposits? Diversify into superfracking? The sky's the limit on this one.

Speaking of unbalanced... he's also standing at the top of these really steep marble stairs. One wrong step - or push - and he won't have to worry about uranium prices ever again. No one would have to know it was you.

Or maybe something else?

>_

Today makes tomorrow.

-- Prehistorical Organization Motto