Why aren't they doing anything? That was the question ringing in my head. I had made the general assumption that when I finally got Anna to take the deal, the H.A.A. would move pretty much immediately to block it but... nothing. They hadn't said anything for or against it, and that was bugging me.

Right now, though, I have more pressing concerns. Dad and Miguel were going back and forth over the plan for the housing, and Miguel was getting ready to launch into a full rant, "Look, I get the idea, but this ain't your specialty. Buying them up individually won't work like you think it will."

Dad jumped in, "We can negotiate with the banks on it. The idea's solid."

They were both frustrated. This had been going back and forth for a bit, and I stepped in, "Guys! Okay, let's see if I have this right in my head. Dad, you're convinced we can do the housing deal, but I think what Miguel is saying is that the approach is wrong. I'm looking at debt collection agencies, and how they do it is to buy up batches of debt at a time, which is how they get the more absurd deals. And looking at it, Miguel's right. The plan won't work as it is... not yet, at least."

I didn't like that Dad was obviously hurt that I'd taken Miguel's side, but I mean, what am I gonna do, lie to him? It was right there. Buying individual mortgages wasn't the direct shot he thought it was. The banks would see us coming, and fight to keep the amount as high as they could, to recoup as much as they could. Even if it went the way Dad thought at first, we'd get maybe one or two homes saved before the banks shifted tactics, and closed out not only us, but anyone else trying to affect the same outcome. The central idea, to help people before they got to the losing their homes point was good, but the approach wasn't as solid as he was thinking it was. Dad could be stubborn, and in a lot of ways, it helped him rise up, willing to keep pushing when a lot of other people would have given up, but everyone has their flaws. Miguel, on the other hand, was arguing from a different place entirely.

He had watched this go down, watched his own father lose his house, so by natural persuasion, he should be gunning for this. That he wasn't, that he was taking a swing at it, spoke volumes, "Look, we all want the same thing here, we're just arguing the best way to get to a solution. Take a minute, neutral corners, and give me some time to consider how we move forward."

They both got up to go at the same time, but I motioned Miguel to stay. Their backs were up, and I needed them both to stay away from each other. Miguel's face said it, I hate that I'm right. I'd had the same face enough recently that I could scent my own. Dad needed the time to calm down and listen, and Miguel needed to not feel like a total shitbag, "You remember when you told me I couldn't have saved the people I fired at SolCo?"

He nodded, but the near-constant smile was gone. I exhaled steadily, "Okay, it's almost noon. Let's go get lunch."

Our office was half-living in Cubo and a couple of other nearby restaurants by now, so instead, we went over to Sizzle Pie. Pizza was calming, and they sold by the slice. Miguel didn't talk on the drive over beyond the basics. He wasn't being rude, he'd just had to tell my Dad that he couldn't save people like his pops, "You know, both you and Dad told me I can't save everyone, and you're both right, but you both also seem to think you each should be able to. You couldn't have stopped it, and you weren't wrong here.

"This can't be about what feels good, it has to be about doing it right, and that means we're gonna fight. Everyone we're hiring on believes, and from what I've seen, the believers will fight, even if it turns into fighting each other."

Miguel took it in, "I just wish I could do something. I'm such an asshole, and then I gotta sit there and tell a guy that he can't jump in t'help guys like Pops."

I considered, "Well... that's not precisely accurate. There may be guys like your dad that we won't be able to help, or help in time, but we can help Pops."

He snapped up, "Que?"

I took a big drink of my soda, "You said it. Your dad worked construction for twenty years. That's a full Ph.D., internship, residency, and well into a doctor's career as an attending. We'll need someone to act as a liaison between us and the construction folks working on the mall, to say nothing of any stuff we're going to have to build coming up. They have to know how it works, and he fits the bill, and he knows it from the ground up."

Stolen story; please report.

The smile reignited, and he responded entirely in Spanish, "I can't wait to tell him!"

I winced, "You can't."

"Come on, ese, why not?!"

I looked up at the ceiling, "You're still his kid. Most likely, he'll see it as pity. Not saying you're not a man, I'm saying that your dad is still gonna see Mijo, not the man. Don't be so bummed about it. I can't give the offer to him either, since I'm actually a child."

He closed his eyes, "Your dad."

I smiled, nodding, "Oh yeah. That's gonna be a fun talk at the office."

He chuckled ruefully, "Yeah... about your dad. Is he really good to run the real estate side of things?"

I thought for a moment and considered it, "Don't know, but to ask the question: Is there any other company where you're running the financial end of things, and not just manning a desk? We try, we test, and we adapt. It's all we can do, and frankly, it's important we're doing things this way. Now come on, let's get back to the office, and get our dads working together. No chance of blowback on us with that!"

Following lunch, things were calmer. Dad had gotten food in him that Mom would have objected to. Much as my diet was all over the place, Dad would live out of the Taco Bell drive-thru if the man wasn't stopped. There are a thousand places in Portland to get really great Mexican, and yet, I could recite his go-to order before the 1% power had even become a thing: Chalupa Combo, beef, no sour cream, add spicy ranch, a soft taco, large Baja Blast, and two cheesy roll-ups. Apparently, they used to sell something called a Baja Beef Gordita, and that was as close as he could get now.

The trip through the South had fucked me in at least one way: Our sweet tea and fried chicken options were shit. I'd had the real thing now, and the bullshit version here just didn't cut it anymore. Ah well, not enough time in the day for this problem, but I would set aside time later to correct it.

I got back to work, and resumed the fight, "Okay, so giving it some thought, I have a compromise solution: For now, until we've got the capital for it, what we do is a partial plan. We help with refinancing, and help people get more favorable terms to help avoid foreclosure in the first place. We can buy the actually bankrupt properties, and put them up on a rent-to-own basis, as opposed to trying to straight-shot this. Later on, we can revisit our options, but just for now, we need to do what we can do."

They settled it, and shook hands, before I called back as I exited the conference room, "Oh, and we need to hire Hector Suarez. Ask Miguel about it. Off to code!"

I did need to get coding and walked right into the next argument, World War Nerd. Fuck, I do not have time for this, "GUYS! We're using Unreal. It's done!"

Patrick started to object, but I just cut over him, "I am going to code in Unreal, so your options are: Make useless script we can't use, or use Unreal."

I didn't really care that much, but Unreal had the benefit of being more set for doing direct code, as opposed to Unity, which was designed for snap-to. In the general sense, it was the superior engine for starting studios, but we weren't the typical studio. At this point, between my typing speed, coding knowledge, and Technopathy ability, it just wasn't a contest. Okay, time for my next thing.

I called my team together, "Okay, we're instituting a new policy. For the last Monday of each month, while you do still need to come to work, you can work on whatever you want for that whole day. No quotas, no meetings, nothing. The only rule is that the next day, share what you've worked on. I don't care if it's current stuff we're working on, stuff we've released, or new things that you've thought of. It doesn't even have to directly concern your section. Share it. We might implement it immediately, we might not, or we may wait on it, but bring those ideas forward."

Fully admit, I was cribbing notes from various places. I'd arranged meetings, and organizational charts around the ones used by Naoki Yoshida, who'd rebirthed Final Fantasy XIV. Same thing with deadlines, essentially asking what the shortest times were for a given task, and what the longest times were, then setting the deadline somewhere in the middle. The last Monday idea was from the TedTalk on motivation, and there were a half-dozen other things I was taking from other sources of management. I encouraged playing games that competed with the games we were looking at producing because I wanted to be sure that everyone actually knew what they were walking into, what the expectations of the games were, where they fell short, and what they did well. Know yourself, and know your enemy.

I got to coding, creating the baseline code for an incremental idler. The irony of me sitting at a computer building an incremental wasn't lost on me, and I did spare a short laugh at the irony of what I was making, but it was really more of a thought exercise, getting the foundations down rather than coding a proper game. I had to start failing faster, to get the rhythm down. It broke, it froze, it went off the rails in so many spectacular ways, but I kept advancing.

With things settling down at the office, myself, Dad, and Miguel went to see the mall we'd bought. We took the boards off around the middle of the place, and.... fuck. The interior was pretty trashed, with wiring that had been stripped for copper, sections of ceiling torn out to get at it, and water damage, it was all over the place. Yeah, I kind of expected it, but man, it still sucks. There were some folks there, having snuck into the interior, and using it for shelter. They didn't bother us or anything, more or less skittering off. It was a prey response, which meant they saw us as predators. Not a great start. There was so much work that needed doing.

Oh well, that's for tomorrow. Tonight, I was taking Merida out trick-or-treating.