When we got there I realized that Jacob hadn’t given me the key. Thankfully, I was still carrying my lockpick kit and was inside in only ten seconds. Once inside we started making bread. Today we mixed equal amounts of wheat flour and white flour, as pure wheat flour didn’t want to rise properly and we needed to use it. By the time Jacob got there at 11:30 we already had one batch finished and a second in the oven.
I left Di working on the next batch and pulled Jacob and Paul over to the side. “Hey, I was thinking about something last night and was wondering if you might let me renovate the church’s clothing giveaway.” The soup kitchen was just beside the church. On the other side of the kitchen was an old store front where the church handed out clothing, blankets, and other necessities to the poor. I told the two of them about the System Market and how I could sell things to other countries with it. “I noticed that there was an Outpost Core in the market as well. It would need to be linked to my settlement, but it would let us trade goods between them, as well as let me set up a warehouse and trade terminal here. I could also give you a generator orb to provide power for all of that, the kitchen, and the church.”
Jacob thought about it for a minute. “How much would it cost?”
“I would have to use the System money I have, for now, but we can charge a small fee for using it to earn that back. Plus, the System seems to value precious metals, so you or other people can feed jewelry into it to get System money for now. It would probably take around twenty to thirty thousand Zerka to set up, more if I buy a teleporter so we can travel between the two, but you can pay me back once the outpost earns enough to do so.”
The three of us, and Di, were the only ones here that could actually carry System currency in our brains, but the Market Terminal could track the accounts of millions of users if it had to, then transfer that money to their Nodes when they fully connected. After explaining how it would allow them to store far more goods and trade with my settlement, Jacob agreed to it.
I sent a message to the man in France that had sold me the power devices, asking if he had any more in stock, and went back to work. A few minutes later he responded. He had built another two so far, and would sell them to me at the previous price. I would need to wait until I was back at my base to buy them, but I told him I would take them. I also added a power generator for five thousand, an outpost core for another five thousand, and a trade terminal for five thousand. I considered buying a standard warehouse, like I had at my base, but instead settled on the mark two version of one, at ten thousand. That bought the total up to twenty six thousand, not including the wiring and other bits I would need to hook it all up.
After the day was over, we checked the buckets again. A little over three hundred today, not including the jewelry, and the church had gotten several thousand in tithes during Mass. That should keep us running for a little while, though only a day if you counted the cost of food. We weren’t going through as much meat, though, which greatly reduced the cost.
“Before I leave, do any of you have any experience butchering an animal?” I asked. Most of them looked confused, but Paul spoke up.
“I’ve hunted a bit, and butchered a few. Why do you ask?”
“I have a source of pig carcasses, but didn’t know what to do with them. I plan on selling most of them to a meat trader, but if you can handle it, I’ll donate one per week to the soup kitchen.”
Mary looked excited at that. A donated source of meat would help out even more. Paul agreed to do the butchering, and I told him to follow us back to the base to pick it up.
When I got back I showed him to the cooler and he pulled out one of the bodies and carried it over to his truck, throwing it in the back. “I didn’t realize you were that strong.” I said. “I’m guessing they gave you a lot of J-17 in the army.”
He looked at me surprised. “Now how do you know what that is?”
“The guy we did that job for gave me a dose. It really helped with my muscle tone. Of course, I only got one dose.”
Paul nodded. “Yeah, I got as much as my body would take. And now.” He grabbed under the bumper of his truck and lifted up, lifting the back tires several inches off the ground. “Don’t tell anybody though. It’s supposed to be top secret.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t. I will give you a call if I need someone to deadlift a car, though.”
He smiled, and I noticed Tony pulling in with another truck following him. Three men got out of two trucks and walked over. “Hey, boss.” said Tom. “This here is Doug. He’s been buying up a lot of meat in town and selling it. He wants to take a look at the goods before he buys it.”
“Of course, right this way.” I lead him to the cooler and opened it, revealing the three bodies inside. “There they are.”
He looked them over. “I’m a bit surprised that you have that many. How did you happen to get them?”
“Tom found a farm outside of the city that still had some, and we cleaned them.” I said, repeating the story I had given them this morning.
“And how’s your supply.”
“Well, there are enough there that we can probably supply you with three a week for the next couple of months.”
Doug smirked. “Must have been a factory farm to have that many living after the plague. So, how does fifteen hundred each sound?”
“Two thousand each sounds better.” I countered.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
Doug nodded. “Well, I won’t make as much profit, but I recon I can pay that. Two thousand each it is.” We shook on it and he threw a tarp down in the bed of his truck. A few minutes later we had transferred the three bodies into his truck and he had given me six thousand dollars in cash. “After this, do you mind delivering them to my shop?”
“I can have Tom and Tony bring you three every Sunday afternoon, if you want.”
Doug nodded, thanked me for my business, and left. Once he was gone I congratulated Tom. “Good job finding us a buyer.” I said, then handed him and Tony a thousand each. “Now we at least have a stable enough income to pay a few more people.
They moved another load of Di’s stuff and I cooked supper. I still had that pound of ground beef and, while Di wouldn’t eat it, I picked up some pasta from Lawrence. I had to make it over a camp fire, as the propane tank in my RV was almost out and I needed it for heating, but by the time they returned I had supper ready.
After supper I sent in my order thorough the Market and all of the goods appeared. I loaded everything I thought I would need into the back of my car, then decided to add a few things to the base. The first thing would be to expand the bubble a bit so I could have more buildings. I bought an extra Outpost core and a Food Warehouse orb. The Food Warehouse was like a normal warehouse, only it only expanded the space by a factor of five. In exchange it could remove all air from within its field, control the temperature, and slow time by a factor of ten. It cost as much as a Warehouse 2 crystal, at ten thousand, but it would let perishable items like food last one hundred times longer than if we didn’t preserve them.
I then went over to the nearest building in the nearby shopping center. As long as the fields of the Outpost and Settlement overlapped the Settlement could send power to the Outpost, so I temporarily stuck it on Bob’s charging station until it was charged enough to overlap the fields. The building was a Gwendoline's fast food restaurant, with a giant red-headed mascot on the front window. I went inside and went into the back. Someone had already taken all of the food from the freezer and storage, but that didn’t matter. I went into the manager’s office and set the Outpost orb on a table. Once I set its field of influence high enough that it overlapped a bit with Gary’s I also set the Food Warehouse crystal in front of the walk in freezer. After connecting the two I had plenty of room to place food.
I moved the Outpost Orb into the utility closet where their power came into the building and disconnected the outside power line, taping the wire to the surface of the Outpost Orb. After a bit of configuring, the power came on and I could test everything.
I spent the next few hours cleaning up. They had cleaned up well enough when the place was closed, but salvagers had trashed the place since. I then put a sign on the door that the restaurant was claimed by the Settlement, and went back to my RV.
The next morning I woke Di up so that we could head out early and went to talk to Lawrence. Di had stayed in her RV last night, but Tony and Tom would be finishing her move tonight. Lawrence was also the kind to get up early, and after twenty minutes or so we had worked out a deal. I would buy all of the perishable food he still had in stock, including the produce that hadn’t gone bad yet, in exchange for twenty thousand dollars. The Food Warehouse could barely hold it all, as he had made sure to keep his generators running so that it didn’t go bad, but because it was within the Outpost’s area I was able to just transfer the food directly.
This surprised Lawrence and his daughter, who I now knew was named Olivia. I explained to him about the System, and how it could sell me devices that were more advanced than anything Earth could make and he just stared at me.
Olivia was the first to speak up. “So, this system can give me magic powers?” she asked. “I always did love those kinds of anime.”
“Well, not real magic. But it can fake it well enough.” I made a ball of light appear above my head and lightning crackle around my fingers. She seemed fascinated, but Lawrence seemed even more confused.
“And I thought Zombies was the weirdest thing I would have to deal with.” Lawrence said, scratching his head. “So there are now aliens and magic. I guess the apocalypse wasn’t what I was expecting.”
I told them both that I could connect them to the System if they wanted. Lawrence told me he would think about it, but Olivia agreed at once. I grabbed her hand and after a few uses of Align Nanites she heard the voice of her assistant in her head. She named it and wondered off to ask it questions. Lawrence just shook his head, thanked me for my business, and walked back towards the front of the store.
Once we were up front I offered to buy him a Warehouse orb so he could store all of the stuff here, but he turned me down. “I prefer to have all of my stuff out here where I can see it.” he said. Still, the ability to set up Market terminals and let people buy things through that did appeal to him, so he said he would think about doing it later.
We left soon after that. We were running late thanks to my delay in talking to Lawrence, and got to the soup kitchen five minutes late. Once we were there, Di went inside to help and I unloaded the things I had brought with me. Jacob let me into the building. There was an unused office in the back where I could set up the Warehouse crystal. I also set up the power source and the Outpost Core in the utility closet the same way I did at the restaurant. When I was done I plugged in the Market Terminal and started transferring everything into the warehouse, expanding it as I cleared out some of the rooms. The Warehouse 2 crystal could take up to two hundred cubic meters of space and expand it by a factor of one hundred, so everything in the packed building easily fit in the Warehouse it created.
I finished around 11am, and went next door to help them. The lunch rush had already started, but I was able to join in and help them out. When we got a break around 2pm I showed Jacob and Paul how I had set up things next door. The Market Terminal was in the front of the building, where anyone who wanted to could use it. The Warehouse held everything that was previously stored there. I set Jacob up as the Second in Command of the outpost, with Paul as the Chief of Security. That way they would be able to give the equipment here orders. I then asked them what they wanted to name the outpost. In the end we decided to name it after the patron saint of the poor and children, Saint Nicholas. It would have been more appropriate if we built the place a few weeks ago, on Christmas, but it still made a good name. Thus, Saint Nicholas’s Outpost opened its doors.
Jacob stayed next door to configure everything in the terminal and show the people how to use the equipment, and Paul and I went back to the kitchen to work on supper. By that night over three hundred people had gotten clothing or blankets for free from the Market terminal, and over a dozen had sold jewelry to it to earn Zerka. They didn’t have anything to spend it on yet, but the fact that my settlement could ship things in would allow them to do so soon.
Back at the base I ordered Gary to start setting prices for everything in the main warehouse and the food in the unnamed restaurant outpost. He wasn’t specialized in barter, but he could set prices well enough that I wouldn’t have to do it manually.
The biggest surprise was that Tony and Tom had managed to get the septic tank in the ground and started to run the drain line for it. In a few more days we would have proper plumbing and the outpost could finally have people move in.
While Tony and Tom spent the rest of the night helping Di finish moving in, I took a break. I had managed to set up so much stuff over the last week that I was tired. Luckily, the System seemed to have copied thousands of television programs and movies. Vera showed me how to access them and I spent the next few hours binging anime while laying in my RV.
I woke up the next morning to the sound of the backhoe. I checked my phone and realized that I had overslept. I quickly got ready and went outside, only to see that Di was already sitting in my car. I told Tony and Tom about the restaurant outpost, and that they could just get some food from there if they were hungry, and left.
Once we were at the kitchen I got to work. Everyone else was already working, so it took me a minute to get into the rhythm.
Once the lunch rush was over I sat down. “Long night?” asked Jacob.
I looked around to make sure Mary, Maria, and Gertrude weren’t around before responding. “No, I was just up late watching TV. I figured out you could watch it directly from the System if you were connected.” I explained the procedure to him and he was able to make it work.
“Should come in handy when I get some time off. I used to watch westerns all the time, but haven’t had much of an opportunity since the plague.”
“Well, now you can watch them again if you get the time.” I sighed. “Now I just need to figure out how to introduce more people to the System. I told a few people about it, but they were all confused. I can prove it to them, but I’ll look like a mad man if I just tell them about it.”
“That is a problem.” he said, taking the seat beside me. “When I was told about it, I was called into the Bishop’s office and shown a video some Cardinal had made explaining everything. I must have rewatched it half a dozen times before it all sunk in. Maybe you could do that.”
“Why would anyone believe the video, though? Sure, the people that use the Market Terminal might accept it as an explanation for why stuff appears out of thin air or disappears when they sell it, but that’s not all the System does.”
“What if I help you make the videos. Then we can work out the problems. Once we are sure we are ready, we can show the video here, and tell the people about it. Now, I don’t know if we can convince them all, or if they can actually connect to it at this point, but we we can try.”