Chapter Four: One Battery Buys a Neighborhood

He Chongshan was an elderly scrapyard owner who argued with Zhou over the price of copper. He had also once been chief systems engineer for a crewed spacecraft. They found him drinking tea atop a discarded rocket fairing. He scraped a corner from the sample and studied it beneath a microscope. “The atoms are too orderly,” He said. “Doesn't look made by people.” Zhou went still. The old engineer tossed it back. “But the production line can look human. Take the equipment behind the yard. I want two percent technical equity. And stop buying aerospace titanium from me at scrap-steel prices.” Within seventy-two hours, the dead textile mill lit up.