NationStates Jolt Archive

Port-Allanea, Allanean Pharmaceuticals headquarters

Rudolf Hernandez, Allanean Pharmaceuticals Chief Personnel manager threw down the newspaper. It was a Lun Noir daily. The headline screamed “Insane Drug Genius Captured on Campus!!!”. Below it, a picture of a young long-haired man, several marijuana plants, and the words: ”Today, our brave and valiant police officers detained a gifted – yet depraved – youth, whose lust for money has turned his talent of a biologist towards crime. His teachers from the university where he was studying for a BA in Biology refer to him as “talented, yet undisciplined”. The police chief…”The article proceeded in the same vein, yet Rudolf wasn’t interested. He was already grabbing for his phone.

“Jeremy? Listen, get on the phone with the Lun Noir police. I think we have a deal here we just can’t pass up.”

Within half an hour, his secretary was on the phone with Lun Noir clerks securing passage papers. In his office, an emergency strategy session was held.

“Look, we need this boy. Look at those plants!”

“What about them?”

“This is a quality breed. Look at those buds. Look at those leaves. This is something I’d be proud of if it came out of a quality lab here.”

The other executive shrugged:

“Look, Rudolf. This is a black-and-white picture. There’s a limit to what you can learn from it.”

“It’s okay. I’ll take Ronald, the degustator from High Times Allanea. Look, this guy is good – even if he’s half as good as he seems – and it seems he grew what, nearly a ton of the stuff in his Mom’s basement? Even it’s just merely good weed – instead of what it looks like, which is top-class weed – I say we go for him. If nothing else, he’d be better off here than in prison in Lun Noir.”

“OK, you seem to make sense with this. So what do you want from me?”

“I need a jet allocation, and a lawyer.”

“Going for it.”

Two hours later, PAX

The sleek corporate jet was pure white, with the logo of AP – a green marijuana leaf in a circle – painted proudly on the tail.

Towards the plane went three people:

Rudolf Hernandez – one of the top people in Allanean Pharmaceuticals. The company was 60% family-ownded, and many people at the top were called Hernandez - and they were proud of it. He, and the lawyer, were dressed in virginous white suits you’d always know an Allanean Pharmacetuicals big shot – they copied the style from the Colombian barons of old.

The lawyer was Stephen Greenberry, on permanent retainer with Allanean Pharmaceuticals. One of many good lawyers the corporations had on hand, he was loyal to it heart and sould – and wore his white suit with pride.

The third man was Ronald Franks. A black shirt, sunglasses, and long greying hair gave the man the ‘aging hippy look.” Only the large military handgun he wore – as any Allanean – distinguished him from a full-on hippy. In reality, he was a reviewer and travelling reporter for High-Times Allanea. This was going to be a scoop. And Ronald was not going to miss it.

It had been a busy day for the police of Lun Noir.

Bradley "Bud" Wall had finally been captured. He had become infamous, the wide-scale grower and distributor of some high grade marijuana. The article that hit the papers warned against the evils of such a drug, and showed several medical diagrams that detailed how it would deteriorate one's health and mental abilities. An attached report explained that everyone who became a user of drugs ended up living and dying in a cardboard box on the street, or would turn to a life of crime.

These things were all wildly overstated.

***********************

Namuscan, Lun Noir.
Interrogation room of the station.

The head of the station, an officer by the name of Jerlain Temple, was sitting in a dimly lit room at one side of a long metal table. On the other end sat Bradley, who was slouched down in his chair, arms folded, staring coldly back. He had a black eye from a previous interrogation.

They had been there for about two hours like that, and finally Jerlain spoke, "Look, kid. You're scum, but you could be lucrative scum. I don't want you here any more than you want to be here, so just tell me about the drugs, and we can get you moved on."

Bud replied, "It's all in my statement. I don't know what you're talking about. I was coming home from class, and was arrested."

"There was just short of a metric ton of weed growing down there. It stank to high heavens. How could you not know anything about it?"

"I don't know a thing."

Jerlain fell silent again. There was a fortune to be made here; Bradley had a college degree. That was rare among criminals, and some corporation was bound to buy him up. But first he had to admit guilt.

The session was interrupted. "Temple? You have an international call." He frowned, stood, and walked out of the room, leaving Bud to himself.

He got on the phone. It was Allanean Pharmaceuticals. This was an odd turn of events. "And you want to meet? About the drughead?" His mind was already turning the possibilities over and over. The kid didn't seem likely to crack anytime soon. But selling international, that would be a way to bypass that restriction..
"Yeah, sure, see you soon. You'll have a limo waiting at the airport for you."


**********

A few hours later, Namuscan Air Transit Authority

The three men were passed through security very rapidly and ushered to a long black stretch with dark tinted windows. Inside, orchestral music was playing, and several teas, coffees, sodas, other juices, and water was available. It was odd though, that it lacked alchohol. Greenberry had brushed up on Noiran law on the way over, though, and explained that alchohol was an outlawed drink.

“Look here,” said Franks, “this is unbelievable. Indoors growing of cannabis is hard. It is definitely not the kind of thing that lends itself easily to large scale production. There’s dozens of minutia to tend to.”

“And? – Hernandez lifted an eyebrow – “You think it’s not the genuine article?”

“Wait. Listen to me. It’s the kind of process you need to make good weed – genuinely good weed – but the plant is going to be smaller and it is going to take much more work. You’ll have UV lamps instead of the sun, artificial watering instead of the rain, and chemical fertilizer instead of Nature’s ground. You’ll need to monitor every detail – but it usually pays off because if you do it right, you end up growing killer weed. But making lots of it this way is hard. You understand?’

“Yes, so far. It is not really my field, I am simply personnel officer – but I can sense a good deal when I see it.”

“Here’s my point – if what we see here is true, this is not a good deal.” – Franks paused dramatically for a moment – “This is an extremely good deal. This kid grew what, nearly a metric ton of ‘skunk’ in his basement, no quality equipment, no assistants, and all the while he was studying in college and dodging the local drug warriors. This boy is not just a cool grower. This boy is a freaking genius. I can also bet bodyparts that Daddy Hernandez knows it – unlike you, he’s not ‘just a personnel officer’, he knows his leaves – and if you come back without The Infamous Grower, Daddy Hernandez is going to tear you a new orifice or three.”

“Yeah,” replied Hernandez, “he hates it when people miss a good deal. On the other hand, if I succeed…”

“If you succeed,” shrugged the journalist, “you’re golden. I am golden regardless, because my readers are going to love this.” Then he opened his PocketPC and began typing.

The limousine pulled up to the station. It was Jerlain Temple himself who opened the door for the three Allaneans. "Good afternoon, gentlemen. I had some food prepared on your trip over, I hope you like lobster."

The uniform worn by officers was one of red and black, with levels of gold trim to represent rank. The amount of trim that Jerlain wore marked him as the one who ran this station. He led the men into the station and to a side room, a conference room, where a number of appetizers had been laid out, and lobster as apparently the main dish.

He continued as he shut and locked the door, "I hope you all had a good flight." He was used to companies wanting to be treated to pleasantries. "Feel free to make yourselves at home. Now, what can I do for you?"

The Allaneans paused briefly as they examined the Noir policemen. Hernandez was the first to speak: “Good day, Sir. We came because of the, well, grower.”

He showed them the newspaper article.

“I am an employee of Allanean Pharmaceuticals. You might have heard of the company. This here is Mr. Franks, reviewer and columnist for High Times Allanea..”

He continues. “You see, while in your nation this… grower is a perceived liability, in the United States he is considered valuable manpower. Very valuable, if this, errm, press report is even half-true. The company is willing to pay you – and him – a generous amount if you agree that he be released from custody and into Allanea – and we’ll give him a job and a citizenship.”

He paused before he made his request.

“However, we would like to be given access – if you still have them – to samples of the harvest, so to speak. Mr. Franks here has been brought on as an outside expert to establish the level of the prospective employee’s skill. As an expert reviewer of cannabis products he will be able to allow us…” again, Hernandez paused for a second, searching for a wording that would not offend the Noiri ‘drug warriors’ “to assess properly how much Mr. Grower is worth to the company – we assure you Mr. Franks doesn’t work for Allanean Pharmaceuticals – thus, his opinion is as unbiased as an opinion of a reporter can ever be.”

Somehow, Franks managed to inject himself into the conversation, catching the Noiri police officer in the scope of an aggressive looking digital camera “Good day, officer. I am a reporter for Hight Times Allanea, and, as Mr. Hernandez specified, I would like to take a look at the suspect’s lab and harvest so I can evaluate his proffessional talents for the mutual benefit of both Mr. Hernandez’s company and your own.”

OOC:”The United States” means the United States of Allanea, of course.

OOC: This is not related. But, have you checked the BoF Cup thread? You're second in the group... And I just beat your team 3-2...

The officer listened carefully, not to the three men's words, so much as their tone. They seemed both cautious and anxious, confirming his suspicions. There was a healthy profit to be made here.

Allanea was a huge country, and here, a large corporation from there was approaching him, Jerlain, about the purchase of a punk kid. It warranted enough to bring a reporter, no less. The officer, himself, was anxious to make the deal as well. However, he knew that he had to keep up a skeptical, defensive, and almost uninterested outward appearance.

And so he kept up a poker face.

"Well, we can by all means stop by there. We have not actually taken any samples of the drug, and have tried to maintain the crime site in prinstine condition. If you'd like to go now, feel free to grab something to eat on the way." He continued, "You realize that normally these dealings do not happen internationally, and I'm not sure if you would be able to beat the offers that are already on the table for this kid, 'Bud'. He's in high demand." Sure, he was lying. But he was good at it. It was part of his day to day job.

He stood up and unlocked the conference room door. "I suppose you all will have a better idea of how much he's worth to you after seeing that basement, though."

He led the men out of the station once more. He pushed a button on his keyring which caused a jeep to hum to life. It could fit four men, though it was a bit on the small size, and it had decent trunk space. It also had a rifle rack with some manner of assault rifle and a pistol resting in a holster near the steering wheel.

They started driving.

Hernandez smiled: “In actual fact, we have eaten rather well during the flight. There are advantages to travelling in a dedicated corporate jet, and good food is one of them.

Inwardly, he was more than a little bit worried. Has a competitor been trying to get his hands on this supposed genius? Or perhaps some local company that didn’t know what it was doing and was simply looking for a clerk? Or was the foreigner simply bluffing? He had no way to know – and no way to influence the situation. Oh well. He could only suffer quietly.

They followed Jerlain into the Jeep. “Nice car”, Franks commented, just as he strapped himself in and began typing frantically on his laptop. One must give it to the Noiri drug warriors, they are polite. When we spoke to them at the the police station, they offered us go and eat something before we set to business…

Jerlain didn’t know it yet, but he was scoring some points with Allanean readers.

Then, Franks reached for his camera once again. “Dear Sir,” he asked Jerlain, “Would it be against the local custom to take pictures? I feel a few street shots of Noir would be of interest to my readers – while, of course, not as interesting as the destination as hand, I usually take a lot of pictures for my editor to choose from. Or do you mind greatly?”