Grandmother was rich. It was the morning after the last Challenge day. The single day event stretched into four days this time. The human challengers were so outnumbered by selkie that Grandmother decided she needed to get more human squares onto the transportation network. Grandmother finally found time to open the crystal’s interface and select the option that allowed it to be opened from her personal interface. She went back up to her room where she could relax on the comfort of the sofa while looking the interface over. It was very similar to the gallery interface.
The square inventory was not empty. It contained stacks of crafting materials; iron, steel, bronze and copper ingots, skeins of thread, bolts of cloth and planks of wood. There were also coins, a little less than three bright copper worth.
She wondered if all squares made this kind of money. She had to believe they did. What did crystal owners do with it all? She could maybe believe that human owners didn’t know how to use the crystal interface to get the money out, but the selkie had to know. What did Ray-Do-So spend her coins on? She suspected some humans must have figured it out as well.
There were upgrades that could be bought. A far larger number of upgrades were available through questing. Looking over the purchasable upgrades Grandmother noticed that nearly everyone had a material option and a coin price. Did the square owners spend their money on these upgrades? Most of them Grandmother couldn’t figure out what they would be. There was one that she was fairly certain was glass doors at the entrances. Before this she’d always thought that feature was tied to the tier of a square. Maybe it was. If you bought enough of these upgrades that probably raised the tier of the settlement. When squares spawned they were designated a tier and given a set of upgrades that matched that tier. It made sense, Grandmother would update the user manual with that theory when she got back.
The cash price for the doors was very high. The amount of glass ingots requested was impressive, but considering how much they harvested from the mining machines it seemed much more affordable. She would talk to the team and see if they were willing to use their resources to buy the doors.
Looking through the rest of the icons she found one that looked exactly like the protection crystal itself. The only purchase option for it was coins and a lot of them, more than Grandmother had. She thought this option must increase the lifespan of the crystal. Was this what the selkie spent their coins on?
The protection crystal icon appeared under the quest section too. Selecting the icon did nothing. There would be no hints on how to complete that quest. The glass door option was there as well. Selecting it revealed a table of numbers. Grandmother decided to put off interpreting those numbers until they saw the result of the training journey to the upgraded rest.
Grandmother finally got a hint of where the square's money was coming from when she started selecting the icons for the existing upgrades. The icon for the inn contained a ledger. Grandmother knew that the innkeeper was really the owner of the kitchen and common room. They made their money from the food they produced. They received only a small fraction of the room rent. The first two columns in the ledger appeared to be the date. Looking at the values, Grandmother decided the second column was year and the first was day. The highest year value, at the top of the ledger, was eleven. That was the age of Home Square. The first number was never greater than 372. The top entry was numbered 303, which was yesterday. Grandmother did some quick math in her head and decided the count did not start the day the crystal spawned. That event occurred late in the year when Grandmother was on her way out for the maintenance cycle.
She scrolled the entries up. The entries for the last few days, during Challenge days and three days before, the number in the third column were large. After that they fell off to a relatively steady value, that must represent the rent of all the people who called the inn their home. The last Challenge day was clearly visible as another increase. Grandmother identified the ‘the inn is never full’ event by a one day spike in sales. The numbers slowly decreased going back in time from there. At the date of day forty five, year one, the fifth column numbers changed to all zeros. At day seventeen the third and fourth column numbers changed to zeros. Except for the last line, which read one one five zero zero. Grandmother translated this to read, day one, year one, income five iron, zero, zero.
The cost for renting a single room in the inn was five iron. The ledger started at the first sale and was dated from that point. Grandmother thought the fourth column was the innkeeper’s share. It was a one twelfth fraction of the daily sales, rounded down. At least three rooms had to be rented before the innkeeper received a single iron. On day seventeen or eighteen rather, someone, probably the current innkeeper, rented the inn. Day forty six was about the right time of year for when the crystal spawned. The last column wasn’t the remainder of the inn’s earnings less the innkeeper’s fee, but it was a much larger percentage than what the innkeeper was receiving. Grandmother thought this was the crystal owner’s share. It was hard to calculate what it was, since the percentage varied. Most of the everyday usage was about half the earnings The Challenge days however netted the square a full three quarters of the earning column. Interestingly ‘the inn is never full’ event was something closer to only twenty percent.
The accounting for the vendor was similar. Only instead of the innkeeper’s column there was a column that included an icon of what was sold or bought. The column for payments to the crystal owner included not just numbers but the occasional material icon. Grandmother thought this was where some of the materials in the square’s inventory came from. It looked like if someone sold materials to the vendor, the crystal owner got a share of those items. If someone bought items from the vendor, the crystal owner got a share of the coins. The whole thing didn’t really make economic sense to Grandmother, since it didn’t matter if someone bought or sold from the vendor, the crystal owner profited.
The pay surfaces in the market were similar, the crystal owner got a share of every transaction. Or rather the square was paid for every transaction, proportional to the size for sale. It was a small fraction, but they added up. Grandmother knew that no money went missing from market pay surfaces. No one would use them if it did. She was sure she was getting a share of the shop and apartment rentals too. She wondered if she got paid for the transactions on the shop pay surfaces or the use of the inventory access points. Both of those could be additional sources for the materials in the square’s inventory.
She was getting the idea that Control was paying the crystal owner for getting players to use its services. Grandmother considered how the percentage paid from the hotel receipts went up on Challenge day and down on ‘the inn is never full’ event. Control’s reward was less if the person using the service was already a resident of the square, but went up when they were mostly outsiders. They were more than outsiders, they were selkie. Was that a factor in the reward? She considered how she wasn’t getting a flat fee from the pay surface transactions, but rather a percentage of the sales.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Control was paying a reward for the prosperity of the square. That was interesting. It didn’t fit with Grandmother's vision of Control as a psychotic killer with a personal vendetta against her. It didn't really even fit in its role as the narrator of adventure stories.
Prosperity in a square would lead to more comfortable lives for the inhabitants. Grandmother supposed that more skilled crafters would produce higher quality armor and weapons. Heroes could use that equipment to go out and die in glorious battle. It seemed like the coliseum was a more direct solution to that. Promoting prosperity in a square was a similar idea to the high quality dishes she’d bought in Seagrass. It wasn’t required. Not for an adventure tale and not for Grandmother’s idea that the prize at the end was the control of nanobots. It was just something… nice. It was like there was another mind at work here different from Control. Someone trying to build a life for those trapped in the structure.
Grandmother thought of the Tinkerer, looking up at her from the arena floor. She was pretty certain the Tinkerer was Control, so she didn’t know why she thought of it.
There was a knock on her door. Grandmother jerked in surprise. She couldn’t remember when someone had ever knocked on the door before. In whoever was knocking’s defense, Grandmother didn’t spend much time in the suite. She opened the door to find the innkeeper in the hallway.
“Please excuse the interruption,” Innkeeper announced. “There is a newcomer in the common room asking for you.” Grandmother was slightly amused that the innkeeper used the selkie word for human, although whoever was asking for her probably was human. With as many selkie that had been through the inn for the Challenge days, there was no way the innkeeper could have known if a particular selkie was a newcomer or not.
“I’ll come right down,” Grandmother responded. She grabbed her walking stick from the weapon rack on the way out of the queen’s suite. She followed Innkeeper down the stairs to find a total stranger standing at the service counter, half turned away from her. Suspicious, she narrowed her eyes and focused on them. The structure's augmentation dropped, leaving a clear vision of Valin. Grandmother relaxed her eyes, letting the new human illusion reappear.
“Valin,” Grandmother said in greeting. “We visited Seagrass and found you gone. Ellen was worried.”
“I relocated to OpenSky,” the elf explained, turning to face her. He showed no surprise at Grandmother knowing who he was.
“We’ll have tea,” Grandmother said to the innkeeper, before she turned to lead the way to her table. Valin sat at the end of the table, where Todd usually sat. Grandmother thought he just didn’t want to sit at the bench across from her that was for Companion. “Were you here for Challenge day?” Grandmother asked.
“I drifted in and out,” Valin responded. “It’s an easy trip through the halls from OpenSky. When is the training trip scheduled?”
“The day after tomorrow,” Grandmother responded. “I have a few things I need to pick up before the trip. Do you have a shop in OpenSky?”
“Yes,” Valin said, “there was no open space here. That was part of the reason I chose to settle there.” A server arrived with the porcelain teapot and the tiny cups. Valin accepted his cup. He sipped from it with every indication of pleasure.
“Will you hire someone to run it while you're away?” Grandmother asked.
“No,” Valin responded. “I am too new to the square to know who I can trust with it.”
“Yes, that is a problem,” Grandmother responded. “I have a shop in Londontown I’d like to reopen. I’d need to find someone honest to run it for me, but it has been many years since I spent any time there.”
“I can do that for you,” Valin said. “Find someone to run the shop,” he clarified. “That is one of my skills.”
“Hmm…” Grandmother said, as she thought it over. “After the trip to the upgraded rest you can look into that,” Grandmother responded. “Find three good candidates and I will pick.”
“Do you have any preferences? Magic color? Crafting skills? Male or female? Single or with a family? Young or old?” Valin asked.
“No one affiliated with the royal family,” Grandmother said, then she thought of Harry. Harry was a guard for the royal family in Londontown before he left to find a better future for his family. “No, scratch that. No one who is close to the seat of power. I don’t care if they worked for the family, or are some distant relation with no chance of inheriting. I will provide the merchandise, so they don’t need any crafting abilities.”
“What does the shop sell?” Valin asked.
“Furniture,” Grandmother replied. “Like what Alex is selling here. I want to expand it to sell books as well. If the clerk is trustworthy enough, I’ll even sell magic books.” Valin looked puzzled for a moment.
“What other books do you sell that don’t contain magic?” he asked.
“Educational books,” Grandmother responded. “The book shop here has a few I printed off at the Speedwell during the last maintenance cycle. Ask for the book on Earth history or the User Manual. Although with all the things you told us about the outpost interface we will have to issue a new edition of that one.”
“I’ll buy a copy,” Valin promised. He finished his tea, setting the empty cup down with some reluctance. Grandmother wondered how Valin would read the book. Did he know how to read human script or did his translator work on the written word?
“Join us for dinner,” Grandmother invited. “We will go over our final plans for content on the trip.” Valin agreed and rose to his feet. “If you run into Ellen at the shop, make sure you tell her you're alright,” Grandmother commented. Valin nodded his understanding. As he crossed the common room he passed Todd heading to Grandmother’s table.
“Todd,” he said in acknowledgement. Todd looked at the total stranger in surprise. He took in the man’s earring.
“Valin,” Todd responded, with a nod. He continued on. “So Valin’s turned up again,” he commented to Grandmother after sitting down.
“Yes,” Grandmother responded, sipping tea from her tiny cup. “He relocated his shop to OpenSky. Remind me to warn Joe about him, although I don’t think Betty will fall for him for a minute.”
“What did he want?” Todd asked.
“He was reporting for duty,” Grandmother answered. Todd noted the vagueness of that response.
“For the trip?” Todd asked.
“Yes and more. I believe he just signed up to be my spy master,” Grandmother replied. Todd leaned back and raised one eyebrow. He remembered she called Valin a tool that they could use or could be used against them. “I admit I don’t see much need for him right now, but when we get to the southern continent that might change,” Grandmother commented. That remark set Todd back. She didn’t say ‘if we get to the southern continent’, but when.