“So, that’s the story.” said Simon before sitting down. We had moved into the CEO’s office in the office building, as I left the stuff in it in place in case I decided to use it. For now it would be acting as my office.
I thought for a few minutes. It seemed like a simple misunderstanding to me. Our people thought they had claimed something, the other people thought they hadn’t, and claimed it for themselves. This resulted it some tension, which caused them to resort to violence.
“Ok, here’s the way I see it. The outside group had no reason to suspect that the car was claimed, so they claimed it. You did believe you had claimed it, and tried to take it back. That resulted in a fight. Is that correct?” I looked at the man that was stabbed. Marcus, I think.
“Yeah, but it was ours. Just because the flier got blown off doesn’t mean it wasn’t.”
“You didn’t really take that into consideration when you claimed it. Why didn’t you use those markers to just write on the hood or windshield?”
“You want us to deface our own car?”
“You’re just hauling it back to the Market so that you can scrap it, right? The System isn’t going to care about a bit of marker, or even a broken window. All of that will just be turned into raw materials.”
Marcus shrugged. “I guess.”
“So, here’s what I’m going to do. All of the hybrid and electric vehicles, besides the one you guys fought over, belong to Marcus’s crew. The one you fought over, and any of the others they want to properly claim within thirty minutes will belong to Darrel's crew. In order to clear things up, I will then extend the field of the settlement to cover the place, and give Marcus and Darrel temporary permission to send their claimed vehicles directly to the Market for scrap. Any vehicles that aren’t claimed will then be up for you or others to claim them from tomorrow onward. Just make sure you write “Claimed by” then your team name or your name somewhere where others can see it, in something that can’t be easily removed. That way no one will mistake your claim as something that is unclaimed.”
“And the injuries?” asked Darrel.
“The way I see it, you two were both justified in self defense. Though stabbing a man for trying to pull a guy from under a car is too much, it made sense to think he was going to do more than that. You both were seriously injured, but you should both recover, so that whole issue kind of balances itself out.” The two men nodded. “Now, if’s that’s everything, lets head over to the garage and get this sorted out.”
I don’t think either of them were happy with the outcome, but isn’t that what negotiation is, finding a compromise that neither of you are happy with? Hopefully, they will both see my decision as fair enough that they will continue working in the area.
Once we were there, I gave Darrel’s crew thirty minutes to claim any non-electric, non-hybrid car they wanted. They all had permanent markers, and were writing their claims on the hoods of the cars. When they finished, I expanded the field and the two of them went to send their vehicles directly to the Market. Thankfully none of them tried to transfer a vehicle they hadn’t claimed. Once they were finished, I returned the field to normal and revoked their permission to send things directly to the market.
It seemed Darrel's group came out slightly ahead. They earned 23782 zerka, while Marcus’s group earned 22687 zerka. Still, both groups were happy with the massive salvage they had brought in today, and by the end they both had agreed to have a drink together at the newly opened bar. They did have a twenty minute wait to get in, but it seemed to be worth it.
With the new influx of money from the salvage groups and the bar, we made more than normal for the next several days. The influx of money into the local economy lead to two people setting up their own businesses. One group had saved up enough money to by a Factory Station and was starting to make metal car parts. They had seen how long it took Marcus’s crew to find what they needed to get the tow truck up and running, and were planning on just making any parts people might need from the local supply of steel. The other group were going to try and open up a trade route between here, the alien settlement, and the city. There were plenty of things that we might have have that one of the others might want, but they simply never thought about it. The System didn’t charge a huge amount to move goods, but at the amount of trade they were expecting once the three economies were developed, those small charges would add up.
Three days after the investigation ended, I decided that there was one thing that we needed to truly expand the base, something that I had overlooked. That was a Nanite Forge. If given the proper materials, it could make any of the System devices we could order at significantly lower cost, it would just take time to do so.
After the device arrived I asked it to make a Generator 2. It told me that it lacked the necessary materials, but if it had them it could make one in eight and a half days. That seemed a bit longer than I had hoped for, and when I checked it was less than ten percent of the Forge’s maximum output. It seemed the problem was power. Until now the two Generator 1s we had been using were more than enough for everything. What excess power we had was mostly going to Bob to speed up the growth of food, with Gary storing any that was left over. Now, however, the Nanite forge needed all of the energy it could get to grow one of those devices, and we could only supply it less than ten percent of what it could use.
What about a Generator 1? That would take one day, seven hours. Much more reasonable, but it still didn’t have the raw materials to do so. I asked it to make a list of anything we had in storage which contained minerals it could use, and surprisingly the number one item was bulk stone from the mine. Now that I thought about it, stone did contain many different elements in trace amounts. It would, however, take over nine hours to extract the minerals it needed.
I pulled the chemical factory out of storage and told it to start processing the raw stone until we had at least a kilogram of thorium in stock. The Forge didn’t need any radioactive minerals to make the generators, but it was a suitably rare mineral to base the levels of other minerals off of for now.
An hour later the Forge reported that it now had enough materials to make a Generator 1, and had begun construction. The chemical factory was much faster than the nanite forge at breaking down materials, it seemed. I told Gary that once that generator was complete he should have it send 100% of its power to the Forge, and start producing a Generator 2.
I looked through the Market for other power solutions and came across something that seemed more like what Earth would use, a micro nuclear reactor. It could take a kilogram of thorium, uranium, plutonium or other fissile or fertile material and, burning around thirty grams per day, would give you 100,000 Ko per day in power. This was on par with an 800 kilowatt reactor, but was only the size of a basketball. And the best part was that the mine and the chemical factory working together could produce 80 grams of thorium and 20 grams of uranium per day, enough to run more than three of the reactors at full power. And they were cheap, at only 5000 zerka each.
I briefly considered having the Forge make one of them instead of the Generator 2, but I didn’t want them to require shipping radioactive materials. Sure, the System could move them safely, but I didn’t want to risk nuclear proliferation. For that reason, I would only use them here and at the mining camp, where we already had those minerals. For all other outposts I would use the standard Generators.
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With our power issues now handled, I decided it was time for some more diplomacy. I pulled out my flying disk and went to the kitchen. It was after noon on a Sunday, so the place was open. Apparently, the place had expanded across the road, as they had set up tables and chairs in many of the buildings there and Mary and Gertrude were making meals appear out of the warehouse to serve to the people that were sitting there. I soon found out that the place across the street functioned as a restaurant, with everything there being paid for dishes. This allowed them to raise enough money to buy preserved foods from Lawrence and some of the salvagers in the area and run the kitchen.
Jacob was free to talk to me at the moment, as he was now working more as a manager than kitchen worker, so we walked into the kitchen to talk. “Hey Jacob. I see everything was going well for you here.”
“Yeah, the influx of money from the Market Terminal is really helping out a lot of people. The number of people the Kitchen needs to feed decreases every day as more and more of them have the money to buy their own food. Honestly, the only thing that still makes us busy here is Movie Night.”
I smiled. “I actually came to ask about maybe connecting this outpost to my settlement in a way that would let people move between them more easily. It won’t be cheap, but I can put in a teleporter that will be able to move people between here and my settlement. Maybe you could even come and visit us.”
“If it’s expensive, I assume you’ll want some way to earn money on it?”
“I was thinking of just charging people to use it. At one zerka per kilometer per hundred kilos it will probably work out to around five zerka per trip per person. That should pay me back for the device eventually.”
“Might be a bit less than that, as the people seem to have lost a lot of weight. The System is good at that.”
“Still, the way I want to set it up, it can move up to five thousand people a day, and will make the energy cost of shipping between us cheaper. Even if we only average two thousand a day, that’s ten thousand zerka per day, and the device only costs seventy five thousand, paying me back for it in about a week. Once it’s paid back, I can drop the price even more. Maybe to a tenth of that.”
Jacob nodded. “Sounds good.” He said. I arranged to have the second set of generator and teleporter brought here as soon as it was finished, with the settlement getting the first one.
I then set off for the alf settlement to the north. When I got near and woman flew out to meet me, one of their scouts, but when I mentioned that I was the mayor of the settlement Silan had visited I was allowed to land.
The place looked more like a settlement from the seventeen or eighteen hundreds than something you would expect aliens to build. Most of the buildings, not including the Lord’s manor in the center of the town, were log cabins, though some of the newer ones were made of rough hewn boards in a medieval style, with whitewashed walls. The lord’s manor seemed to be a modern style two story house, probably once belonging to the park ranger that watched over this area. I landed beside the Lord’s Manor and Silan came out to greet me. “Oh, Mayor Greg, it is good to see you again, though I must admit I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I’m sorry about that. I should have sent you a message first, but I was visiting one of my outposts about setting up a teleporter there when I realized that you might also be interested in the offer.”
“A teleporter? Isn’t that a bit expensive for a village our size?”
“Well, normally it would be, but I have an offer I was hoping I could discuss with you, about allowing me to place one here, and simply charging your people to use it.”
Silan nodded. “It would open up more trade between our people, though I don’t know what we could offer you.”
“I had an idea about that as well.” I noticed a group of people standing around listening in while talking quietly in another language. I should probably download the translation skill.
‘Do you want me to get it for you? It will only translate the literal meaning of their words at first, but it should adjust in time.’ Vera said.
‘Sure, please do.’
It took a few seconds for the program to download, after which I started getting the literal meaning of their words. “Short range movement device” was a common phrase, which is what I assumed they called the teleporter.
Silan lead me into the Lord’s Manor, where I met another man who was even taller and stood straighter. “This is Lord Tarn.” he introduced. “Lord Tarn, this is the human I told you about who was the Mayor of the town to the south, Greg.”
Lord Tarn bowed slightly, which I returned. “It is good to meet someone as powerful as yourself.”
“Powerful?” I asked, and Lord Tarn looked a bit puzzled.
“In our society, the size, military might and economic might of your settlement determines the station of a noble.” explained Silan. “Your settlement beats this one in all three categories.”
“We have no military, though.”
“However, your city militia is well trained, much larger, and carries some sort of technological weapon which is superior to most of our weapons.” Lord Tarn responded. “I believe you call them ‘guns’.”
“Oh, yes. I have been trying to train my people to better use the system, but we are doing so out of simply a desire to better ourselves, not train an army.”
“Never the less, your military might is superior to ours.” he responded. “But I believe you came to us with a proposal. Would you like to sit down? I believe humans prefer having meetings while sitting instead of standing.”
“If you wish.” They lead me too an ornate office with a new desk and several leather padded chairs. He must have had his best people make the furniture, judging by the jump in quality of the woodworking compared to that of the houses.
“So,” Lord Tarn said after we were seated, “what do you propose?”
I explained to them how I had an outpost in the city and a mining outpost, both of which I would be placing teleporters at once my Nanite Forge made them. This would allow them to move both people and goods between the three areas at a tenth of the energy cost, with non-living things being able to move at one-tenth the power of a living thing anyway. I then offered to place a teleportation platform and Generator 2 in their village. The generator would primarily power the teleporter, but if it produced excess power it could give that power to the settlement. I would only charge for people to use the platform. As they were a poor village at this point, I would start them off at the lower cost of point two zerka per kilometer per hundred kilograms, for an estimated average cost of one zerka per person, one way.
This would open them up to trade with the other outposts, and would allow other people to come to this settlement to set up businesses or spend money, though as it was his territory he would be able to regulate what they could do here.
Lord Tarn was concerned about what his people could provide, as their village was in the middle of the woods. I explained to him that we and the city had very few trees, and would therefore not have enough wood to build what we needed. While in the city most of their use of wood use would be in upgrading and modifying buildings, most of ours would go to building new buildings. I also told him about the sawmill I bought from the System and how I could handle processing the wood that would be sold to the city if he wished, or could share the standard measurements for wood on this planet with him if he wanted to purchase one himself and process the wood.
Now that they had a guaranteed export, he believed that their economy would greatly benefit from the teleporter. He agreed to let me set one up here, and asked Silan to have a building built for it, essentially a gazebo to keep rain off of it.
I thanked him and told him that I would add his village to the network once the city outpost and my settlement had teleporters, and Silan offered to give me a tour around the settlement.
It seemed that they were attempting to save money by basing their economy on older industries. They, of course, had a massive lumber industry, but also potters, tanners, hunters, and a smithy. None of these places required System devices to run, so all of the zerka they had spent was on a massive Warehouse 3, Food Warehouse 2, a market terminal, and their settlement core. The Warehouse was used to store most of the lumber they had, as well as any stone or ores they found. They were currently disassembling one of the ranger’s two vehicles, a 2021 Ford F150, for steel to make all of the tools they needed, and only about half of it was left in the warehouse. The food warehouse seemed to only contain the food they brought with them, as well as the few animals they managed to hunt and the few edible plants they managed to find, as well as half a pig which they had purchased from us. According to Silan, the hunting was very poor, with over half the animals they find being undead, and therefore worthless for food.
They also had a tailor, though as the only material the man had to work with was leather, he didn’t have much to do. I told the man about our tailor, and how we had salvaged huge amounts of cloth, and could sell him some. He looked overjoyed to have proper cloth to work with.
As the sun neared the horizon, I said goodbye and flew back home. There I noticed that things were far more lively now that the bar was open. Maybe morale would improve more.
I found Lawrence sitting near the camp fire, drinking beers with Tony, Tom, Di and Simon. “Hey guys and gal” I said, landing nearby and putting away my floating disk. I looked like a certain static powered teen hero from the nineties any time I used it, but so far no one seemed to notice.
“Hey, Greg.” said Tony, offering me a beer. I turned him down, but joined them anyway. “So, Lawrence was just telling us about his plans for his store.”
“Yes, I’m going to set up booths inside that merchants can rent to sell their wares. I’ll even bring in merchants from the city once the teleporter connects us.”
“You mean like a flea market?” I asked, and Lawrence seemed annoyed.
“That’s what I said,” said Tom.
“It isn’t a flea market,” said Lawrence. “More like an indoor city fair or a trade show.”
“So, are you going to specialize in what you are selling?”
“Well, not at first, but over time as I get more people wanting booths, I was thinking about turning it into a kind of gun show. This town’s main export is weapons, after all.”
“That could work, though we will need to expand the gun production quite a bit in both volume and variety first.”
“No problem.” said Lawrence. “I already spoke with Philip. He’s planning on moving his production into one of the dorms once everyone moves out and turning it into a proper factory, hiring another dozen people at least. Seems he picked up a ‘weapon smith’ class when he chose the RP paradigm and is really getting into making guns.”
“Sounds nice. Maybe we can add an armor factory too. I know we have that group that have started making car parts. Maybe they can expand into making power armor too.”
“That would be nice. Probably a lot further away than the gun factory, though.” I made a note to talk to them later. After all, I had that Factory in storage. Maybe I could loan it to them in exchange for some sort of profit sharing.