Kestrel sent his sons to canvass the village to find relatives of people from Dal County. Apparently, a lot of Moonlight residents came from Dal County, and the communities in that area. All I knew was that it was somewhere east of us, and contained the natural resources we’d need to make concrete… lots and lots of concrete.

Less than an hour later, a mass of people formed around Proctor, Trevor, Dillard, and myself at the fire pit. We stood up from the log benches to face the people.

At first, my mind went to the worst thought, presuming we were about to get overrun again like we did when the giant bugs attacked, but this time was refreshingly different.

The village had been through such awfulness, a spirit of community seemed to rise up and replace the aura of negativity plaguing us before.

This time the crowd sought my input. Admittedly, it was an intoxicating feeling. One of the villagers at the front of the friendly mob, a woman named Georgia asked me how she, and the rest of them could help making the village safe from further attacks.

I heartily accepted whatever help anyone in the large group wanted to give. I guessed there were probably fifty people behind Georgia. I stepped up onto one of the logs so I could see everyone before us. I was like a politician on a stage.

“Whatever you could do to contribute would be great,” I said. “I appreciate you offering.”

“We’ve an idea,” Georgia said.

“We wish to dig a trench,” shouted a man from behind her.

Interesting. I turned to look at Proctor, and he shrugged. His face told me he was thinking it wasn’t the worst idea.

“Like a moat?” Trevor asked.

“Could be that,” Georgia said. “Doesn’t need water though. Maybe something to slow ‘em down.”

The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.

“In front of the wall then?” I said.

“It’s what we think,” Georgia said. “You find the diggers to create it. A lot of us want to stand guard. Lots of guards. With weapons.”

Yes, very interesting.

“What do you think?” I asked Proctor.

“Could work,” he said. “Cost becomes a factor, however.”

Always the voice of reason.

“I can help with this,” said a familiar voice. It was Barkley, the merchant, and he stepped out from the assembled villagers. “I have a stable of laborers under my pay.”

“What do you propose?” I said.

“My people could dig the trench for you,” Barkley said. “Would be a large undertaking, I’m sure you would agree.”

“I do.”

“I could get that done for you,” Barkley said. “Twenty currency ought to be sufficient.”

Twenty gold coins!

I couldn’t imagine spending that much. Proctor made clicking noises with his mouth, and it immediately told me he wasn’t on board with Barkley’s price.

“Let me get back to you on that,” I said.

Happy to have so many of the surviving villagers on board, I was feeling like a silver lining could be found from the disaster we’d all lived through. Seeing everyone ready to take an active role in securing the entire area, truly warmed my heart. It also meant soon I’d be able to completely focus on building the baseball team.

“Well, that was a positive development,” Proctor said.

“No kidding.”

“Twenty coins to Barkley is too many,” Proctor said. “I’d see if you could source that labor through someone else.”

“Agreed.”

Proctor then told me his priority for the day was to see if the System meant the other androids we’d met specifically, whether those were the ones being repurposed for umpiring ball games. He planned to visit the cave the locals referred to as ‘The Tomb’, just to confirm both Slate and Math were truly gone. If not, they could really help us with our construction projects.

Not long after Proctor took his leave, Gak, my favorite reformed barbarian came by. When nosy Dillard told him about the trench/moat plan, his eyes lit up like I’d just placed a roasted ham before him.

“I’ll do it!” Gak shouted.

“You can’t dig a trench around the entire village on your own,” I said.

“Me and my mates,” Gak said. “We’ll do it. Leave it to us.”

“Really?” I said. “You think you could handle it?”

“Dug many a hole in my life,” Gak said.

Before he could elaborate on that, I was pretty sure I knew why.

“We’ll do it,” Gak said.

“Great.”

“For five currency,” he said.

I nearly burst out into laughter. What I wanted to do was to grab him in a bear hug, but the man’s seven feet tall, and huge. Wasn’t sure how he’d take that. But, five gold coins when Barkley was offering to do it for twenty?

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Sold!” I said.

Gak’s smile lit up my soul. He marched off, swollen with pride. To be honest, I couldn’t think of a better person to have in charge of digging a moat.

“You fools are gonna have your own river around your Blue Jaze base ball,” Dillard said.

He reminded me, I still didn’t have a franchise name.

“Blue Jay?” Trevor said. “What’s that mean again?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I was trying to think of what to call our team.”

“What’s a teeeem?” Dillard said.

“When you plow a field,” Trevor said. “The oxen.”

“No, no,” I corrected, pleased to be talking about this on a cold, yet beautiful morning while surrounded by a community who all seemed to be working toward the same goal. I can’t properly describe the momentary bliss of that stitch in time.

“Not that kind of team,” I said. “It means a group of people working together to win a competition.”

I was proud of my off the cuff definition that had just popped into my brain.

“A sporting competition,” I said. “You know, like athletics?”

Then I had a brain wave.

“Oh, Athletics!” I said, remembering another professional baseball team’s nickname. “Oakland.”

“Oakland?” Dillard said, face scrunched up. “That’s five counties over, ain’t it?”

“Of course there’s an Oakland here,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” I said.

I liked the Athletics name, but I wasn’t sure it fit with the village’s name: Moonlight. The Moonlight Athletics. Part of me thought, ‘yeah, that flows’, while the other part of me thought it was clunky.

“An athlete like Ulrich?” Trevor said, referring to Moonlight’s most famous person.

“Exactly,” I said. “Just like that. Now imagine a group of people who are like Ulrich, and they come together to compete against another group of Ulrichs to see who can win. That group is a team.”

“Ah.”

I could see nods of recognition from the two men.

“And, you give the group a name?” Trevor said.

He was quicker on the uptake than Dillard.

“Right,” I said. “Just like your village has a name. You call it Moonlight. Same thing with Moonlight’s baseball team. We need to call it something.”

“But not Ulrich,” Dillard said. “We can’t call your base ball that.”

The innocence of the question caused me to giggle. “No,” I said. “We can’t call the team Ulrich.”

I mean, we could, technically. But, I didn’t think that’d work for the entirety of my franchise. I wanted something iconic. When I thought of names like the Yankees, the Cardinals, the Dodgers, the Giants…

“Oh, the Giants!” I’d just remembered another pro team from back in the modern world.

Trevor bowed his massive head, and looked embarrassed.

“Ya ain’t gotta make fun of him,” Dillard said, pointing up at the big man.

“No! Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean you, Trevor. There’s a team I’ve heard of before, and they were called the Giants.”

“A team named after someone like me?” Trevor said. He said with such shame in his voice. If he wasn’t so enormous, I would’ve given him a hug.

I was feeling very huggy this day, apparently.

“I suppose so,” I said. Actually, I didn’t know why the Giants were called the Giants. That would’ve been a quick internet check before, but in this moment I had to be satisfied with not knowing.

“I don’t want Moonlight’s team named after me,” Trevor said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “We’ll pick something else.”

Barkley, the not at all trustworthy merchant (as near as I could tell up to this point), returned to interrupt our fireside conversation with another offer.

“Couldn’t help but notice,” he said. “Your new guards, they will require armaments, yes? Weaponry?”

True. He raised a good point.

“I can be of use in this,” Barkley said. “I have sources for these kinds of items.”

I sure he did.

“I can source weaponry for you,” Barkley said. “Put swords and spears in the hands of Moonlight’s guards. Arrows, torches, you name it.”

“Great,” I said. “That would be excellent.”

I braced for his price.

“For twelve,” Barkley said. “What say you?”

Impressive. He proposed a price, I felt was pretty close to fair given what he was offering.

“Twelve gold?” I said.

“‘Tis a fair price, I feel,” Barkley said. And there was that slimy smile

Part of me wondered if he would actually follow through once I’d paid him. But, Moonlight was a small village, and getting smaller all the time.

“Twelve seems fair,” I said. “You’ve got a deal.”

We shook forearms.

“Six now?” Barkley said. “And, six on delivery, fair?”

I loved that all of these things were happening in mid January. Unfortunately, though it turns out the System was spot on when it came to the androids.

Proctor returned to report indeed Slate and Math were gone from The Tomb.

“Umpires then,” I said. “So, we’ll see them down the road at some point. During a game?”

“I suppose so,” Proctor said.

“Umpire?” Dillard said. “What kind of a foolish thing is that?

“I’ll tell you later,” I said.

Georgia, the crowd’s spokesperson from earlier in the morning came to me, but acting a bit more shy this time. The tell tale sign of someone about to ask about money.

It was fair she was asking about payment for the security mob (for lack of a better label for the group).

“‘Tis impolite, I know it,” Georgia said. “But, currency’s important.”

No argument there.

She agreed to a price of eight gold. How the heck all those people were going to split that up, it was beyond me, but already I was understanding the money crunch we were about to face.

“Is there any such thing as a business loan in this world?” I said to Proctor.

“Might be worth finding out,” he agreed.

It brought about an awkward silence. Proctor ended it after a minute, urging me on to the next task at hand.

“You have a team name yet?” He asked.

“Funny you should ask,” I said. “We were just talking about that.”

“Well, for now, you’ll have to think about it, but, I’ve asked Kestrel to meet us over on the west end,” Proctor said.

“Not the soda machine,” I said. “I’m not ready to tackle that beast again. Not yet, anyway.”

“No,” Proctor said. “Remember we agreed. Or, rather, you had mentioned you liked that open area as the spot to locate the ballpark?”

“Yes.”

“Kestrel’s expressed interest in working on it,” Proctor said. “He’s going to meet us over there. We can map out the park itself.”

“I’d like to come with you,” Trevor said. “Is that acceptable? I wish to help build your park.”

“Oh, wow,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about what a ballpark would even look like.”

“Well start thinking about it,” Proctor said. “We need to get it finished as quickly as we can. You need to consider the park’s dimensions. How big do you want the outfield to be, and what shape? How far from home plate to the outfield walls? How much spectator seating? What size and shape will foul ground be? The height of the walls?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I held out my hands. “Is it just me…” I said, “or are we suddenly on a rocket ship here in getting projects off the ground? It’s like we’re in a super hurry to get everything to do with this franchise done ASAP. I don’t even have time to turn around. The height of the outfield walls? I don’t know what to think about anything. I don’t even have a team name yet. I don’t know what’s going on. This is a lot.”

“Welcome to the System,” Proctor said. “Get used to that feeling.”