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Operation Heathrow
Chapter 23: Big dreams and bigger clashes!

Chapter 23: Big dreams and bigger clashes!

The following day, after the eco-center was built overnight, Karine wonders just how large is the rent for it. Negotiating a lease just isn’t like negotiating an insolvency proposal, beyond the payment portion. In an insolvency proposal, you need to allocate the debtor payments among the various creditors, but I just don’t know much about local leasing practices.

Here it seems like Yenaleda drafted a lease agreement for the eco-center as if it was a finance, long-term lease. Especially since the rent appears to be a long-term lease with relatively high interest rates, probably higher than a mortgage.

“I wonder how long is the useful life of the eco-center…” Karine asks the other two at the start of the working day.

“Why?” a puzzled Yenaleda asks the human.

“Which leads into my next question: how are leases handled for accounting purposes?”

“I’m sorry, Karine, but lease accounting questions aren’t for you to deal with. You’re responsible only for managing the construction budget!” Billerica warns her.

“Right now, the construction budget represents the entire budget! Does this mean the leasing budget will now be separate from the construction budget?” Karine asks her boss.

Speaking of the construction budget, I might have given her too much autonomy over it, Billerica sees that Karine has purchased the quadruplex blueprint for T120,000. How is Karine different from her predecessor as project manager? Other than wanting to become caliph instead of the caliph, of course…

“I guess, yes; that way I should be able to pay the recurring bills when the rent payments come in without having to worry about debt payments getting in the way” Billerica answers her, before the next idea arrives.

“I wonder if there is enough demand for a homeless refuge to be quadruplex-sized. If so, maybe we can get some more rental revenue out of the town!” Karine suggests to her boss.

“It’s not that simple: a bigger refuge also means more staff, even if the capacity and demand was there, at least in the long run!” Yenaleda comments, speaking with a high-pitched voice.

“There’s the demand for the service and the ability to provide it. Sure, it would be less expensive in the long run to get more housing built, but you know by now that often short-run costs might be the big obstacle” Karine comments on the economics of operating homeless refuges.

“Now I have two people wanting to become caliph instead of the caliph! Do you think the town council would be happy to hear about how you want the homeless refuge to be twice as large as originally planned?” Billerica screams at his employees.

“There’s more nuance to the issue than you think! It depends on how serious the homelessness issue is to them” Yenaleda asks before calling the town hall.

So while Yenaleda asks town officials about the homelessness issue, Karine orders the construction of a quadruplex which, unlike the previous units, take longer to build, even when it requires five bots to build as opposed to three.

“Everywhere I look on this world, it seems like I hear about how people are forced to share a housing unit because of the rent. Yet a shortage of housing starts is symptomatic of issues in the construction sector. What makes the construction industry such an undesirable sector to work in, or start a business?” Karine asks her boss.

“What do you mean, the construction industry is undesirable?” Billerica asks her, while the construction of the first quadruplex is well underway. “Are you implying that no one wants to build anything on this world?”

“Not quite, just that I am made to feel like, even with construction bots, there’s something that makes me feel like construction is an industry people avoid” Karine answers a boss whose annoyance she can feel in the air.

“One more thing: sometimes I feel like we are growing too quickly as a company. When you arrived here, we built only bungalows in the swamp. Now you have us build an entire neighborhood’s worth of duplexes and quadruplexes in only a few short weeks? What’s next? Building condo tower-sized homeless refuges in suburban Pandemonium, right under the Senate’s noses?”

“Doing as you plan on doing will keep me stuck here forever! Once we become solvent, you can find another project manager for the long run!” Karine quips before freezing in place.

Oh boy, Billerica raises a lot of questions. First, he seems to be implying Pandemonium is the capital city of the world, or at least of a region of the world. Second, the way he talks about homeless refuges, he seems to be implying they are a political hot potato. That, even though the town obviously treats one as part of the solution to the housing crisis, Karine’s train of thought accelerates, as memories of Pandemonium’s role in the later stages of MAA’s life as a game resurface in her mind. In the past few days, I didn’t think of MAA’s world much, but… there might be more than one race of demons if that was the case, a Karine frozen in place keeps musing about the possibility of Taladu being a region on MAA’s world.

Or even a name given to MAA’s Hell by that race. And yet, only the swamp appears to fit a possible vision of a region in hell for now. That village she’s working on didn’t seem to be particularly hellish to her.

“Karine? Karine!” Yenaleda yells at Karine to try to snap out of her condition.

“What is it now?” Karine asks while yawning.

“You froze in place and you blanked out”

“Probably something I ate or drank, which made my brain more vulnerable to overload. However, the boss has a point: growing too quickly can cause cash flow problems”

And yet, the quadruplex is almost finished, which makes Karine a little relieved since it’s put for sale immediately after completion. She then starts planning the next step: the power plant. She also needs to buy its blueprint, which comes out to T120,000.

“The town said that, until the senatorial funds arrive, they will lease the power plant, but they feel like, if the need arise for more homeless refuges in the future, they will instead build a new one in a different district, rather than building a bigger one now” Billerica announces to his coworkers.

“Very well, I’ll buy the materials for it”

Karine realizes the materials’ prices have gone sharply down after the eco-center’s completion. Don’t be fooled by the promise of quick profits just because the eco-center allows us to obtain recycled construction materials at a little over half-cost. That, even though it’s a major expense that goes down. Even then, I can’t help but feel like it’s a trap.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Yenaleda, I feel like it’s a trap. I would like to double-check if there are any discounts on the sale of construction materials that require operating an eco-center, a bill that passed that makes recycled construction materials exempt from certain types of indirect taxes we paid up to this point, that kind of thing” Karine points at the new materials price schedule. “This feels too good to be true, especially when ramping up housing starts will make the demand for construction materials go up, even recycled!”

“Fine…” Yenaleda sighs. “I guess, I can always chalk that up to your lack of knowledge of our world, of our policy landscape more specifically”

“Karine, up to this point, you always seemed to get things done. But now I feel like you’re having second thoughts?” Billerica asks her, while making an offer on the first derelict he can lay his hands on.

“I don’t want to get us scammed! That will cause us to go bankrupt!” Karine remains on guard, believing that such discounts might result in them not getting any materials at all.

“What do you mean, scammed?” Billerica’s expression starts turning sour upon hearing the word scammed.

Already that the HCP is a desperate attempt to prop up flagging housing starts, the question is: what makes Karine think that the reasons behind the size of the discounts on materials could be our undoing? Billerica pulls the trigger on buying the maximum amount of recycled construction materials in one go.

Meanwhile, his skin is gradually turning green out of anger at Karine’s sudden suspicions, as the eco-center seems to convert waste teleported in from the nearest landfills into recycled construction materials.

“You had us buy five thousand tons of recycled construction materials?” Karine’s face turns red, knowing that overbuying any given item can do a project in, even when the items in question carry over to future projects. “I feel like the previous staff overstocked either housing or materials!”

“Sorry, but this Plan Iznogoud of yours will really be no good if we have inadequate inventory!” a green-faced Billerica shouts at her in protest.

Both people keep arguing about inventory management. But upon delivery of what Karine feels is a mountain of materials, bought for T125,000, she orders the demolition of the derelict multigenerational house Billerica bought while they were fighting over the potential trap of a discount that could be too good to be true.

After the demolition is finished, the power plant begins construction, but takes up the rest of the workday to five bots to finish. However, it’s only then that the quadruplex finds a buyer. While this was still much faster than selling these kinds of homes on Earth, I would have expected someone to have bought the quadruplex much faster than that, especially if a housing crisis was afoot. Still, T300,000 is a deal to me, Karine sees the offer being made, and takes it.

“And even if the growth does materialize, under the form of bigger HCP contracts, the residents of the new units, neighborhoods even, have infrastructure needs such as education, healthcare, and so on. Power and law enforcement just aren’t the end of the story here!” Karine vents to her boss. “You seem to treat residential construction as if houses are mass-produced commodities; we don’t build on that scale!”

“You might feel like you want to become caliph instead of the caliph at times, but the Senate didn’t think things through. Try to imagine the squabbling that took place in Pandemonium when the HCP was still a bill! Billerica tries to defuse the situation.

“Some might feel like the ability of residential builders to build a variety of buildings is an antitrust law concern” Yenaleda comments on the Senate imposing limitations on what can and can’t be built under the HCP. “And surely you understand the hellish process of getting institutional buildings built!”

“Yeah, competitive bidding, and sometimes architectural competitions” Billerica sighs.

“That doesn’t sound like an antitrust law issue! I would be more worried about poor urban planning to be honest” Karine retorts.

And, after they finish their work day, they eat more fried toilets, after which they watch a horror movie, for which the universal translator is deactivated. Unlike the last time Karine watched a local film, however, the little green men in the film don’t engage in consensual sex. It seems like opening a movie with a hancky-pancky scene is a telltale sign that their film is for a mature audience, Karine muses while she doesn’t understand anything of the native dialogue. And screams at the movie.

“Eeeek!” Karine screams, upon seeing a scene that makes her uncomfortable, but, without the universal translator, the other two don’t understand anything. “This is horrible! What these little green men are doing is just gory!”

Here it seems like Karine’s mind is hijacked by the sheer number of horrible actions taken by the villainous little green men, but, since she couldn’t understand the local language, she was unable to make heads of the motives of the characters. As such, she feels like watching the movie is, at best, watching aliens do horrible things without understanding why.

The following day, she awakens to find a derelict owner who decided to sell off their home, feeling like they can’t afford the repairs, even with insurance. And that, perhaps, T30k would be the best its owner could hope for, while renting either a duplex or quadruplex unit to stay in town.

“Try to find a tenant, or have the town temporarily use the gardening center as a farmers’ market until an operator can be found to operate it! I’m about to build it!” Karine instructs Yenaleda as the blueprint for it is bought.

And, of course, the derelict is demolished to make way for the gardening center, which is built around a barn much larger than a multigenerational house, but still fits on that quarter-acre plot. Complete with greenhouses and shelving.

“That’s a very short notice! The town might have to use the gardening center as a farmers’ market for a while…” Yenaleda complains about the task of finding tenants, while the gardening center is being built. “I might need to find tenants for the farmers’ market then, selling food, gardening supplies and equipment”

“Was the old gardening center operated by a big-box chain?” Karine asks her.

“No”

And, while the garden center is being built, Karine buys one final derelict, which she plans on demolishing right after the garden center’s completion. I might have enough materials to get the project here done without building additional units, but I feel like more construction bots are going to help in the future. Six bots might not be a whole lot, and more bots can’t hurt in future projects. However, more bots means I should build one more building before moving on from this town; after all, rapid but sustainable growth is the best way I found to get back home, since I believe my obligations would be finished once the initial debts are fully repaid, Karine feels tempted to build one more quadruplex before the homeless refuge gets built so she can pay for more used construction bots.

But as the local supply of derelicts dry up, she wonders if she should stick to the original Plan Iznogoud or follow through with the change. It’s tough: building an extra quadruplex is a surefire way for the project to take longer. Is the project taking longer worth the extra cost and rewards of building it? Or am I just kicking the can down the road? A puzzled Karine starts weighing both options in her head, while the garden center is getting built, and she promptly buys the first derelict coming up for sale in the area. Who am I kidding? However, it’s not a question of materials for now.

“Ta-da: the garden center is finished! There’s only the homeless refuge left to go, but…” Karine is interrupted by her boss, while she double-checks the construction budget against the proposed cost of purchasing additional bots.

“What is it now?” Billerica asks, his face turning green as the derelict gets demolished, and the debris, converted in minutes.

“I feel three more construction bots would be helpful in the future. Right now, we can only work on one plot at a time; for bigger projects, we might need to work on more than one plot at once!” Karine explains herself before the derelict bungalow is cleared. “Barring that, bigger buildings, such as quadruplexes and bigger, require more bots to build!”

Karine sighs of relief when she realizes that she has sufficient funds to proceed with the final phase of Plan Iznogoud and buy three more used bots while the duplex slated to become a homeless refuge is under construction. And maybe enough to cover the beginning of the next project, which Billerica is busy looking for among the HCP’s databases.

And, of course, the leases get signed with the town’s public works department. The town’s first homeless refuge begins operations as simply a place where homeless can find temporary shelter, while the administration tries to find the personnel required to make the refuge fully operational.

“Yay! Plan Iznogoud is finally complete!” an overjoyed Karine jumps for joy.