Metropolis -  Capsule Bay 28 - Unit 10

Sunday, May 10th, 2089 | 9:57am

[Status: In-Game]

Durrenheim’s scorching sun only got hotter as midday approached. Aya shielded her eyes and looked up to see the sun approximately where she’d expect Earth’s sun to be at ten in the morning. It was strange how time dilation worked. An Era day was like a normal Earth day, the only difference being it had five times as many hours. She’d logged on a little after seven real time, meaning she’d been in game for almost fourteen hours. It was strange to think that so much could happen in Era while the minutes slowly ticked by on Earth. It made her all too aware of how important her rank was; if she couldn’t pull through by the end of the week… she’d never make it. Aya bit her lip, uncertainty taking over.

‘Surely, they’d see my earning potential after today...’ Aya had almost succeeded in comforting herself when other thoughts poked at her vulnerability.

‘That is, if Donovan…’

‘But if he doesn’t…’

Her thoughts started spiraling into the black hole of despair she’d avoided all morning.

“No!” she said out loud before she could stop herself.

Players and NPCs alike looked at her uncertainly. She flushed, ducked her head and pretended to talk to another player through her interface. They couldn’t know she was bluffing… could they? It was enough of a distraction to get her going again.

Aya watched from across the plaza as the Serving Time group broke into yet another quarrel. Taking out her notebook, she occupied herself by making as many observations as she could, who was fighting who, but more importantly, about what. She’d witnessed enough fights over the last couple of hours to know Serving Time members didn’t agree on everything. In fact, they didn’t agree on much of anything. Aya smirked and put her notebook away when the fight broke up a few minutes later. It was time to get her head in the game again. Nodding once, she set her worries aside and got back to work.

Opening the forums, she selected a saved shortcut. It led her to a list of custom Contract requests, the same one she’d been industriously going through for the last three Era hours. She browsed it one last time, making sure that no new requests she could fulfill had come in. Then she spent the next ten minutes uploading the backlog of Contracts she’d created.

She picked up a Contract, matched it to its request, selected the upload option and watched as the Contract in her hands disappeared. It was like watching a wind blow the Contract away, pixel by pixel. She’d been fascinated the first time she saw it. Aya repeated the procedure for the fifteen or so Contracts she hadn’t uploaded yet.

With only two more to go, she finally reached her daily gold payment with the bank. She heaved a sigh of relief when her Contract payments didn’t automatically go into the bank’s account. Instead, she was now the wealthy possessor of 52 gold. In the hands of a level six player, it was a fortune. In the hands of someone who should have at least been level 15 by now, it was okay. But in the hands of someone who had 10,000 gold only hours before…

‘Well,’ Aya thought. ‘Let’s just hope I made the right investments.’

After over an hour of talking to the banker, Aya walked out of Durrenheim City Bank with a subtle smile of victory and 10,000 in gold. She’d achieved more than she expected to but less than she wanted. Sensing eyes on her, she turned and waved at Qanelin, the banker.

From the window, the banker waved back and watched the small boyish girl leave. He sported the same smile. After the slight figure disappeared behind a corner, he walked to a filing cabinet and stored the hard copy of Aya’s Contract. He’d managed to get a great deal, considering. The girl had driven a surprisingly tough bargain, but he’d still come out on top. Of that there was no doubt. He took out Nelson’s void Contract and grinned. If only she knew the nightmare she had prevented. Walking over to the fireplace, he never noticed Aya’s name on the Contract before he destroyed it.

Down the street and out of view, Aya literally skipped with joy. A huge weight had been lifted off of her shoulders, making her feel light as a feather. She continued skipping the span of two blocks, until the City Library came into view before her. The sight hit her like a big bucket of ice water. Aya sighed, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She couldn’t celebrate yet. All the pieces had come together during her hour-long negotiation with Qanelin, but she’d only pulled off one of the many steps ahead of her.

Yes, she’d managed to make a deal of 112,000 gold for all of Nelson’s property, when the land value alone was 280,000. Or at least that is what Qanelin assured her, even going as far as showing her the value of other land Contracts in the region. She, in turn, had pointed out the drought, its uncertain end and the obvious exodus from the region. It had been a battle of wills, back and forth, back and forth. In the end, the price had landed closer to her proposal than his.

The next item of debate had been her collateral. Not owning anything, she had been forced to offer her service as a Scribe until all of her debt was repaid. Aya cringed just thinking about how many Basic Contracts would be needed for the feat. Qanelin had argued along the same lines until she pulled a blank sheet off of his table along with a heavily ornamented fountain pen. Even though it was flashier than Nelson’s pens, she noticed the quality of the pen itself was inferior. Filing the information away for later use, Aya activated her Scribe skill and proceeded to bang out a Basic Contract in record time. The action impressed Qanelin enough for him to agree.

Collateral taken care of, they moved to payment time frame. Being all too aware of the effect of compound interest - she knew a thing or two about student loans - she tried to forego interest completely.  Qanelin had not been on board at all. Bankers loved interest, so in order to convince him, she offered to pay off the debt within a year. The proposition softened the banker a bit, but not enough to close the deal. Knowing she had been pushing for too much, she decided to give a little in the negotiations, first offering weekly and then daily payments.

At that point she knew she almost had him, but not quite yet. Thinking fast, she added another bribe, promising to pay him half of her daily LayHen earnings as soon as it exceeded 307 gold a day. Qanelin had pursed his lips in thought but finally turned her down. He claimed there was no guarantee that she would be able to get the business going again, even if she could offer the same stat-Eggs as Nelson had, once upon a time.

She sat back in thought, considering his words. Aya realized he was probably right. The amount of starting capital she would need to get the operation going was ridiculous. The renovation, food and maintenance costs alone would break her. She couldn’t do it, not without starting capital. And that’s when she asked for an additional 10,000 gold loan.

Qanelin shook his head immediately turning her down, he did it repeatedly until she agreed on something ridiculous. 0.5% interest, paid on a daily basis. An additional 50 gold a day. She was down to paying him 357 gold a day, but she walked out of there anyway. If she could pay it off within a week, she would only have wasted 350 gold total on the loan. And having the gold on hand now was huge. If she could survive the week, coming up with the money wouldn’t be a problem. Not if everything worked like it should. But if it didn’t, and she ended up with only ten game hours a day…

‘It takes money to make money,’ she thought bitterly, clearing her head of negative thoughts.

Sure, it was a lot of starting capital. The only problem was, it wasn’t enough starting capital, at least not for the LayHens. It wasn’t even enough for her Chain of Production plan, at least not with a little boost. She smiled at the City Library’s front double door. Two NPC guards stood there, frowning at her. It was clear her reputation was going to give her problems down the line; she just didn’t know how much, yet.

She heard murmurs of complaint as she passed.

“Isn’t th— one that…”

“Let her pass… —ior Aizan said… —ault access…”

“That thing!” were the only words she heard clearly, uttered in an exclamation that cut the conversation short.

Henry cocked his head to the side, as if considering the situation for her, and they progressed to the Vault. Finding Senior Aizan was easy after that. He was surprised to see her so soon, but understood immediately when she asked to be instructed in more complex Contracts. She readied herself for a long, drawn-out negotiation, but unlike with Qanelin, she was able to get what she wanted much faster.

In less than half an hour, she walked away with the knowledge to create the next three grades of Contracts, all the way up to the Standard Contract. Sure, she would have to submit 25 copies of each to the Vault, without pay, but it was a more than favorable Contract. It was only much later that she considered the effects her Manipulation Tree and her reputation points had on her discussion with Senior Aizan. Throughout her conversation with Qanelin she’d received various “Manipulation Tree Thrives” updates. But it was only after she received the same with Aizan that she considered the possibility her Manipulation Tree had helped her in making better deals.

For a moment, she felt a little deflated. There she was, thinking she was some hot-shot manipulator, when in reality her Manipulation Tree was having some kind of effect on NPCs. She sighed on her way out of the library, until she remembered the conversations she still had ahead of her, conversations with real players, not NPCs. She smiled and then frowned a moment later when Obelisk came online. Thinking about manipulating and actually manipulating were two very different things. Aya sighed and pinged Obelisk.

The plan was simple: she was going to create a production line of weapon and metal goods for Durrenheim. She didn’t intend on fulfilling any of the positions herself - no, she’d done enough mining and hauling for a lifetime - but she saw a vacancy in the market and she was going to fill it. She was going to be the middleman. Now she only had to get everyone to agree.

Obelisk got on board surprisingly easily. She’d shot her number really low, unsure of what his break-even was going to be. Aya offered to pay 70% of the ore’s value, delivered at the mine itself. Obelisk agreed to 75%. She didn’t outright tell him what her plan was, but she figured he could probably work out the gist of it. By eliminating his need to go back to Durrenheim with a full pack of ore, she not only increased his mining time, but also increased his speed of Skill progression. Aya was just beginning to understand how valuable that was.

She used a Standard Contract to seal the deal. If Obelisk was surprised by the move, he didn’t show it, but he did ask if she was on the hunt for more clients. He had friends and innocently suggested they, too, might be interested in her offer. Aya saw the opportunity and grabbed it. Having learned from their deal that she could have gone lower, Aya told him she would be offering 70% of Durrenheim’s market ore value from then on. Before he could argue against it on ‘principle’, she offered him 1% of the cut. He took 2%; she’d been willing to offer 2.5%. Both parties walked away happy with the deal and another Standard Contract was signed.

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The next step of the production line was a tricky one. It took her a while to figure out how to do it, but she finally decided to use new players as her ‘cheap labor’. It seemed like every production line depended on it at some point. She felt like she was taking advantage of them a little, but such was business. Walking back to the center of the square, she bought five basic ore sacks and waited by the beginner’s location for the next new player to sign in.

It didn’t take long for three players to pop in, not more than 5 minutes apart. The reason was made clear almost immediately: they were friends. Two had played before and were showing their ‘noob’ friend around. She detailed her proposal. The two players were immediately wary until she showed them three valid Basic Contracts, after which they all accepted, each taking one of her ore sacks before they left. She offered the sack as a bonus for anyone that filled it 50 times, though she doubted any of them would do it.

The deal was simple, 1 gold for each sack of ‘junk ore’ they filled up and dropped off at the coordinates she’d designated, about 50 feet from the entrance. For now, she didn’t need to worry about theft, not with the junk ore that was so freely lying around everywhere in the mine, but it occurred to her she should probably think of security next. Trust wasn’t something she was having luck with recently, and the more she thought about it, the less it seemed plausible for her to trust anyone. Then she smacked herself in the head. Duh! Who needed trust when you had Contracts?

But who would want a guard position? Standing outside the mine, keeping watch over a useless pile of ore? The foreman! He was standing there anyway, working on his reputation points; no man would turn down some easy gold on the side. It occurred to her that the price she offered didn’t matter, not with Contracts to force their honesty, but she decided to offer him a fair compensation anyway, ten gold an hour.

She brought up the Town Bulletin window and found the listing for that day’s mine foreman, a player named Phora. Aya PM’d her, wondering if she would accept. Aya attached the Contract, ready for approval, but she was still an unknown prisoner and she knew how players generally felt about them. While waiting for a reply, another new player logged in, almost immediately followed by a friend.

The sight made her feel a little lonely. Ever since the murder, she’d felt more alone than ever. Before, she’d had Rin, but in prison, she had no one on her side. Aya tried consoling herself with the thought of Donovan and Tiny but the antisocial kid and hulk-woman hardly counted as her friends. She rolled her eyes, clearing her mind of the melodrama to focus on the moment.

The two new players were both interested and suspicious, in the end suspicion won and they went on their way. It took another ten minutes for a player to show up; she filled the time by working on her Contract with Senior Aizan. This one showed up on her own, was skeptical like the others at first, but eventually accepted and left with one of her ore sacks. Two minutes later, another solitary player showed up to take her last ore sack.

She had no idea how many carriers she would need to keep up with the haulers that she still needed to find, but eventually the bottlenecks would show themselves. In production lines, it was just a matter of time. As she saw it, the production line would look something like this:

Miners —> Carriers —> Haulers I —> Rockyno Drop Off —> Haulers II —> Blacksmiths

Having sorted the first two, she needed to find a solution for the third. She would need a wagon. Knowing she would have to contact Xavier later for the final link in the production chain anyway, she put the wagon off for later.  Instead, she focused on finding players to pull them. Hiring animals like bulls and horses was a possibility, but as her earlier deal with Xavier had shown her, it was just too expensive at the moment. With the heat and drought going on, caring for a large animal was more expensive than caring for a player. This meant she would need to find players, preferably large players, like the orcs that had… Why not the orcs themselves?

She wondered how she would find them until she remembered the picks they’d gotten out of their initial deal only the day before yesterday. Aya contacted Obelisk and, as she expected, he testified to their presence in the mines. He put them in contact with each other, jokingly telling her she owed him one. She knew he would be collecting on it at a later point.

The deal with the orcs was a little harder to finagle, especially since she had to add a confidentiality clause to the Contract. She’d found out about the Rockynos in the forums but as far as she knew, no one had tried it on such a large scale before. Aya wasn’t about to start giving people ideas, not when they were hers and potentially about to make her a killing. Unfortunately, they did not accept gold as payment and she ended up having to promise them each a pick for a day’s worth of work. Not knowing how long it would take to get a pile going, she scheduled the first run for five hours from then. Later, she would find out that she could’ve started right then.

A day’s work was agreed as 8 hours of Era time. Seeing as each pick was worth anywhere from 80-300+ gold, they were being ridiculously overpaid. Instead of seeing it as a rip-off, she chose to see it as the price of confidentiality and an easy way of disposing of the picks without raising attention to herself. If someone really wanted to, they would be able to trace them back to her, so she added a little caveat as a security measure. The orcs would not be able to sell, trade or give the picks away. It was a sloppy band-aid of protection, but unless she was willing to hire a scapegoat as an intermediary, she had to risk exposure somewhere.

Having the Haulers figured out, she was left with her final and production-line critical link. Really, she should have talked to Xavier first, made sure he was on board. But fear he wouldn’t agree, no matter what she said, had kept her from seeing him. Sitting in the same spot in the square, she had no excuse not to approach him when he packed up his goods and left his stand. She followed, lamely waiting for an opportunity to broach the subject.

Aya didn’t have to wait long. Not even a block from the square, on the way to the smithy, Xavier turned around and barked at her, eyebrows drawn together. She’d seen him have a bad day at the stand. At first, she thought it would make him more amenable to her cause, but the stern look in his eyes made her doubt herself.

She shouldn’t have. The moment she made her offer his expression changed. Showing him the vat full of 100% pure metal cinched the deal, but Aya suspected he would have been on board even with 10% purity. She found out that Serving Time was taking a cut in all of the blacksmiths’ earnings, apparently the Contract magic wasn’t lost on everyone. It made it almost impossible to make a profit. Unfortunately, the guild had been smart enough to force Contracts on all the crafters. Fortunately, there was such a thing as a loophole.

The Contract explicitly said “any earnings made anywhere in Durrenheim” and it just so happened that Aya knew of a place just a ways off. The next step was a little more complicated, as it involved rounding up all the exploited craftsmen. She needn’t have worried; Xavier almost jumped at the opportunity. It was strange seeing the man’s surly attitude changed so suddenly into one of almost manic vengeance. She vowed to never get on the man’s bad side… again.

While Xavier rounded up the craftsmen, Aya went to see a Constructor. The players with the professions had already moved out the moment people stopped building, but Aya found an NPC with emotional ties to the region. At first he turned her away; her reputation was just that bad. Shamed, she asked Xavier for an introduction. After the blacksmith, who knew Ackman, introduced her, he accepted her Contract.

“All I am sayin’ is,” he said. “I’ll be checkin’ on this place of yers. No promises or nothin’.”

“…I understand, Mr.Ackman,” she replied carefully.

“Oh, naw. I’m no mister. Just Ackman will do just fine,” he said, relaxing his tall wiry frame by a fraction. “So where is this place of yers anyway?”

“It’s halfway between here and the mines,” she said, trying to explain. “If you walk about 15 minutes outside of town and head directly…”

“Wait,” he said, suddenly alert. “This Nelson’s place yer talkin’ bout? Be crawlin with these bird-buggers like?”

“Well… yea,” Aya said, surprised the man knew it. Taking a closer look, she noticed the man’s age for the first time. It was very near what Nelson’s would have been, at least from the accounts in his diary. She would never have guessed the man she buried to be anything less than eighty. In actuality he had only been pushing the early sixties.

“What you doin’ on Nelson’s land now?” Ackman asked, suspicious.

“Oh,” Aya said, uncomfortable. “You don’t know yet…”

“Know what now?”

“Nelson… passed away…”

Ackman’s eyes progressed from surprise to doubt and anger in less than a second.

“I dun’ believe it,” he said. “Man was drinkin’ it up, usual-like just night before last…”

Aya pursed her lips, unsure of how to tell him everything. She started at the beginning, with her meeting Nelson in prison. When he asked, she even offered the reason behind her own conviction. At first he didn’t comment, but when the story was told he warmed up to her really fast.

“That’s real respectable-like,” he said, with a firm set to his jaw. “Man never was the same after Anya… Maybe now he’ll get some peace.”

Aya nodded mutely and they sat in silence, sipping the small cups of water he had brought out. The drought was hitting everyone really hard and the more people she met, the more sorry Aya felt for them. She’d chosen the location because of the drought, but in all her time in the game she hadn’t even gotten past her own problems.

After taking the final sip in continued silence, Ackman got up and showed her out. He assured her he still knew how to get to Nelson’s place and said he’d look at the buildings if he had a chance as well. If he was curious about why she wanted a little shop built so far from any market, he didn’t show it.

Watching the tall wiry man go around the corner, shrugged and headed for the square once more. Having tackled all of the links, all she could do now was wait and see how it all panned out. She’d been very generous with handing out Contracts, so there was no need to supervise. Everyone would do exactly as she had asked, she smiled at the thought, feeling a little dictatorial. Contracts really were the best thing that could have happened to her.

Thinking about it, she got to work on her daily payment to the bank. It was one of the things she hadn’t finished yet. Throughout the rest of the morning she got various messages, one from Phora accepting the Contract, one from Obelisk giving her two more miners and one from Xavier updating her on the Crafter-hunt. In less than two hours, he had managed to round up four Crafters and expected to hear from another fourteen throughout the day as they logged on.

Ackman also hunted her down at some point. He quoted the project at 10,000 gold. Using manipulation, arguments about the drought and desertment and his friendship with Nelson, she eventually managed to talk him down to 8,000 gold. It was still quite a steep price and she briefly considered charging it to the blacksmiths’ fee, but decided against it. Having the shop paid by her would make them more willing to listen to her in the future… she hoped.

It was like watching a symphony come together, at last. She sighed in relief, watching the pieces finally tumbling together. There were a few things left to iron out. She’d been thinking about the Rockynos. Seeing as they were the only link not Contracted to her, they were the most unreliable. She would need to find a way to control them, maybe herding? She wondered if she could breed them like the LayHens, but that’s also when she realized she was getting ahead of herself.

No point in putting the wagon in front of the horse. One step at a time. For now, all she could do was wait and see what parts of the production chain needed adjusting. For her to figure it out, she needed to let it run a little. If a major problem came up, one of her Contractees would message her about it. It was a caveat she had made sure to add to every one of them.

And that’s how Aya, a level six player, ended up sitting in the square in charge of a growing operation already including more than twenty players and a couple of NPCs. All that was left was to wait for the final puzzle piece to show up: Donovan. She looked at the clock: 9:59am real time. It was normal for people to say ten and show up ten or fifteen minutes late, but then again, Donovan wasn’t normal.

She suspected he would show up at exactly 10:00. And, as if on cue, the second the clock changed its display, he came online on her friends’ list. She smiled, knowing for sure she’d chosen the perfect person for the job. The only question now, was whether or not he would accept. Without missing a beat she messaged him.

Aya: Hey kid, you ready?

Donovan: Yes.

She waited a minute to see if he would add something. He didn’t. Aya suppressed a giggle but couldn’t stop the eyeroll.

Aya: I meant, can you meet up right now?

Donovan: My mother says I cannot.

Aya: … What? … Why not?

Donovan: You are a prisoner.