Eve, Paul, Blaine and I were once again in a booth at a bar/restaurant. After the fun we had last Friday, we decided to get together again tonight. I was the last person to answer the question: How was your day? Eve’s had been spent in an all-day meeting and was, therefore, mind numbing; Paul’s was typical with no surprises; Blaine’s was busy but nothing of note happened.
“No one needed you to help them with their asteroid mining plans?” Eve asked him.
Without pausing, he answered, “Attorney client privilege.” I snickered. He leaned toward me. “What am I missing?”
“She found me reading an article about space law as it applies or may need to apply to asteroid mining.”
“Space law is interesting,” he said. I gave Eve a look that said See? Blaine asked, “You read that today?”
“No. Today I was on the phone for five hours going over a proposal line by line, making changes and adding information. We finished an hour before it had to be emailed to someone who has to sign off on it, and when I checked the file after attaching it to an email, all of those changes were gone.” Their reactions were variations of speechless and mortified, all tinged with black amusement.
“How—what happened?” Eve wanted to know.
“I think I attached a cached version, which was older. The actual file was still OK and still on the hard drive, but I had to close everything before it opened.”
“Damn.” Eve said it but all agreed with the sentiment.
“Did you get it out on time?” Blaine asked. I nodded.
I hadn’t gotten lunch and offered to buy appetizers for the table. Eve and Paul had dinner waiting at home, but Blaine was willing to split something with me. After Eve and Paul left, he asked if I wanted him to move to the other side of the table.
“I really don’t.” We held hands under the table until the appetizer arrived.
When we finished, he walked me to my car. I faced him and slid my hands inside his jacket. He was warm and smelled good.
“If this is a result of a bad day, I’m going to have to hope for more calamities” he said.
“Then you’ve found the right girl.”
The funny thing is that asteroid mining law is obliquely involved in the plot of one of my novels and it _never_ occurred to me that laws for it already existed. I just made everything up (but it's vague enough that it won't be a problem).
ReplyDeleteA funny lawyer who really likes you -- sounds like a great thing!
You’re ahead of me. I had no idea asteroid mining was a thing until I found this article and a few others. From what I gather, the only law specific to it concerns who owns what is mined.
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