As I thought about it that night, however, I realized that the armor factory should be a separate thing, but that the car parts people could still make good use of the Factory. The next morning I sent a message to the people that owned the machine shop for making car parts. I offered to rent them the Factory in exchange for some sort of profit sharing on anything they use the factory to manufacture. They countered with an offer of one thousand per month. At that price they would be able to buy one of their own in five months. I knew that some sort of deal could be made, so I asked them to come by my office to discuss it. Thirty minutes later and woman in overalls came by my office. Apparently, she was the owner of the company, but had been under a car when I sent the offer. “Janet” she said, holding her hand out. I shook her hand and offered her a seat.
“My concern with accepting a flat payment is that the city could make much more money in the short term by using it to manufacture something else.” I said. “That would likely require a new city-owned business be started, however. Now that the town’s finances are starting to improve, I am willing to loan equipment to people which their companies can use to improve their own sales.”
“I’m not exactly comfortable with the government owning the factories. Sounds like communism.” she responded.
“That wasn’t really my intention. We just needed manufacturing and other businesses to get this town off the ground, and I was the only one around with the money to buy the machines.”
“So, you are the one that owns the machine and wants to loan it to me?”
“Now, that’s a good question. I was the one that paid for it originally, but I kind of gave it to the city. So, technically the city owns it. That said, there is nothing preventing you from buying one for yourself, so even though the government owns the machine, it isn’t really controlling the means of production.”
Janet thought about it for a few seconds. “Good enough. So, how would this deal work?”
I was glad we were discussing business and not politics now. I was much more comfortable dealing with money. “Basically I would let you take the equipment and use it however you wanted. In exchange, you would give the city, as the owner of the machine, half the profit you earn from that machine. That’s the same deal places like the gun factory and tailor get.”
“And how long would this agreement last for? I don’t want to be stuck giving you half when we I can afford to get my own.”
“You can just keep it as long as you want, and return it for us to loan to another person at any time you want. We might want to set a minimum amount on the payment, though, like 100 zerka per week, as I’ll be using this deal with other loaner equipment and only want to loan equipment to people that actually use it to improve the economy, but keeping it as long as you can turn a decent profit is fine.”
“Still, seems kind of strange for you to just offer us a machine out of the blue like that.”
“Well it was just sitting in storage, and I thought that it would be better letting it earn money than sitting in a warehouse. Besides, you are the first real independent business owner, and might be able to use it. You see, the most broken part in cars is the computer, followed by the other electronics. If you can make more of those we can revive pretty much every car in the city. That could be quite a lucrative market.”
“I suppose so.” she said. “By ‘profits’ you do mean after expenses, right? Because the gun guy is sending you 50% of sales.”
“That’s because the city provided everything for the gun factory, including starting capital and raw materials, so half of the profits is half of the sales. In your case they aren’t the same. In your case, profits would be calculated as sells minus expenses, so you would deduct wages, material costs, etc.”
She nodded. “In that case, I would love to use the machine. One hundred minimum to 50% of the profits it is.” I quickly had Vera write up the agreement, and sent it to her. We then both signed it electronically and got a copy of the signed document with the hash for digital security, so no one could change it later.
With that, I transferred renter’s rights to the machine to her so that she could remove it from the warehouse. The System would recognize her as the manager of the machine and let her control further access, with only myself or another city official having further control, and only then if their role gave them that access, like Simon accessing its records if he had a warrant as part of a criminal investigation.
I checked my messages and saw that Gary had notified me of the new generator being finished and how, thanks to the massive increase in the energy it was receiving, the next generator will be ready in less than a day. I asked him about manufacturing Teleportation platforms and he informed me that the parts could be printed individually for a total of three days per device. It would essentially be a prefab device which could then be assembled on any flat surface with at least a two meter radius area. That meant that it would take us four days for each platform we set up, for sixteen days assembling the four of them. It looked like I reached that part of a city builder where you can start rapidly expanding, but this was real life.
I posted a message on the bulletin board about the Machine Loan program, offering to buy the equipment you needed to start a business in exchange for 50% of the machine’s profits, with a minimum of 2% of the machine’s cost per week. This would mean that, even at minimum payments, the city would be paid back for the devices in less than a year.
The next two weeks passed quickly. Many groups of people came by my office to set up new businesses in town and wanting to rent equipment. They set up in the buildings around the main settlement, and I had to expand the field of the settlement to a one kilometer radius to cover all of the machines so they could be supplied power and buy materials directly from the warehouse or market. I gave the salvage crews one week to claim vehicles within the expanded area before I absorbed them, but never really got around to doing that due to having other responsibilities.
The teleportation platforms were set up in both outposts and at the Alf village, thanks to the fact that you could make a second nanite forge with the first one. I considered having one of them constantly make more of them, but realized that we wouldn’t really need to do that. The town was really growing now, thanks to the influx of people from the city, but our industry was already more than the people could support.
Once we had a connection to the Alf village we brought in a massive number of trees and started producing lumber. That lead to houses being built everywhere in the village. Both construction crews switched to building houses, and the concrete we were producing was quickly being used up to pour footers for buildings where the asphalt had been torn up in the parking lot. This meant that I had to put in two additional Automated Mines at the stone quarry, and even made them a micro nuclear reactor to power everything. The chemical plant was working 80% of the time to produce all of the raw materials the people in town were demanding, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before I would need to buy another one.
With all of the upgrades the city was now making around two hundred thousand zerka per week. Things were really looking up for us.
Then one day we got a message from the mines. They had come under attack by a group of dog and lizard people who tried to steal the equipment. They had managed to chase them away, but several miners were injured in the attack, with one of them dying from a blow to the head. They estimated it would take him three days before he was revived, more if there was memory loss as the backup memories might take a few days to be restored.
I didn’t know much about these dog and lizard people but assumed that they would be another two alien races. Who better to know about aliens than another group of aliens? I took the teleporter over to Solinan Bascabana, which I learned meant “Fort Solinan”, named for Lord Tarn’s grandfather, and asked Lord Tarn for assistance. As our trade relationship had given him the financial security to buy a Portal Arch and bring in several hundred more serfs, he was more than happy to lend me one of his scouts. The one he sent with me was the same woman that had visited our town when they first introduced ourselves.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Grilk.” she said upon seeing the corpses.
“Was that an expletive?” I asked.
“No, that’s their name. The furry ones are Greater Grilk, the reptilian ones are Lesser Grilk. They are generally salvagers that show up on worlds new to the System to pick through the ruins of whatever society existed there. If the civilization still exists, they aren’t above piracy to get what they want.”
“I would call them Kobolds.” said Olivia, walking over. She had built a firing range nearby for people to test their firearms and attack magic at. “Both the canine and reptilian types exist in fiction. Strange that two different races share a name, though.”
“That is because they are actually the same race. About one thousand seven hundred of your years ago some of the ones on a desert-like ecumenopolis world developed a type of atavism that caused their reptilian ancestry to shine through. That type was able to stand the heat much better than their fur covered cousins, and became the dominant variety on that planet. Because they were a racial minority, however, they have been persecuted since then by the other race. Which makes it strange that they are working together.” She looked them over for a few minutes, hoping to find an answer to that mystery, before continuing. “They are part of the Galactic Commerce Alliance.”
“So, like an interstellar megacorp?”
“When they first began they were just a mega corperation, but for the last few thousand years they have been using their power to sieze control of any world that interests them. And it appears Earth may be one of those worlds. These Grilk were corporate slaves, forced to attack you or else face unemployment, which, because the Corporation owns all the businesses in their society, means death for them and the families they support.”
“Then we can expect the attacks to continue?”
“You probably have a ten-day or two before they come at you in force. This was a small strike team. They won’t attack a strong settlement without an army of at least twice their numbers, to guarantee victory.”
“Can I count on your people’s help, then?”
“That would be up to Lord Tarn, but I suspect so. The GCA is a threat to all peaceful races and settlements on this planet.”
We returned to Fort Solinan where we told Lord Tarn about what happened. He agreed to send out scouts to locate their base and watch their troop movements. His settlement still had less than four hundred citizens, so he couldn’t afford to spare any troops to aid us, just a single advisor to teach us about the enemy and advise us on our preparations. As the scout woman he sent to our mines would be needed to watch the enemy, he instead sent Silan.
We returned to the town where I issued an emergency bulletin, advising the people about the attack on the mines, and that we would be temporarily shifting city resources to building defenses and further preparing for the attack.
Silan informed me that the first line of defense should be a good wall. The GCA rarely provides its soldiers with armor piercing weapons, so even a simple wall should be able to keep them out of your settlement for a while. This was why Fort Solinan was building a palisade wall around their core settlement.
Realizing that we could do far better than a palisade wall, I asked Gary what it would take to build a concrete wall around the Town. He informed me that there was a device that could automatically build buildings for you if you had the raw materials, but that it would be much slower than using a construction crew for simple builds like a wall. I asked him to design the blueprints for a three meter high, half meter thick wall around the town. He decided to embed an additional two meters of concrete beneath it underground, to help prevent tunneling and to help stabilize it.
As he worked on that I sent a message to Paul, informing him about the attack and asking him to lead and help train our troops. If he didn’t want the job, I would at least like him to help train the troops and could use his advise on finding a captain to lead them. I also informed the two construction crews and the sewage/line crew that I would like them to help build the wall.
I then got to work purchasing things that would be needed to scale up production. Ten more automated mines, 50 thousand zerka. Seven would go to the mines and three would be used here to quickly dig the trench where the wall would be poured. Two new chemical plants, to help the old one deal with all of the new rock that was coming in, 10k. A new concrete plant, to make all of the concrete we would need, 2.5k. Two Extruders, which could turn metals into wires and rods, which would be used to make rebar to reinforce the walls, and the wire to tie the rebar together, 5k. Two smelters to deal with all of the iron ore dust that the mining was producing and turn it into steel, 5k. I would have the two nanite forces make two more Generator 2s, one for here and one for the mine. All of that would total 72500 zerka. We still had a lot of money to use to get the place set up, but I would likely need to use it to buy military hardware, either from the production businesses or the System.
After setting up all of the new pieces of equipment, I found Silan sitting in the bar, drinking a beer. “is this some type of Ale?” he asked. “Unusual taste, but not unwelcome.”
“Not sure. I think it has some sort of plant called ‘hops’ in it, but I don’t know much about how it is made.”
He nodded. “Do you realize that since I arrived here two hours ago, three women have attempted to proposition me? We aren’t even the same species, yet one emphasized that it would be ‘on the house’ whatever that means. Is she expecting me to climb onto the roof for public fornication?”
I sighed. Business must be slow, as it was only the afternoon. “On the house means ‘free’.”
“So, they are prostitutes?” he asked with a shocked look on his face.
“Yeah, this bar is kind of doubling as a brothel at the moment. We had gender segregated housing for a while, and built this place to deal with some of the issues that and a lack of privacy caused.”
“I am surprised that you allow such an unsavory place in your settlement, much less in a well traveled area like the middle of town.”
“Well, it was actually kind of my idea. Technically, I just wanted them to build rooms in the back so couples would have a place for private activities, but many such women asked if they could pick up customers here. I allow it to continue because their rental fees pays most of the bar’s expenses. They are being a bit too proactive in their work, but it’s probably because they are attracted to you.”
“But we are different species.”
“That isn’t really a problem for many humans. You are enough like us that I doubt many women would reject you simply for being a different species.”
“But we can’t procreate. What would be the point of pursuing a relationship with me?”
“For most humans it is more about supporting each other emotionally than it is about procreation. For some, it’s just about entertainment. It varies quite a bit.”
He took a gulp of his beer. “How vulgar. Your culture is quite unusual.”
“I’m sure your culture has some traditions we would find unusual too, but we are willing to learn.”
He nodded. “So, how are you preparing so far?” I told him about how I scaled up the mining operation and would be making a half meter thick, three meter tall concrete and rebar wall around the entire town, with only the main road going through a west and east gate. I also told him that I invited an ex military special forces man to help train the troops. “What is ‘concrete and rebar’?”
I further explained to him that concrete was the ‘artificial rock’ under his feet, and how the metal ‘reinforcement bars’, which rebar was short for, would greatly increase its ability to handle impacts. He asked for a demonstration of this durability once we got a section of the wall completed.
As we finished our conversation Paul walked in and I introduced the two of them to each other. Silan was greatly impressed by his physical size and assumed that he was a melee fighter. Paul countered that he could kill a man equally well at range. Well, he used to be able to, but now that the plague went through the human population, it was very difficult to actually kill anyone anymore.
“What do you mean?” asked Silan. I explained to him how the plague gave anyone that survived it perfect health, including fixing all diseases and faster healing, and that they all essentially had a skill called ‘Immortality 1’ which would do its best to revive them after death, even if it had to absorb body parts to do that.
“I read a story about a woman in Mexico City that got shot in the head, and the nanites ate half her right hand to get the materials they needed to revive her, then regrew her hand over the next week.”
“So, all of your people have this ability to come back from the dead? This ‘immortality 1’?”
“Well, only the ones that weren’t connected to the System before the plague.” I answered. “The System prevented you from getting it, so they never got the trait. Though you have to have the System to have it as an official skill. I and Paul meet both criteria as I learned it while finding a way to treat the plague and sent the skill to all of the System users I knew, including Paul. I also found a way to bring those that survived the plague into the System, so the vast majority of my citizens are plague survivors that are part of the System.”
Silan nodded. “This will greatly change how the war goes. With you not dying permanently, you will never lose troops.”
“It also causes an issue.” I countered. “If they enslave my people, I will have no choice but to try to liberate them, as they won’t even be able to end their slavery through death, and the plague effects will extend their lives.”
ives.”