Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 93: Business as Usual

Okay, end of the month is approaching. Bills are coming due. We’ve gotten sixteen cars, twelve refrigerators, a hundred broken TVs, various plastic children’s toys, a metric ton of expired batteries, and a bunch of other random garbage.

So the real-world example is this: One car can be scrapped down and re-sold as about six hundred kilos of high performing, cheap parts, netting me about eight hundred dollars per kilo.

$480,000 per car.

In theory.

Looking at his sales numbers, Perry was only selling his cheap parts at a rate of approximately $50,000 per day. Chopping up more cars and putting them on the market wouldn’t increase the rate of sale.

At fifty thousand per day, Perry was making 1,500,000 in a standard thirty-day month.

1,500,000

-915,000 (wages)

-15726.53 (acquisitions)

-11,400 (supplies, maintainance, bills,)

-40,000 (Lawyer’s retainer)

= 517,873.47 profit

-est. 40% tax, & 10% protection fees.

= 258,936.74/month

Perry liked to estimate taxes high. It made it a pleasant surprise when they turned out to be lower.

Here’s the problem, though.

Perry was rapidly flooding the ‘cheap parts’ market, and had been warned that the Tinker market would begin to charge him storage fees if he continued to pump massive amounts of bulk goods that would sit for long periods of time before they sold.

There was also evidence that his sales might dwindle as time went by, rather than go up.

Popularity and word-of-mouth notwithstanding, Perry’s parts simply didn’t break, meaning Perry had very few repeat customers. Since they don’t break, maybe I can go the Craftsman route and offer to replace any part that breaks for free? Hmm…nah.

Perry’s parts were used in high performance machines with a lot of wear and tear. Eventually his gears and springs and wires and fuses would begin reaching their end-of life.

It might take a few years longer than otherwise, but it would happen. That would be a wave of new customers that could revitalize his sales when Perry was in his twenties.

In the meantime, he needed other commodities with either higher turnaround or a consumeable nature.

Consumables market, Perry wrote a note and underlined it.

Batteries?Perry could create batteries that produced a substantially higher amount of electricity over the same amount of time, allowing him to sell new ones to the same customers after a few months.

Actual scrap?

Perry tapped his pencil on the paper, revisiting the idea from before.

A normal scrapper doesn’t make enough profit to pay them six thousand dollars a month. Perry was basically subsidizing his workforce.

Perry skimmed maybe 5% of the best raw materials off the top and had them shipped to his lair.

About 15% of it went to the upper floors for Perry to turn into the highly profitable Tinker parts.

Leaving 80%, or the vast bulk of the scrap to be torn down and resold to private and public enterprises.

That figure was not included in Perry’s estimate yet, but Perry didn’t expect it to be more than a half-million. Were it not for Perry’s Tinker abilities, they would be deep in the red.

Only problem is, we’re not getting quite enough scrap to keep everyone busy.

Perry had personally seen an entire crew playing soccer in one of the empty office floors in the middle of the building.

I could improve and expand our processing and production areas…put them to work.

Rather than sell raw scrap to other businesses and allow them to convert the scrap into steel products…why not do it all in house?

Mostly because the burden of sorting and processing all of it in house would be far too high, as well as the issue with an inconsistent supply chain. Some stuff would pile up and not get used, while other stuff would constantly be out of stock.

If they decided to make their own steel products, they would need to be getting thousands of cars per month, rather than just a dozen or two, along with everything else.

Thousands of cars would have thousands of windshields, thousands of plastic dashboards, thousands of leather seats, thousands of seat cushions, rubber tubes, tires, etc.

Basically the input was so random and varied that they would HAVE to sell most of the scrap to other companies just to get it off their hands, because operating an inconsistent steel mill with bits and bobs that might be enough was a recipe for failure.

Interestingly, if Perry went that route, he might wind up buying scrap from other scrapping businesses to make sure he always had enough raw materials to have consistent output.

They would probably charge him an arm and a leg, because it was no secret that Paradox was running Orson’s Scrapyard and using his powers to undercut the market.

Was Perry interested in losing more money, just to keep his workers busy?

I’m starting to think hiring a hundred and fifty people may have been a bit of a mistake.

The building could run as it was on half that. Comfortably.

Perry frowned as two ideas percolated in his mind.

Idea number 1: go get the scrap. Rather than waiting for scrap to come to him, Perry could build a dozen or so garbage trucks to ‘help’ people clean up after super battles. Outfit those trucks with four guys apiece, and suddenly the workforce is more engaged, and Perry’s inflow improves drastically. Perry could even do some shady deals with various villains to give him first access to the battlefield.

Plus, garbage trucks were depreciating assets, and if he made a dozen of them, that would be a couple million he could write off on his taxes over the next five years or so.

Cons: may require some kind of licensing or permit. May be seen as profiteering. May ACTUALLY be profiteering. May require significant PR offset. Ask lawyer.

Idea number 2: Approach an Industrial Tinker and buy some high tech recycling machines. Something that could easily handle raw ingredients in amounts as big or small as necessary, spitting out refined bricks of pure elements.

Honestly that might be a pretty bad idea…

A machine like that would make life easier and increase their profit margin slightly, as pure ingredients sold fairly well. BUT, a plug-and play machine like that would actually give his workforce MORE time on their hands.

Also, it would cost an arm and a leg. Perry’s modest nest-egg of eleven million would be wiped out buying just one. He might even go into debt.

It just wasn’t worth the price with the low volume Perry was working with. Perry discarded the idea.

So I need to increase my volume, vary my output, with more focus on consumables, and work on the demand side of supply and demand. Which means…advertising?

Perry leaned over and grabbed his phone dialing up Locust.

“’Sup?” The wizened supervillain asked.

“How do…advertising?” Perry asked.

“Well, you don’t do it yourself. You can hire someone fresh out of college and hope that your ability to discern talent is proven correct, or try and scalp an older mercenary away from another company with a higher pay rate.”

“Your PR guy must be incredible, given how famous you are.” Perry said.

“Nice try, kid, I’m not telling you their name.” Locust said, chuckling.

“Worth a shot,” Perry said, his mind chewing on the problem. He didn’t know what he was doing. Hiring a young professional right out of college might be the better choice for someone who had been around for a while and was looking to score a talented youth for the next few decades.

But if Perry was a newbie, and his advertiser was a newbie, things could take a nosedive from combined incompetence and groupthink.

Better to scalp someone who could get the advertising going right away, and with a modicum of proficiency.

“Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.”

“How much am I getting this month?” Locust asked before Perry had the chance to hang up.

“Fifty one point seven thousand,” Perry said.

“Those are rookie numbers, Paradox. You gotta pump up those numbers.”

“Why you think I’m asking about advertising?” Perry asked before hanging up and dialing his lawyer.

“Hey, quick question. What’s the legality of cleaning up rubble after super-fights and then recycling it for profit?” Perry said without preamble.

“If someone can prove intent to cause destruction in order to profit from the cleanup, then you can be sued for a substantial amount of money. Other than that, you just need some permitting and have to meet certain equipment and training standards.” John White said after a moment, seemingly reading through dense legalese for Perry.

“Is there anyone else in the game who I’d be competing with?” Perry asked.

“Honestly, causing destruction is far more popular than cleaning it up. Most clean-up crews are government employees, and they’re slow as hell.”

“…Excellent…” Perry said ominously, stifling an evil laugh. “Can you get us started on that as soon as possible?”

“Sure, I’ll sic my aide on it and have the permitting documents, training and equipment requirements to you by tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Perry said.

“Hey, do you want this gold pin, card and fruit basket we usually send to customers who deposit more than ten million? I figured you might not, considering how quickly you did it. less of a lifetime achievement than it says on the card.”

“You would be correct,” Perry said, saying his goodbyes before hanging up and moving on to his next business-y type job.

“Hey you guys!” Perry said, ducking his head into one of the empty office floors where some fifteen guys were sitting on their asses watching sitcoms.

“Work-cation is over. You are now officially the Oberon Scrapyard Research Department. The pay rate is the same.”

They tensed up.

“I want you guys to watch T.V.”

As one, around fifteen people gave him a flummoxed stare. Cows in headlights. Perry continued.

“And then write down your favorite advertisements, and any ads you can remember. Include magazine ads and billboards and slogans and stuff like that. Once you’ve got a good list of your favorite propaganda, I need you to make some phone calls and find out who was responsible for designing them.”

“Then list the names top to bottom and put their ads beside them, list where they work and how much they’re getting paid, if you can figure out their compensation.”

“There’s gotta be a website with advertiser’s portfolios on them,” one of the younger mutants said with a shrug.

“If there is, find THAT. otherwise, do it the hard way.” Perry said, ducking back out.

“Can we use the computers in the upper office?” the young mutant called after him, prompting Perry to duck his head back in the room.

“Yes, four of you. But I swear to God, if I find you guys playing League again, everyone is going to know exactly who lost them computer privileges.” Perry shook his fist at them before power-walking back out.

His mind fully bent on the rubble-cleanup tangent, Perry had a sudden realization, coming to a halt.

If I begin cleaning up battles, my inflow will increase dramatically, but the bulk of it will be concrete, steel, and glass, in that order.

Is concrete recyclable? Perry wondered, pulling out his phone and entering a quick search.

No? Why not?Oh, because it’s mostly aggregate, and the chemical reaction of cement hydration is impossible to reverse cheaply with modern science.

The vast majority of bulk in concrete was sand and stone, with cement filling in the spaces between them and binding them together.

Most concrete recycling was re-using it as aggregate for another project.

That didn’t sit well with Perry. He wanted to re-sell the cement and aggregate separately for a profit. Maybe even use them for his own building projects.

Perry paused for a moment to write down a note.

Reverse cement hydration. Harden aggregate to filter?

There were two main problems:

1: Cement hydration was a bitch to reverse. Perry was getting conflicting information on whether it was possible by re-burning it, similar to the process of creating cement in the first place.

2: even if it was possible to re-burn it, it was thoroughly mixed with aggregate, which would create a different product when burned at clinker temperatures.

All that silicate would most likely glassify and make a machine-ruining sludge rather than a fine cement powder.

So perry had to figure out how to do two things at industrial scale. He had to figure out how to perfectly separate cement and aggregate from each other, and figure out cement de-hydration.

Good times.

The first one wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Perry had been looking for a way to take advantage of his new Blueprint ability.

Perry made most of the gears, springs and batteries himself while he was in-office, but he didn’t want to be standing next to the machine grinding and seperating concrete rubble as it worked sixteen hours a day separating valuable cement from cheap aggregate.

How was a machine going to do that with a Blueprint? All Perry had to do was figure out a way to make his Spendthrift perk apply to either the cement, or the aggregate, making the physical properties of the two materials so drastically different from each other that the two could be separated using simple mechanical force.

Like sorting potatoes out of dirt with a machine.

In this example, the dirt would be the cement, and the aggregate would be the potatoes. Except in this case the dirt would be the more valuable part.

Crap, it’s my potato farmer blood acting up again.

Perry looked up the price per ton of cement. It was insanely cheap.

Is this even worth my time? Perry thought before reconsidering.

1 ton of cement isn’t actually much. Damaged megastructures probably shed tens of tons per fight.We’re looking to pick up… Perry did a little search. Heavy debris dumpster carries ten tons…

Perry scratched his head.

Like 2000 dollars worth of cement and aggregate per truck.

Perry would have to undercut the cost of recycling it to near-zero in order to make a profit. He could do that by using some purchased scrap to make the industrial grinders and kilns he would need.

If each of a dozen trucks could make…lets say two trips per day, that would be 48,000 per day in raw materials. About the same as I make from the Tinker marketplace.

Plus there was always a strong demand for concrete. How else would they patch up the holes of supers getting thrown through walls?

This might actually turn a profit. I’m gonna sell the city its own busted ass back to it.

Now just to figure out how to reverse an irreversible chemical process…for free.

No sweat.