But until the homeless refuge construction’s ends, Karine is kept up at night because of her inspiration for writing a jumbled mess she calls a horror movie script on her phone. Which she used mostly as a notebook because she knew the telephony services wouldn’t work.
She reports to work, a little tired, and lets her phone recharge. She then overhears Yenaleda pleading with the boss to buy her numbered company out since its loans are repaid in full. As are the dividends.
“Karine, we already sold all sixty units in these two condo towers. Start building the towers!” Billerica yells at Karine.
“What does that imply for your debts?” Karine asks her boss at the onset of the condo towers’ construction. “I didn’t tell you this before, because you regularly told me that I wanted to become caliph instead of the caliph, but you might need to get debt counseling to prevent an Evergrande kind of situation from happening! No opportunity lasts forever, nor is every opportunity worth pursuing!”
Evergrande was way over-leveraged, and pursued opportunities it had no transferrable expertise in. Like food, healthcare, automotive and entertainment industries, Karine ruminates while awaiting an answer from her boss.
“Yeah, you should be able to pay the payroll out of rental revenue going forward” Yenaleda comments after Billerica buys out her shell company for about a year of salary.
“Now that the initial debts are fully repaid, Karine, the debts incurred for you will be repaid, too” Billerica uses the proceeds from the sale of condos to repay all outstanding debts.
Thank heavens for this! I can hire another employment agency to get me another project manager to replace Karine. She was, simply put, unpleasant to work with. She might have known what she was doing, but she asked too many questions, she always seemed like she knew better when it came to housing and society, or business strategy, Billerica ruminates, then puts a job posting for Karine’s replacement.
He starts daydreaming about moving into one of the luxury homes Karine’s predecessor built but was unable to sell, as well as the price of one such house. So, while the luxury home market might have crashed, condos and rental homes, on the other hand, appear to skyrocket.
“In a day or two, we’ll move into a new home. I’ll check against the list of homes Karine’s predecessor built and got subsequently foreclosed before her predecessor was fired” Billerica then shows the contents of that list to his two employees.
The two are shown an eclectic selection of homes. Some of these appear built as if carved out of molten metal, while others were clearly designed by non-Taladuans. Each of the styles appear to reflect the race of damned, or demons, that designed home blueprints with it.
“For some reason, my predecessor seems to have built McMansions reminding me far too much of the McMansions in my neighborhood on my home world!” Karine has come to realize what her predecessor built.
Some of these homes, across a variety of styles, remind me of horror movies, while others remind me of my days of playing MAA. And even of why I even started playing MAA back then: I initially looked at MAA as I had a horror RPG at the time. About stuff being out to get me, and sometimes questing inside haunted houses, she starts thinking about what got her through the leveling stages of the game. Good thing the damned don’t seem to mind abrupt changes in architecture within the same neighborhood.
But because Karine knows they can’t build more than two condo towers at a time, and the lead time to get the materials is far shorter than their construction time, she decides to leave the two Taladuans to their own devices when they are shopping among a selection of high-end homes. And to continue writing her horror movie script while watching the real estate market for more properties to tear down. Ideally two more properties.
Yet she realizes that, because they are no longer building affordable housing, as defined by the HCP, the cost of materials is much higher than they used to pay. So rather than to pay a quarter of a million talas to buy 5000 tons of construction materials, they end up paying at least 40% more depending on how fast they want the shipment to be delivered. By nightfall ideally.
“Since I might not be working here for much longer, I have a few questions: first, do the following location names mean anything to you? Heathrow, Perseria, Tartarus” Karine asks Yenaleda.
“Tartarus? That’s at the other end of the caliphate! And now that you mention it, Tartarus falling to Perserian hands sent the whole caliphate in a state of panic at the time” Yenaleda explains to her, and bulbs flash in Karine’s mind.
Monseigneur and Clavet both kept telling me about the plight of Perseria before and during the race to world first of Operation Heathrow. However, Yenaleda mentioned the capture of the Gates of Tartarus, and I fought Charon some time before the Gates would have been released as a one-boss dungeon! Karine’s memories of playing MAA resurface in her mind, but stops making any progress towards writing her horror movie script.
“Did the caliph attempt to make peace with Perseria afterward?”
“Yes. Heathrow and Perseria agreed to relinquish their possessions on the eastern bank of the Acheron River, which is, to this day, the caliphate’s western border. And the caliphate closed its borders, while they mutually agreed not to deploy troops on the other side of the Acheron”
“For a place that so many called Hell, what makes this world hellish is mostly about the natural environment. What happened?” Karine asks Yenaleda.
“It seems like these losses against Perseria and Heathrow caused political tremors in Pandemonium. So many among the so-called damned blaming the defeats on stuff such as excessive bureaucracy and poor morale caused by poor living conditions inside the caliphate, and the then-endless torments”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Now that Karine has a better idea of what happened on MAA’s world after its war of independence, she looks for a world map in Hell’s equivalent to the Internet. Once she takes a photo of it on her phone, she resumes writing the horror movie script while Billerica is busy looking for an employment agency that can get him a project manager to replace Karine. And, later, contact Xerrid to announce the termination of Karine’s employment, and pay her severance.
“This is Billerica, I would love to know whether Karine can return safely to her world, especially since I’m unsatisfied with her. She kept trying to become caliph instead of the caliph, pontifying about housing and society, as well as financial management!”
“It took us several days to track down what caused the teleporter to malfunction and get Karine to you” Xerrid explains to him. “But was she doing her work properly at least?”
“I mean, yes, she was able to get housing units built, up to these condo towers. But do you have any assurance that she can safely return to her home world, if you were to use the teleporter on her now?”
“Yes. We tested the repairs against various objects, and then on other off-world employees we placed” Xerrid attempts to placate him, while the convo continues.
Once the first pair of condo towers is completed, Karine starts demolishing the two properties she managed to buy while juggling the writing of her very own horror movie script.
Which is centered around post-pandemic Evergrande and, true to form, features tons of unfinished condo towers. Oh crap, I believe the concept I’m fleshing out might work better as a horror game, as opposed to a horror movie. Either way, the main antagonist is a horde of people whose life savings went into buying an unfinished condo. However, neither would rush the plot the way these movies Billerica made us watch might have had, Karine starts realizing that, even with better pacing, she otherwise has no real idea of how to write a horror movie script beyond a setting, an inciting incident and characters. Am I writing a horrible zombie apocalypse movie script that doesn’t rush the plot, only with a protagonist based on post-pandemic Hui Ka Yan?
“Construction is now underway for these two new condo towers!” Karine announces to her boss, while the construction bots start building the two new condo towers.
The demand for these condos by the damned of the region proves so great that they could sell all 60 condos in these towers in a matter of minutes. And at the same prices as the previous 60 units.
Which makes Billerica buy an additional lot of 9 used construction bots, in three-unit packages. And, hopefully, some other city being willing to let them build more condo towers.
But once he cashes in the proceeds from the sale of these condos, he goes back to choosing homes among a catalog of foreclosures left behind by Karine’s predecessor. And this throws him in a tailspin, since, for all the managerial failings of Karine’s predecessor, he was at least able to get homes built.
Now that he has enough money to repair the wooden cabin, he plans on doing so after he leaves the cabin behind, and later use it as a rental property. He also plans on booking movers once his selection is made.
“Now that my obligations towards you are complete, I wonder how long it will take to find a replacement for me…” Karine sighs.
“Probably a day or two” Billerica answers, while asking for the flooring contractor Karine’s predecessor used to get the flooring rebuilt, using ceramic tiles, as opposed to the old hardwood floor. “I’ll review the reports from the employment agency before making a final decision, and then I’ll drop you off at Xerrid’s”
Hopefully Karine’s replacement will be more singularly focused on building and managing its associated expenditures than Karine was. That her replacement won’t try to become caliph instead of the caliph, or otherwise ask too many questions, Billerica ruminates, while Karine goes to sleep.
But, while Karine is asleep, she rolls in her bed, painfully reminded of why she stopped watching horror movies and started playing horror games instead. About the need to have some level of control over what’s happening, since her nightmare is about loss of control. I might accept that I won’t have complete control over anything, but being unable to determine what I can and cannot control is another matter entirely, Karine ruminates as she awakens from this nightmare.
She also realizes that what makes her idea of a horror movie script better suited for a horror game is, well, the impact the lead’s actions is going to have. At the onset, the lead is loyal to the Chinese Communist Party. Throughout the story, the lead’s loyalties to the CCP will be tested, and the consequences of being loyal to the CCP vs joining the anti-CCP wronged homeowner elements of the horde must be weighed, and must be done on an ongoing basis. While, in and of itself, this concept is nothing new in horror gaming, or even a rich protagonist facing the harsh consequences of their actions, who am I kidding? I’m a licensed insolvency trustee, I don’t think I would be a very good indie video game developer, horror or otherwise. Crap, I can’t seem to decide which one would be better for this idea of a horror story, a movie script or a video game!
After her morning routine is done, Billerica gives her another bit that doesn’t seem to faze her at all.
“It appears your predecessor might have added customizations pre-emptively, and piecemeal, which added a layer of complexity to shopping even if I restricted myself to the foreclosures your predecessor left behind”
“Like what?” Karine asks, her eyes rolling upon hearing about preemptive customization.
“An indoor rock-climbing wall, a sauna, an observatory, and these are just the start!”
“I expected things more like a torture room, a grand chandelier and/or staircase, or a pipe organ! Or other kinds of fancy fixtures that go beyond just adding crown mouldings sold by the kilometer!”
“I am combing this list of unsold foreclosures because it’s MY company who built these!” Billerica’s mind then turns to the reports from another employment agency about candidates for Karine’s replacement.
By the time he fills out the paperwork, Karine prepares to get out of this creepy wooden cabin, and presumably out of this world as well, packing her meager belongings she was teleported to this world with. Yet she feels her brain overheating. For some reason, this corner of MAA’s world feels like a horror movie set, I can no longer feel welcome in a world where people treat homes as they would have stocks on the stock market. But perhaps things could have been different if I landed on this world in either Heathrow or Perseria…
“Are you ready, Karine? I’m afraid that getting out of this world by using Xerrid’s teleporter will cost you your entire severance pay, plus your regular pay, net of payroll taxes. However, you don’t need to worry about taxation since payroll tax is one of the main Pandemonian tax levies”
“Good”
Good, because then I wouldn’t need to declare any income earned here on my tax returns on Earth, Karine’s mind lies heavy as she boards Billerica’s car to get back to Xerrid’s employment agency.