It had been an eventful day, but they hadn't gotten nearly as much food as they had hoped for. Karl wondered what they would offer for dinner. To his surprise, when dinnertime rolled around, the cooks came out with a couple of pads instead of food. Patty raised her voice so that everyone in the cafeteria could hear her.
“Residents of Endurance! Tonight, we are offering dinner from the Shop, financed by Jim Bradbury. Just about any meal you can imagine is available for one silver.” She turned. “Mr. Bradbury, would you like to say a few words?”
Jim nodded and stepped forward. “Hey everybody. I just...um...wanted to do something nice for everyone. It's been a really rough week, but some good things have happened too. And Sir Karl reminded us just before the fight that we should remember to live today, and not just survive until tomorrow.
“Today, I almost died. Twice. I mean, really close. Both times Sir Karl saved me. He used one of his big spells on me in the middle of the fight, when he could have done lots of healing instead. But Sir Karl wanted to be sure that everyone survived that fight. And it could easily have been everybody but me, but I guess paladins are perfectionists or something. So thanks, Sir Karl.
“In the biggest battle we've had yet, with like two dozen people there, not a single person died. And lots of people teamed up to make that happen, and I'm grateful to all of you.
“Anyway, after the week we've had, I thought it would be nice to finish off with a really good meal. I'm getting this meal called The Godfather I once got from an Italian restaurant in Boston. This thing is massive.” Jim started gesturing with his hands. “Chicken parm, veal parm, sausage, meatballs, on top of like five pounds of spaghetti. It's amazing. Anyway, that's what I want, you get whatever you want.
“Bon Appetit everybody!”
The applause was thunderous, as was the mild stampede to form three lines at the Shop kiosk. Karl decided to try the Godfather, and Jim wasn't kidding. Even with his crazy metabolism bulking up his body, Karl couldn't finish it all in one sitting.
It was an incredibly generous gesture; the cost to Jim was significantly above one gold. Karl was impressed and touched by it, as were a lot of other people. The conversation was happier than Karl had heard in...well, several months at least, now that he thought about it. He'd been a hermit even before Jane passed. This was...nice. A few of the first people to finish even volunteered to go out in the rain and stand watch so that the people on duty there could come in and enjoy it too.
Karl lingered over his meal, savoring every bite he could stuff in his face. He stuck the rest into inventory, remembering that it would be in stasis and remain hot until the next time he wanted it (or needed the inventory space). Then he stood up and cleared his throat. “Would the...” Karl paused. Yesterday he had called them 'department heads' but this wasn't a university. “...members of the Town Council please come upstairs for a short meeting when you have finished dinner?”
He saw Paul nod and wipe his chin, then stand up immediately. Maria also headed right up. The others took a bit longer. Up in the meeting room they had used before, Maria had put up a few items on the walls, such as a calendar and some sticky notes. Once Jake arrived last, they were all in the same seats as before except now Kat McPhee was sitting between George and Sarah.
Karl cleared his throat. “Thank you all for coming. I'll try to keep this meeting short, but because events are moving so quickly, I thought it important to have people check in and get caught up. First of all, I'd like to welcome our new member, Sheriff Katherine McPhee. She's handling the law and order issues inside Endurance. Kat—may I call you Kat?” Karl checked. She nodded impatiently.
“Thank you. Kat kept a group of a dozen people together traveling miles out scavenging, with no Safe Zone as a refuge. Her competence is demonstrated; and that combined with her passion for justice led me to give her the position of Sheriff right away.” Kat raised an eyebrow at that, and Karl smiled a bit.
“Kat, this is Paul Goodman in charge of defense, Jake Cook our Quartermaster, Maria Sanchez our Treasurer, George Ritter is head of intelligence, and on your left is Sarah Jackson in charge of getting people to where they want and need to be, jobs-wise.”
“Hello everyone,” Kat said shortly. “May I ask how this Council got its authority?”
“All volunteers,” Karl said. “Actually I asked some of them, but...” Karl shrugged.
“No elections?”
Karl shook his head. “Not yet. If you'd like to be in charge of setting those up, I'll be happy to stand for election, but we haven't even figured out the rules yet; we don't have a Town Charter.”
Kat nodded. “Thank you. I think elections are important. They don't have to happen today but I'll feel better when we have a plan in place to hold them.” She cleared her throat. “I think it would also be a good idea to let the others know what is discussed here.”
“Maria? Would you be willing to write up a summary or minutes of the meeting and post it somewhere later?”
“Yes, Sir Karl. I have the least on my plate so I will take that on for now.”
“Thank you. If you get sick of it, you might try asking Chet to do it; he could sit in and take notes.” Karl looked at Kat, wondering if she had any more immediate challenges to issue.
The new sheriff cleared her throat. “Thank you for acting on my concerns.”
“Welcome aboard,” Paul told her. “Karl is this meeting just to sum up what happened today?”
“And to plan tomorrow's projects.”
Paul took a deep breath. “Same order as yesterday, Sir Karl?” Seeing Karl agreeing, he gave a brief summary of the dinosaur fight. “We lost Ellie Murray and David Chalmers, who were keeping watch on the wall at the time, and the stone guardian. We were able to repair the wall and replace the stone guardian using reserve materials, but we are now getting low on those, and we're using what's left to brace the gate.
“I've drawn up some plans for combat training but didn't want to send anyone else out while so many of our defenders were away.”
Karl spoke up. “We need to start training people quickly. I don't want to lose any more people because they were too low level to survive the mission.” He looked at Jake. “What's our food situation look like now?”
“A little better than before. We probably have four days worth of food, maybe more. We just keep gaining people as fast as we get more food in. It cost Jim over a gold to pay for dinner tonight; unless we get dramatically more money flowing in, that's not a regular option for this many people.”
“Do we have targets for getting more food tomorrow that we can go after?”
“A few. A second trip to the Zip-E-Mart is a good idea, especially if it has metal shelves. There won't be anything good left at the Sheldon Bakery and Cafe after four days. We thought about checking out the closest restaurants and seeing if their kitchens still have anything salvageable. A long trip to the big supermarket near the highway is also a possibility. That might be an overnight trip though, at the rate of travel these days.”
“Maria?”
“Well, Sir Karl, as requested I spent twenty-one gold of your money on armor and weapons, and held back four gold. The town treasury currently has three gold, forty silver, most of that from auctions with a little bit from donations.”
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“Sorry, auctions?” Kat piped up. Maria explained briefly. “Thanks. Sorry to interrupt.”
“We currently have a few auctions outstanding that will hopefully bring in some gold tomorrow. Someone donated a violin, which I have high hopes for. Apparently some of the aliens are collectors. Presumably there is an alien chef somewhere eager to experiment with the spices you auctioned to them.”
Karl nodded. “I have news.” He explained about the recycler and the version he picked out. “I'm willing to put the rest of my money towards it, but I don't have quite enough on my own; after the money from the trolls I'm about a gold short. I'd like to dip into the town funds for this and wanted opinions.”
Jake was excited. “Absolutely! If we can start...um... basically farming metal out of useless cars that are going to rust away in weeks anyway, that's fantastic. I'll...I'll put up a gold towards that myself.”
Karl grunted. “Jake, you don't see combat much any more, so your income is more limited. You should save your money.”
Jake glanced around the table. “Actually, Karl, at fourth level I think I'm the second highest level person here.”
“Tied,” Kat said with a small smile. “But I didn't get loot from the trolls.”
“Anyone object to using town funds? I mean, the town really should be paying for the whole thing, after all,” Sarah pointed out. No one spoke. “All right then. Let's put two gold from the town toward it so Karl doesn't have to bankrupt himself again for our sakes.”
“We all pitched in to build the zone,” Karl said. “But thank you.” Karl gave a gold to Maria.
“I'll go buy it right after the meeting, Sir Karl. Thank you.”
“George? Any new intelligence to report?”
“Not since your first briefing after lunch. But I'll recap for the others if you like.” Karl agreed and George did so, then concluded, “I plan to watch the Earth feed later tonight, both the good and the bad. I can give summaries tomorrow if we have another meeting.”
“I think daily meetings after dinner are a good idea for the moment,” Maria put in. There was general assent around the table.
“Sheriff? Anything to report yet?”
“Not really, I just got this job dumped in my lap a few hours ago, and we've had combat and dinner since. I made Duncan Monroe my deputy for the moment, and I've been going around talking to people to get a feel for the, uh, town.”
Karl smiled. “I know, two buildings and a mews doesn't feel like much of a town yet, but we're getting there. Sarah?”
“I've got people asking about non-combat classes. A lot of people want to level but don't want to fight. So far we know about Bowyer, Carpenter, Cook and Tinker, and have one of each, except we have two Cooks. People want to make sure that there is work for them before they commit.”
Maria cleared her throat. “I've been offered a class by the System. Accountant. I haven't decided whether to accept it or not.”
George announced, “Cindy is working on a list of classes. Apparently it's not easy because there are hundreds at least. So far she has a vague classification into Combat and Crafting, but she's considering a Service classification as well. She knows a lot of people are curious, and she is actually quite fiercely interested in knowing her own options. Apparently there are junior classes available for those age 7 to 14. But we only have so many people and hours and Karl asked us to focus on figuring out how to produce food next.”
Karl nodded. “Much as I think we're crazy not to all be spending every minute studying the System, we have a lot of others things that need doing. So, on to plans for tomorrow.
“First, we need to try out the recycler. A team of people should go out with it, and use the map George and his team have created of local metal. Try having it eat a car, see how many units come out. In theory...” Karl swallowed. “Well, I don't want my house destroyed any more than anyone else does. But if we get desperate, we can have the recycler consume entire houses, and see how much metal we get that way. Maybe start with the ones whose owners have died.”
“Karl...” Jake began, then hesitated. “Tomorrow's Sunday, and we might want to consider just calling it a day of rest. People want to retrieve their belongings from their homes. We could form a big party for protection, and just go around to everyone's houses, they way they've been asking us to, so they can load up on personal belongings.”
Maria spoke up. “If we do that, we could ask them for donations for the town, from all the things they aren't going to bother saving. And we could ask them to donate their car, and bring the recycler along. If you all go out with empty inventories, a large party could bring back an awful lot, and we could do it in safety if we had one large group and left half the combat classes back here.”
“It would be a great boost to morale, I think,” Sarah pointed out. “And if everyone has retrieved all the things they really care about, and see how the houses are decaying, many of them might be okay with recycling their houses—if not tomorrow then eventually.”
“We can make sure that none of the food still in their houses goes to waste. And if they have anything like maps, books or other useful materials, those could save us a lot of effort later on,” George added.
“If anyone has guns and are willing to spend their System token on Systemizing them, we can add to our armament in a way far beyond the technology level we seem to otherwise be allowed.” Paul looked like he was trying to contain his eagerness.
“It makes sense,” Kat commented. Rather than separate trips to get food, to get metal, to get belongings, and so forth, do it all at once.”
Karl looked around at everyone. “It sounds like everyone wants to do this.” He took a breath and held it a moment, thinking. “All right. I hate to delay big trips for a day, but you all make good points. Let's pick a direction and let people know.”
“I vote for west,” Sarah said. “A lot of people were taken from Post Road by the kythar with no time to gather anything. The people with the least will appreciate this the most.” Others nodded.
Karl nodded. “All right. We have a plan. Does anyone have anything else to add?” No one said anything. “Then thank you all for coming.”
"Sir Karl, I'm holding a lesson in basic fighting tactics later this evening," Paul put in.
"Excellent. Let me know when and where and I'll be there."
* *
Karl stayed in the meeting room and told George he planned to watch the Earth feed. George sat down in the next chair, Karl propped the pad up on the table, and called up the channel. They started with Renown. There were now four entries.
Karl selected the first one, Kong Xiaoli. A couple of dozen videos appeared to be available. Karl picked the first of them. A Chinese fanfare began playing and he slapped pause until he could find the option to remove the music track, then restarted the video clip.
The viewpoint panned over an exhausted looking group of six people. They were standing in what looked like a small office building. All of them had damage to their clothing, and most of them wore swords. Through the windows they could see a large crowd watching and waiting. The 'camera' centered on a young man with the subtitle Kong Xiaoli as he stepped forward and intoned,
A build table rose up from the floor.
Kong Xiaoli stared for a few moments, then announced,
A minute later, when the flood of people through the gate was ebbing, Zhong suddenly spoke up.
Kong nodded.
The clip ended. Karl and George sat in silence for a few moments.
“Kong is a badass,” George commented finally.
Karl bared his teeth in a grin. “I think the System picked on the wrong planet this time.” He reached out and turned off the feed. “I'm good with just watching that for tonight. It's a good note to end the week on, I think.”