I represent Loyola Tactical Solutions Group, Ltd., a new Outcast company looking to expand into markets dominated by old money. It's my understanding that your organization and ours have never been best friends, but we're in the business of shaking things up. I know you prefer exclusively patronizing local businesses, but it's definitely time to consider branching out from supporting your local co-op. Interested?

Perhaps I wasn't quite clear. We are a new (i.e., we don't have any cronies yet) company (i.e., we conduct deals). Being a business, we look to make deals that are mutually beneficial so that people seek out our services again and again. I wouldn't approach you if we had nothing to offer. Rather on the contrary, the Loyola Group has a lot to offer if you do.

However, you're right that our relationship has always been straightforward, and if we're to take this anywhere productive, we'll need to complicate things, so. I'd like to propose a trust-building exercise. Something very concrete to prove that we have things to offer each other that will be immediately useful in their own way, yet nothing that really commits us to anything long-term. A metaphorical first date at a well-lit, very metaphorical restaurant.

Should I continue?

It will be good, maybe good enough that you might even drop the tough-guy act for a bit. Machismo is really more of a thing Hispanic men excel at, anyway.

So, here's the deal; the Loyola Group wants to give you, give or take, two thousand pallets of cardamine. All uncut, in 80mg capsules, which is to say, enough to supply all of Cherry Creek on Planet Denver with one dose a day for a week. If that isn't enough for you, 50 pallets of Detroit-made, high-capacity, high-velocity, fully-automatic, military-grade rifles, complete with the shoulder thing that goes up might sweeten the deal. No electronic locks, no plasma batteries, no boludeces, just good old-fashioned lead. Finally, if you're really that keen on seeing some shots fired, you can name your least favorite group of people and we'll prove beyond a doubt that we mean business.

All we ask in return is that you pick somewhere on Ouray that's out of the way, put one of our server boxes there, turn it on, and don't touch it. No funny business; you don't read it no matter what. You can take whatever countermeasures you want to make sure we aren't spying on you with it otherwise. We'll even provide batteries so that you don't have to power the thing.

Before you get up in arms about me offering you drugs, please, don't waste your breath moralizing. Ideology doesn't change the fact that, at the end of the day, we both have a bottom line. We are both on the shadier side of the law. We both kill, extort, and sow misery among our enemies, and we both are in a constant race to do these things more profitably and efficiently. If you like the offer, you can say yes. If you don't like the offer, you can make a serious counteroffer, or you can say no, but one thing our Group isn't interested in is being preached to; I'm already a Catholic, anyway. While I don't expect you would be consuming the cardamine yourselves, I honestly couldn't care less what you do with it, but I hope you have the wisdom to see it as an asset in and of itself.

Make the smart decision.

I do apologize for the delay, but these things take time, especially under peculiar circumstances. Regardless, the shipments have arrived at Ames as promised. Deck 16-A, lockers twelve thru thirty-seven. The guns and server are in the first locker, and the cardamine is in the rest. The code to each locker is "pro opes", all lowercase, no numbers, one space. Proof of delivery has been attached. Let me know if anything is not to your liking.

L'chaim, and pro opes.

Snakes are adept at surviving under the most difficult of conditions, which might be why something like them seems to have somehow evolved on most terrestrial planets. Were it not you, it would be someone else. Anyway, this is a no-brainer. Give me a pickup point for whomever you never want to think about again, and a drop-off point for your favorite literary device, and we can all silently praise ourselves for being such effective capitalists. I have a good feeling about this situation.