In some parts of human culture, there is a sacred drink: coffee. Knowing that, it should come as no surprise to any non-human that the largest of all coffee vendors, Starbucks, is a massive multinational corporation. It is worth over a hundred billion dollars with incredibly strong brand loyalty.

Other than their well-paid advertising department, one of the ways Starbucks cultivates repeat customers is that their baristas scribble their customers' names onto their cups. When they complete your order, they don't call a number; they call your name, which is supposed to feel more personal. Whether it actually works or not, it's become so widely practiced that this is how people expect to get their coffees.

However, there is exactly one Starbucks location on Earth where baristas never ask customers for their names: it is known to some as Store Number 1, or the Stealthy Starbucks. To others, it's just the coffee shop in the lobby of the CIA building in Langley.

Cathy, who works in the Corporate Relations department, was standing in line to get coffee. Contemplating her order and the row of appetizing blueberry scones on display, someone came up behind her and whispered into her ear. "So, what have you done for your country today?"

She turned around and cracked a smile, "hey Mark, what you working on?"

"Mark" was not his real name. Not everyone in the CIA gets fake names. In fact, most don't; most people are like Cathy. They work in ordinary support jobs vital to the function of the less ordinary parts of the building. Like the place where Mark works upstairs.

"Just alien things. You got a minute?" Mark said as the smile dissipated from his face.

So, this was business, Cathy thought as she followed Mark into a windowless conference room.

"How are our contacts over at GC?" Mark started asking as he took off his jacket and opened his backpack, referring to Galactic Credit, the human currency and payment network that carries the entire galactic economy on its back.

"It's… robust," she said as she sat down, preparing for a long meeting, "they know what we do here. And if they didn't, we've got a few people inside who are very aware of what we do here."

"Good, good," Mark said then took a breath before continuing, "we're having a bit of a problem with one of our planets."

"Not this one, I hope?" Cathy joked.

"Zakabara Prime."

"Again?"

"Yeah, those bird faces are up to something, and we're pretty sure we know what it is," Mark continued, "but we'd like some sort of money trail. To connect the dots, so to speak."

"And you want us to call GC up and ask if they know something?"

"Well ideally we'd want them to shut them down, but we both know that's not going to happen. Today, we just want them to monitor accounts on and off Zakabara Prime to see exactly what they're importing."

"They can do that," Cathy replied automatically, then frowning, "but it may be hard to monitor the billions of customers they have there now, though. The birds are using credits now, so they can't be all bad, right?"

"It's complicated," Mark sighed, "they like our stuff, just not us, or the way we do business…"

Then he pushed a heavily redacted document with a list of account numbers over to her, "we have a list of suspected troublemakers. And we want to know where they get all their stuff from. Here are the accounts of the operations we want to take a closer look at…"

Gophor, Gakrek

"UNINTELLIGIBLE GAK," said Enrico as he came into the dining room where Rey and Grood were chatting as Grood made wet rice. At least that's what Rey's translator detected. It certainly sounded that way.

Grood laughed like he just made the funniest joke in the world and completed their good morning ritual in English.

"What the heck was that?" asked a bewildered Rey.

"It's how you say good morning in Gak," Enrico replied and seeing the 'why' question plainly written on her face, he quickly added, "one day, your translator's gonna stop working, and you won't know what to do if you don't speak it at all."

"Do you know how to say anything else in Gak, other than hello, good morning, and thank you?"

"That's not the point!"

As they reached the spaceport, Rey realized that some vendors she saw were different from the day before. When asked about this, Enrico replied, "yeah, some of them only come every other day or only when they have enough things to sell."

"But how do they tell who sets up their tent where?" Rey asked, curious, as this would obviously affect their idea of setting up a restaurant.

"I think it's some sort of first come, first served system," Enrico shrugged as he replied, "but some merchants group up in the same areas every time to make it easier for shoppers to find them. And the fresh food people are always in the tent to protect their goods from spoiling as quickly."

"So there's no pre-assigned spots and there's not some kind of permit system?" she asked.

"Permit system, haha. No, they pay some kind of fee to the spaceport when the spaceport feels like collecting, and they used to also pay fees to Grob and a couple of other security guards. But Grob said they can't do that anymore," he said, sort of knowing where she's going with this.

"Hmm, so hypothetically speaking, what would happen if we were to come real early one day and start building a permanent structure? Like right there in that empty space between the food tents and the luxury goods vendors," she asked, pointing at what she was talking about.

"Ah yeah I see what you're trying to do," Enrico said nodding, "at first, some of the bolder vendors might try to move in. But then, we'd just get Grob to tell them not to do that. And after a while, it'll just become established and nobody will need any reminders. For example, everyone knows that the shipping crates spot belongs to the raw material vendors."

Interestingly, this "find your own spot and don't be a jerk" system is also how it worked in many Earth markets for centuries. And in some less developed areas where there weren't enough merchants to justify setting up a centralized management system, it's still how they occasionally work.

"Ok, good, now hold this end," Rey said, pulling out a measuring tape and a sharpie.

"Wait what? Now?"

Rey measured out a 50ft by 100ft rectangle on the concrete-like material using a pouch of tools Enrico didn't even realize she was carrying in her backpack. As a few Gaks in the area started staring at what the weird humans were doing, she marked the corners with her marker, and then stepped back to admire her work.

"Did you learn to do this at the Hamburger College?"

"Very funny. Hopefully, it won't rain in between today and tomorrow. But mostly I just did that to make sure we could actually fit a building in here without pissing off all the other vendors," she said.

"We're gonna start building tomorrow?" Enrico asked, incredulous.

"Yeah, what are we waiting on, a zoning permit and a soil study?"

Rey had charged him with finding some local construction workers who could help them with building a structure. Up to this point, Enrico had felt mostly useless following Rey around, and here was where he could shine.

He was so buoyed at the high of being asked to do something meaningful that he didn't even realize he didn't know any construction workers, until he walked away to start on his task. Heck, he didn't even know if they had construction workers on Gakrek.

So, he went back into the food tent, where Ghili was peddling home-baked bread again, "wanna buy some bread, Enrico?"

"Not today," he shook his head, "Ghili, I have a weird question."

"Ok, what is it?" There aren't many things as effective as applying a label like "weird" to get kids invested in a question.

"Who built that mud house for your dad?" he asked in a low voice, almost secretively, like he was embarrassed he didn't already know the answer, which he was.

"My dad! He built it with mom and some relatives before she died," she replied matter-of-factly, if not with a hint of sadness for her father's loss.

"Ok," said Enrico. That doesn't help him at all. Then, he tried a different question, "how about the other people? Are there Gaks who only build houses?"

"Gaks who only build houses?" Ghili asked, as if that was indeed the weirdest question she's ever heard, grinning, "everyone builds their own house, silly! Why would someone else build your house for you?"

Ah, shoot. Maybe this was a harder task than it seemed at first.

The problem Enrico was encountering was also common for most of human history: lack of specialization and capital. Most farmers and peasants built their own houses, often with help from their neighbors. It's a process that takes months to complete, which is why farmers would do it during the winter season when there was no other farm work to be done.

Luckily for Enrico, that didn't mean absolutely no Gaks had advanced proficiencies in construction.

When he posed the question to Grob, he didn't know either, but an older security guard he was talking to piped in, "construction workers? Do you mean the people who fix the spaceport when there are problems?"

"Yes! I didn't know that was a thing, but where are all those Gaks?" Enrico asked the guard.

He shrugged, and took his best guess, "I think most of them work at the quarry now."

East Gophor Quarry

Enrico got Grob to abandon his post by paying that older guard two bucks to cover for him so Grob could drive him to the quarry.

It turned out that there actually were skilled craftsbeings in the quarry who built or fixed structures for a living. He found fifty or so dusty Gaks who were busy putting up some new scaffolding deep into the quarry.

Enrico walked up to the guy who appeared to be their informal leader, introduced himself, and asked, "do you guys know how to work with brick?"

The fore-Grak nodded and listed their skillsets. These guys can work with anything from concrete to wood. Brick was no problem. They even knew how to scaffold and work with new plumbing equipment and techniques coming out of Earth!

"Ok, we want to hire you to build a two-story brick building for us."

The fore-Grak looked at him with a slight side-eye and asked, "what's in it for us?"

Not knowing how to best negotiate, Enrico fell back to a buzzword he'd seen on a job application once, "the pay is competitive."

This got the fore-Gak even more suspicious, "how many potatoes does competitive buy?"

Trying another tack, Enrico asked, "um, well, what do you work for now?"

"The miners over there," the fore-Gak nodded towards another group of beings resting on the side with pickaxes and some other tools he couldn't identify, "they used to give us two days' food for one day's work. Now they pay us in credits: twelve credits a week!" A week was six days on Gak.

Looking at the proud expression of the Gak, a horrified Enrico with his first world sensitivities offered without hesitation, "we'll pay you double that money to work with us! And you get weekends off!"

"What are weekends?"

Meanwhile, Rey was on Traders Only, trying to find space truckers who would ship construction supplies from Earth to Gakrek. As it turned out, most of it didn't take that much space and wouldn't be too expensive.

She wasn't an architect, but she had a good idea of what sort of basic supplies she'd need from watching DIY videos on the Internet. She decided that she only needed the basics. If there were any other materials they needed, she could always ask the construction workers what they needed when they arrived.

And if they needed extra help on some advanced problems, they could always ask Earth. Plenty of humans knew how to work with brick too.

Gophor Spaceport

On the first day of construction, only six of the workers showed up. In general, Gaks trusted humans; most of their interactions with them involved literally the most altruistic humans from Earth, some of whom saved their lives. But being the skeptical beings they were, the idea that they were going to get paid four credits a day to build a brick house was just too good to be true.

Most of them thought they'd wait to see if it panned out for the bolder guys who showed up on day one. And since most of them thought that, only six of them actually showed up. They got paid in the morning, started cutting wood nearby to make the base frame, and went back to their buddies at night bragging about their new job.

By the end of week one, the new McDonald's restaurant was the largest construction project on Gakrek in living memory. Seventy skilled workers showed up to cut frames, make brick, and work Earth imported cement, including several workers that looked like underage Gaks who followed their parents to work. Rey insisted they got paid anyway. More were showing up every day.

It turned out brick was not a terrible choice as a construction material. In most developed countries on Earth, this would be a ridiculous statement because the cost of construction projects in fully industrialized nations are measured in time and labor. Of the popular construction materials, brick took the most of both. Here, labor was incredibly cheap, and they could source most of the building materials locally rather than having to import everything from Earth.

Surprisingly, despite most of them not having any experience building "large buildings'' like these, the Gaks managed to self organize. The fore-Gak delegated efficiently so that they wouldn't get into each other's way. Rey saw "construction company owner" potential in that guy.

Six months later, after solving several challenges including installing Earth imported windows, solar panels on the roof, and getting the Gaks to understand why the ceilings had to be that high, it was all coming together.

Despite having to import most of the high-end materials from Earth, and occasionally having to consult the Internet and in a few cases construction workers on Earth, the entire building and its supporting infrastructure ended up costing quite a bit less than a typical construction in a developing country on Earth.

If any of the managers of the spaceport had seen the two-story brick construction going up, they didn't seem to mind.

Chicago, Earth

Isabella was a real estate manager for McDonald's, eating lunch in her office when one of her sales representatives ran up to her office, winded, and rasped out, "there's an alien on the phone trying to rent us property on Gakrek!"

Thinking this might be a prank, she picked up the phone anyway. She realized that she could indeed remotely hear the telltale alien sounds of Gak before it was translated into English, "hello? Is anyone there?"

Isabella pinched herself to make sure she was sane, and took a deep breath. She decided to treat this like she would treat any other call, "hello, I'm Isabella at Franchise Realty Corporation, how may I help you today?"

"Hello, Isabella. We have a piece of prime property for rent." Grob said, slowly reading out the lines that Rey had put in front of him. He married a teacher, so he knew how to read, but that didn't mean he was good at it. "Gophor spaceport on Gakrek. Up to 500 flights a day. Open to the public. Lots of customers."

Most of these flights were just beginning to have crews, but Rey didn't feel the need to point out the difference between bulk passenger flights on Earth and cargo flights with small crews on Gakrek.

"I… see," Isabella said, taking the information in on her laptop, "how big is it?"

"It is… 5,000 square feet…" Grob struggled a bit to read the scribbles, and then continued, "on the first floor. It is a two-story building. So, that is a total of 10,000 square feet of space. The ceiling height is very open. More than twelve feet tall. We can rent it out for 100,000 credits a month."

That's a pretty chunk of change, but a downright steal if the specifications were correct, only $10 per square foot on the equivalent of prime airport property. Even airports on Earth regularly had ten to twenty times the square footage cost for their retail space!

"How much space is there for parking?" Isabella asked for the sake of completion. It was in her script. She was already planning a business trip in her head and thinking about all the possibilities this could bring.

Grob looked around the vast spaceport concrete and replied, chuckling, "oh, there's plenty of parking, don't worry about that."

A week later, Isabella was on a passenger flight to Gakrek after informing the higher ups that this prime piece of opportunity had come up on an alien planet. They were supportive, given the incredible price, and gave her the green light for the deal if it looked good. After all, they've been trying to expand offworld for a while, and Isabella was looking at a sizable bonus in her paycheck if this went through.

Grob showed her around. As rehearsed with Rey and Enrico, he showed Isabella the wide open spaces, the solar panels on the roof, the electrical outlets they had installed, and he alleviated her concerns about waste management and sewage. Grob also made sure to point out to her the steady stream of wealthy space traders who were coming by the vendors next door.

Conducting her usual inspection, Isabella asked Grob, "so this building is up to code?"

"Code?"

"Yeah, this building is safe and legal to operate a business out of?"

"Yes, of course. This is 100% legal and safe," Grob flashed her a charming grin.

It was hard to take the teddy bear wearing a cheap sports jersey too seriously, but Isabella saw nothing fundamentally wrong with the building… even if it was oddly the only standing building she'd seen on the entire planet worth calling it that. She remembered that he did mention something about it being their first building on the phone.

Besides, if… whoever was in charge of this area didn't mind the construction standards, who was she to impose her cultural norms on them, right?

She turned on the faucet and clean cold water came out. She plugged her phone's USB charger into the wall, and it started charging. She checked the door and window hinges: they opened and closed without so much as a creak.

Other than the weird color of the sky in the window and the dozens of curious aliens who were checking out the new human in town, this could just have easily been an Earth building. It really just needed interior decoration, and Isabella was starting to picture this as a franchise restaurant in her mind.

Some people had mentioned that operating a business on Gakrek might be kind of difficult without a rule of law, but this creature had a rifle on his back, so he must have some kind of authority over the area. A local warlord maybe? Oh well, that didn't matter, as long as he made them money.

"Alright, everything checks out so far. We might need to think about this a little, though. This would be our first expansion onto Gakrek, so I may have to check a few things with my manager. I'm sure you understand."

"Ok, of course," Grob replied as he had been taught to respond to this specific negotiating line, "but you might want to hurry. This is a very reasonable price, and we're giving you a big discount because we are just starting out. We called many other Earth chains and retail stores, and they are all interested as well. You aren't the only tour we have scheduled today."

Now Isabella piped up, "which other companies are interested?"

Grob shook his head and recited the line, "sorry, I can't tell you. That's privileged information."

Well, that was a professional answer. Disappointed but not surprised, Isabella quickly made a call to her manager on the side, who called his manager, who got confirmation for the approval that had already been given. After all, it was only $100,000 a month for such a high-profile expansion, and if things didn't pan out, they could always sublease it to another tenant. Their standard contract said so.

"Ok, Grob," Isabella said as she pulled out the pre-printed contract, "we're prepared to make a commitment here and rent this space. Just to be clear, it is 100,000 credits a month for a full 5-year lease, at which point we can renegotiate the lease." Grob nodded eagerly.

"Here's the contract. You can sign here when you're ready. And your initials here, here, and here…" she started circling all the places he needed to sign on the document with a pen.

"Good. Thank you," Grob said, "I will have my people take a look at this. Please give me just one moment. I will be right back!"

Grob walked fifty steps away into the tent right next door.

"She said OK and handed me these," Grob said, passing the contract over to Rey.

"Yes! Good work, Grob!" Rey was ecstatic as she read the lease. Fairly standard stuff with the details she wanted in there, and nothing that Isabella had put in there to trick or squeeze them or anything.

Not that that'll do McDonald's any good if they tried it, without there being an actual legal path to recourse if Grob just decided to screw them. As a company, they're known for doing handshake deals and honorable business anyway, so this wasn't a big concern for Rey.

"Ok, this looks perfect. Just make sure she signs and gives you one of these copies."

A couple of hours later, Isabella was in orbit over Gakrek, celebrating her first successful offworld deal by herself, when she got a call on her phone.

She frowned, thinking: who would call me at three in the morning in Chicago. Then, she looked at the Caller ID: Rey from Hamburger University??

"Hey Rey, you're up late. What's going on?"

"Oh, not much, just checking to see how you're doing."

"Not bad. You?" she replied automatically, thinking, this is weird, Rey hasn't talked to her since she left the company a few months ago. I wonder if she's gotten herself into trouble or something…

"Oh great. I actually just saved up enough money for a franchise like I was talking about a few years back. In fact, I'm currently shopping for prime location real estate to get started," Rey replied nonchalantly.

"Wow, that's great news! What a coincidence. Funny story, I was just on Gakrek. You know, the famine alien planet on the news a few years back? I was there to rent a piece of property one of the locals built. It actually looked really solid, and we're gonna put a franchise on it. Rey, I think this whole offworld thing is gonna kick off huge soon, and you should look into it," she said excitedly. She hadn't found a chance to celebrate this victory with anyone yet, so she was rambling a bit.

Then hearing some loud noises coming from the other end, Isabella asked, "say, is that an airplane in your background?"

"No, that's a spaceship coming in to land. Anyway, I did hear about that sale. I'm down here waving goodbye to your spacecraft with my friend, Grob. And I just wanted to remind you that you've got your franchise owner right here!"

Isabella's eyes widened in recognition and said, "ah, so you're the one who's behind the building. That explains a lot and actually makes me feel a lot better about renting it." Then, she frowned and continued, "But Rey. You know company policy. We can't guarantee that you'd get the franchise license even if you or your friend owns the property. And I heard from higher up that they're thinking about bringing in one of their guys to make sure this goes perfectly for their first one."

"Alright, Izzy. It's fine. I get it. No hard feelings. I just have one question you should bring to your manager though: how are you guys getting water to the restaurant?"

Isabella's wide eyes narrowed, "what do you mean?"

"Well, Grob is saying right here that you promised to pay for utilities and waste," Rey said as she read off the signed contract, "tenant is responsible for-"

"Yeah," Isabella replied, cutting her off, "I checked the water, though. It seemed fine. They had a water purifier on site which he said was from a clean-" then the realization dawned on her.

"Hm… let me check," Rey said, "oh, that's funny. The water and sanitation mains appear to be hooked up to a local river by a certain… Rey Crawley Utilities Company. Huh!"

Isabella couldn't help grinning to herself and felt her eyes almost roll out of their sockets. "What a coincidence."

In the end, it took another few weeks of discussion, but McDonald's didn't fight it very hard. Rey had worked for them for a while, so they knew she was competent and wasn't the worst fit for the job. She'd already had all the training required for a franchise owner. And Isabella went to bat for her: Rey was already on the ground there for months, cultivating relationships and laying the groundwork for a supply chain.

After all, selling food at a spaceport was a lucrative business due to the incredible volume of foot traffic. They knew this from their many stores at actual airports and spaceports on Earth.

If it had been a fair competition between multiple prospects, she would have a good chance of winning the bid anyway.

After paying the $45,000 franchise licensing fee and ordering several very expensive but mandatory items like signs, branding, menus, interior decor, and equipment, Rey was the proud owner of the first ever offworld McDonald's franchise. The first ever offworld restaurant chain.

Now she just had to actually start the business.

Capitol Hill, Earth

"It's the spook again, Senator", said her secretary, "he's put himself on your schedule for the last meeting of the day."

"Aw, what does he want now?" and not getting a satisfactory reply, as expected, Senator Hawthorne said, "alright, send him in."

"What can the United States Senate and its loyal servants do for you today, Agent Mark?" asked Hawthorne, voice dripping with sarcasm. She'd work together with "Mark" on several occasions, if you could call it that. The relationship was mostly one-sided: Mark would have something he wanted done, and the Senator would make sure it got the votes it needed to be done.

"It's about Zakabara Prime, Senator. We need those sanctions we asked for last time," Mark replied, ignoring her pointed words as he settled down into a chair and made himself at home in the Senator's office.

"It's always about the bird faces with you people. You do know that making space guns is no longer illegal, right? We have dozens of countries doing it here at home now," Hawthorne said, slightly annoyed. This wasn't the first time she'd been lobbied about this. "If we keep telling them to stop making them, we'll just look like hypocrites to the other aliens."

"Not this time. We've uncovered actual evidence that the Zakabarans have been preparing for total war," Mark shook his head. He slid over a thick folder of documents and pictures all marked with the recognizable red Top Secret stamp, "… possibly against us."

Now THAT got her attention.

"Here's an economist's analysis of their imports versus exports. They're selling less than ten percent of the ships and weapons they are producing, at most."

"Here's an image taken by a long range intelligence ship of a new facility they've thrown together in the past couple months. Truck loads of people and materials go in, and nothing ever comes out the main entrance. We suspect there is an underground exit."

"Here's the transcript from an interview with a defector from Zakabara Prime. Some high-level research scientist. He brought over several secret documents and blueprints detailing the construction of a space to ground missile. He claims that they are building it in the facility. Our experts say the schematics are production-ready."

"Here's a warehouse housing stockpiles of ammunition and spaceship parts. They grew 2000% last month, and then everything disappeared this week. This is happening all over Zakabara Prime."

"And here we have transactions, bank records from Galactic Credit that shows that they've been spending a full twelve percent of their GDP. Let me say again, twelve percent. They've been purchasing various engine and reactor parts through dummy corporations they set up on other planets. They think they're being real sneaky there, but… we've been doing this money thing for a while."

He wasn't lying. If anyone knew how to work with shady money trails, it was the men and women at Langley. At their peak during the Cold War, they even figured out how to buy materials for spy planes from the very country they were spying on.

"I know you can do the math, Senator."

Hawthorne started dabbing the sweat popping up on her forehead with a handkerchief, even though the temperature in her office was a brisk 55F.

An alien race that Earth had just driven out of the galactic food market, with weapons capabilities that might soon be able to hit Earth. This was the stuff that nightmares are made of and how scandals started.

Hawthorne asked nervously, "how close are they to deploying missiles on their ships?"

"Actually, the technology wasn't that hard to begin with for an FTL capable species. It was just expensive. Based on the layout of this facility and the long range images we're getting of the new ships they're also building, we're pretty sure they're already being deployed."

"This facility is them mass-producing it. Assembly line style."