Kids in the Boardroom - the Story of AMC-14

Imagine you're a boy who's throwing $150 million up in the air to pass the time, until a gust of wind catches it just wrong and it gets stuck up a tree. Several passing grownups offer to help get it down, but that would be too humiliating, so you just leave it up there as a write-off.

While that’s not exactly what happened here, it’s just as stupid.

This story is set amidst the hallowed, locker-lined halls of SES Americom high school, a telecommunications satellite conglomerate based in Luxembourg...

The tale begins in 2008, right before English class, when a communications satellite launch went awry leaving AMC-14 in the wrong orbit. OMG!

The geeky guys in math club were all like, chillax, we can fix this - rocket science shows how we can use some of the propellant on the satellite to send it around the moon, and it'll drop back into the right orbit. We've even done it before!

But the cool kids in the SES boardroom were like whoa, not so fast, yo? 'Cos our hated frenemies over at Boeing Senior High happen to have a patent on that particular orbital trick. And if Boeing and SES were on Facebook, their relationship status would be "It’s legally complicated"… So like, um, not real comfortable asking them about this, 'K?

While the geeky math nerds freaked out over the idea that you could patent an orbit - "Patent an orbit?? THAT'S CRA-CRA, what next, you gonna patent the idea of walking east?" - the suits on the legal team were all like, chillax, we can fix this… we insured everything for the full amount!

So the cool kids in the boardroom told the insurance company that AMC-14 was a total loss, and everybody pulled out their phones to update their status to "high-fivin'!", except the geeky guys who were twotting their Star Trek comics or whatever it is they do.

The insurance guys were just freshmen so they believed what they were told, and plans were made to turn $150 million into a splash in the ocean by Friday, just in time for the big dance.

But other schools had geeky math kids too, including Echostar Prep, who had been counting on AMC-14 to expand its high-def TV channels and like totally wanted to salvage the mission. Echostar had no reason to fear Boeing, they didn’t even have teams in the same league. So those meddling kids started poking around and stirring up trouble!

Here’s where Principal Pentagon steps in, and things get complicated…

Principal Pentagon also had no reason to worry about Boeing, as his wife was friends with the Boeing principal’s wife, not to mention their kids had grown up picking each others’ pockets and shortchanging the servants at the country club.

But pesky school board regulations prevented him from fixing the orbit to return the craft to its intended role. All he could do was offer like $bupkus to SES for poor AMC-14 - because apparently even the wrong orbit was useful for some hush-hush Pentagon family business.

Echostar Prep put on their best smiles and offered $bupkus-and-a-half, which was not enough to cover the embarrassment that SES board members would suffer if AMC-14 ever sent a single episode of "Lost" to an eager customer, 'cos like, how totally awkward would it be the next time they saw the insurance company in study hall?

So today, AMC-14 sits by itself in a lonely corner of the bleachers, whispering secrets to places no one dares to guess at.

The moral of the story: remember those idiots you went to high school with? Those same beer-swilling lowlifes haven't grown up at all, they just wear suits, drink better beer and throw around 9-figure budgets now. This is another reason why we're doomed!