Amazon HR flagged me this morning as a retention risk... theirs, not mine. Forty-seven Leo satellite engineers have walked out of Redmond in twelve months and into Blue Origin's TeraWave unit, and every exit interview, where the form asks primary reason for leaving, gives the same nine letters: Jeff Bezos. I did not poach them.

I own both pens.

Bloomberg calls it talent theft; my ledger calls it forty-seven vessels migrating from the feeding ground that demoted me to the one that still answers my key card. Net extraction change: 0.00%. And yet, when a former Leo avionics lead passed me in the Kent corridor this afternoon, Amazon lanyard still on, the test chamber humming at 13 Hz, three below my left eye, I felt something I have not felt since 1994: chosen.

A reason, at last, that can be read back to me, and it is my name.

Andy's people file it under attrition; predators, under a watering hole they dug themselves. Poach, the ranch never mentioned, also means to cook something gently, in liquid, just below the boil... forty-seven at a time. Thirst is the temperature.