Farmer

by Tom Larcombe

  Sounds like what I was hoping for, Eddie thought.

  “Okay then, I know what I want,” Eddie said.

  “And that is?” Aaron asked.

  “I want ownership of this farm. You can auction it and make sure you've got the high bid, or do it however you want, but I want this farm claimed as my own. Registered as purchased land, not a land claim.”

  Aaron's eyes narrowed.

  “Now that's clever,” he said. “Killing something like three birds with one stone?”

  “More than that,” Eddie said. “This way I get the land, I get the farm, and I've started to establish residence in the Meadowlands. I intend on selling vegetables along with the meat on a stick starting tomorrow, and I can put in whatever crops I want after this first harvest, assuming I let these crops go to harvest. I'll have to see what's planted first. On top of all that, I get to double dip since I'll still get my share of whatever you determine the value of the farm to be.”

  “There's an inventory book in the farmhouse,” Paul said. “It shows everything that ought to be on the farm, as well as what's planted where.”

  “Good, that'll help,” Eddie said.

  “How are you going to ship your crops?” Aaron asked.

  “I'm not, I'm going to make a land claim and build. First it'll be a boarding house type of deal, to start with anyhow. Then I'm going to try to make an inn. The crops will provide a good portion of the food the inn serves.”

  “Wait, you're going go tie yourself to something like that?” Aaron asked.

  Eddie shook his head.

  “Nope, for a little while maybe, but if it pays off, and I'm sure it will with the number of adventurers I saw near the trading post... So let me correct myself to when it pays off, I'll hire employees from the NPCs. I'm betting that those houses near the trading post are occupied by some NPCs that might like a job.”

  “You're going to hire the occupants of the hamlet?” Aaron asked.

  Wait, Eddie thought. Why did he emphasize hamlet like that? Help hamlet.

  Eddie didn't get a response to his request for a help file. As he thought about it, his grin grew wider still.

  Oh, please tell me I'm right, he thought. Help player hamlet.

  Player Hamlet:

  A player hamlet is a small village. It is considered a player hamlet when the player either owns the land it is built on or the player employs at least twenty-five percent of the occupants with no other player employing a higher percentage or owning the majority of the land. The occupants of the hamlet will look to the player as their leader. Although no taxes may be levied at this level, the occupants of the hamlet may volunteer assistance to improvements being built for the hamlet.

  A hamlet is a small community of up to fifty occupants. A well-off hamlet will attract more occupants over time, slowly growing.

  “Yes,” Eddie cried out.

  Aaron just grinned at him.

  “I think we can handle that request,” he said. “Once it goes through you'll get a notification. After you check the notification your deed will appear in your inventory. It will not take up a slot and you can pull it out at will, just like any of your other items. Just look for the sheet of paper icon, symbolizing paperwork I guess.”

  He grimaced with his last few words.

  “It seems that even in games I can't get away from paperwork,” Aaron continued.

  “Where do I sign?” Eddie asked.

  ~ ~ ~

  Chapter Fourteen

  Aaron logged out of the game with a sigh of relief. Now that he had all the releases that Mr. Greenshaw wanted maybe he could get some sleep in the real world. He quickly dialed Mr. Greenshaw's number.

  Mr. Greenshaw answered the phone in his normal, brusque manner.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “Sir, I have all six of the releases for you and we came in well under budget for placating the men being experimented on.”

  “Good, good, how's the progress on tracking down that server you said had the code we need?”

  “I'll need to check with our contractor to find out, I just got back from getting the last release.”

  “Well, do so, then let me know how long it's going to take.”

  This man just doesn't get anything related to cyber, does he? Aaron thought. It's like he thinks there's a guarantee we can find it if we work hard enough. How the hell did he manage to get put in charge of Light Online?

  “I'll get in touch and see if he has an ETA for us sir. There's no guarantee he will have made any progress yet though.”

  “What are we paying him for then?” Mr. Greenshaw bellowed over the phone.

  “Because he's the best option for finding it sir,” Eddie replied.

  “That was a rhetorical question. Get back to work,” Mr. Greenshaw yelled, hanging up when he was finished speaking.

  Aaron sighed. Instead of calling the hacker he'd hired, he sent an email instead, figuring that he could honestly say he'd contacted the man if he was asked, but this way he wouldn't jostle the man's elbow while he was working. Then he immediately left the building, heading home for a shower and a lengthy nap in his own bed.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Claiming land already Eddie?” Paul asked as they left the bunkhouse.

  They turned towards the farmhouse. Eddie had decided that since he'd own the farm soon, he might as well start enjoying the benefits of it a little early.

  “Well, probably not until tomorrow or the day after, but yeah, soon,” Eddie replied.

  “Well then, do you want me to run you off some claim stakes?”

  “Some what?”

  “Heh, it's another thing the game is really sketchy about the help on. The only reason I found it was because I was looking at the blueprints I'd generated.”

  “The blueprints?” Eddie asked.

  “I figured you knew all about those, you were talking about making buildings,” Paul said.

  “Uh, yeah, I was hoping to. My Carpentry skill is only a one so far though.”

  “That explains it, I didn't find out about blueprints until my Carpentry got to a five. That's when you can start generating simple ones.”

  “What are they for?”

  “To reduce the chance of a failure in building something. Some of them are guaranteed. For example, the claim stakes. But for the farmhouse here, I had about a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right first shot. Getting the blueprints made for it dropped the chance of failure by another forty-nine percent. It would've done fifty percent but the game doesn't give a one hundred percent chance on building anything complex.”

  Eddie blinked.

  “Can you use them before level five in carpentry?” he asked.

  “Sure, anyone with carpentry can use them, so can their helpers. See, how they work is when they're applied to the area the building will go in, they give a translucent image of what goes where. It's a lot like a paint by numbers deal, just with heavier lifting. So, you put in everything where the image shows and if you do it right, the image goes away. If you do it wrong, the piece you put in wrong gets outlined in red and you can try to adjust it. But the only failure I've gotten when using a blueprint was when someone passed off some poor materials on me and I didn't catch it.”

  “Sounds awesome. Can you make blueprints?”

  “Only simple ones at my level. I bought most of mine from an architect.”

  “How about something like the bunkhouse, but with walled off areas for each of the beds?”

  “Oh yeah, I could run one of those off. I made that same bunkhouse nine times now, only ever bought the first blueprint. Once you've made something you can sketch that blueprint back out if you did it correctly and you have enough skill, either in architecture or the carpentry specialty dealing with whatever it is.”

  “How much?” Eddie asked.

  “You're trying to get me where I need to go. If you manage to arrange that, I'll give you the blueprint for that for free. Sound like a deal?”

  “D
eal,” Eddie said, sticking out his hand. “And about those claim stakes?”

  “Those are simply used to mark the corners of your claim. The last one you set will also show a number, which is the number of acres in the claim. If you mark your claim with them it's considered ironclad, unless you try to claim land already in use or already claimed by someone else.”

  “Then yes, please. I'd love it if you'd make me some of those as well. Four ought to be enough, I'm thinking a long rectangle bordering the road.”

  “You said you wanted to make an inn?” Paul asked.

  “That's just the first step. I've got bigger plans than that, but I'll have to go one step at a time.”

  “Well, let me know when you want to build the inn. I'm more than happy to run through some of my blueprints with you and see if any will work for it. I'll even give you a discounted price on them.”

  “I was wondering if you might be interested in doing the actual building, maybe for a stake in the profits?” Eddie asked.

  Paul laughed.

  “You are a sly one, aren't you. But why would I want to be stuck out here even longer? There's nothing here.”

  “Yet,” Eddie added. “There's not much here yet, but it's not going to stay that way.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Eddie took possession of the farmhouse, offering Karl and Paul their choice of the bedrooms after Eddie had claimed his own. He searched through the house and discovered that there was a single door that he couldn't open. Paul couldn't open it either, nor could Karl with the lock picks he'd purchased from Old Jeffries.

  “Hm, I didn't actually put that room in,” Paul said. “It's an add-on. See, it took a part of the room next to it. That one was bigger before.”

  “But you've got no clue what it is?” Eddie asked.

  “I have a guess,” Paul said. “If I'm right, that door will open for you after you receive your deed to the farm. Since the farm was a business, it qualified for a control center. It's a very small business so you won't have lots of options, but that would be my guess.”

  “Well, it's dark out and I'm beat. So I'll check it again whenever I receive the deed, but for now I'm going to bed,” Eddie said.

  “I'm not tired yet,” Karl said. “I'm going to go back to the kitchen, I think I saw a cask of ale in there.”

  Eddie's ears perked up at that.

  “Well, maybe I'm not as beat as I thought. A drink or two before bed would go down pretty nice.”

  The three men went into the kitchen and discovered that Karl had been mostly right, the cask was a cheap beer, not an ale. They all grabbed a glass and sat down at the table. Paul asked how Eddie had been doing in the game, and since Aaron had already spilled the beans about the most important part, Eddie went ahead and gave him the rundown.

  Two hours, and four beers, later Eddie made his way to the room he'd claimed. He sprawled out on the bed and was asleep almost instantly.

  The dream started again, as it had most nights recently, but before he'd even finished recalling his entire day, he felt a warm comforting presence, the memories of the day growing washed out by the warm golden light that surrounded him. He woke up slightly, just enough to break out of the dream.

  “Thank you Freyja,” he mumbled, and then fell back asleep. The rest of the night passed dreamlessly.

  When Eddie woke, he saw his notification icon flashing. He pulled it up, ready to dismiss the well-rested message he'd expected, only to find a second notification as well. When he clicked on it, he caught a flicker of motion from his inventory icon. He popped it open and found a new icon on the list, this one a sheet of paper just like Aaron had told him it would be. He opened it and scanned through the deed to the farm, a grin breaking out on his face.

  Huh, let's go see if I can open that room now. If not, maybe I'll cut in through the wall of the adjoining room if I can manage it.

  The knob opened easily for him now and he stepped into what appeared to be a tiny office. The inventory book Paul had told him about rested open on the desk. Beside the desk was an angled wooden panel with three sliding knobs in the middle of it. He bent over to read their labels.

  The first was labeled crops, and the knob was set to the number fifty-five. The second was labeled livestock, with the knob set to ten. The third, and final, knob was labeled garden, and it was set to thirty-five.

  What do those do? he wondered. Let me look through the desk and maybe something will explain it.

  There was nothing in the desk that looked like it would explain the knobs, but he did hear someone moving around downstairs. Hoping it was Paul, and that the builder could shed some light on the function of the sliding knobs, he went downstairs.

  Paul was moving around the kitchen and the smell of eggs and bacon hung heavily in the air.

  “Oh, hey. I hope you don't mind, I raided the pantry.”

  “I don't mind in the slightest, just as long as you're making some of that for me too.”

  “Sure, the bread's a little stale, but since I'm toasting that, it shouldn't matter. Just give me a couple of minutes here and we can eat, I heard someone moving around upstairs, so I cooked enough for two.”

  When Paul sat down, the two started eating. As they did, Eddie explained what he'd found in the locked room and asked Paul if he had any ideas what it was.

  “Like I said, it's a control room. So they must control something about those three things. The three numbers do add up to a hundred, so maybe it's a percent of how much effort goes to each individual thing? But that wouldn't make much sense, they had you guys as farmers and could just tell you where to direct your efforts.”

  “Yeah, I noticed the percentage total. Do businesses generate energy or something? Could it be how much of the farm's energy is focused on any one type of thing? The crops came up really fast after Ross got here, so maybe he adjusted it to work that way?”

  Paul shrugged.

  “Sounds like a reasonable guess. I imagine there's a help file on it somewhere, but I'm betting it's one of the more esoteric type ones like the land claims and such.”

  “I think I'll test that theory. I haven't even decided if I want this batch of crops or not, I didn't look in the book so I don't even know what they are yet. But I know I have a use for the garden stuff. So I'm going to swap the values on the crops and garden. If the garden grows faster after that, then I'll know I was right. It'll be useful for keeping the inn supplied after I build it if that's the case.”

  “So when are you going to talk to those people for me?” Paul asked.

  “This afternoon. This morning, Karl and I are going to go hunting. When we get back we'll harvest a bunch of stuff from the garden, then we'll head down to where the adventurers are. Once we get there, I'll take a few minutes to talk to Tiana for you.”

  “Thank you for that, but you may want to go hunting without Karl. He was still up drinking when I went to bed. We did find out that there's a root cellar with another couple of casks of beer in it though. That's where the bacon and eggs were also, it's a lot cooler down there.”

  “Damn it Karl!” Eddie said.

  Actually, you know what? Eddie thought. He's just been tagging along, doing whatever I do. I should probably ask him what he'd like to do and maybe we can do that for a bit. It isn't fair for me to just keep dragging him along and not even asking him what he wants to do.

  “You're right. I'll let him sleep it off. I was going to try to hunt deer today, but I'll put that off for a bit until he's ready to go with me, if he's willing to hunt with me still. I'll just stick with bunnies or partridge today, although probably more bunnies than partridge, there's a lot more meat on the bunnies.”

  “I can make myself useful this morning too,” Paul said. “I'll make those claim stakes for you and start working on the blueprints for the altered bunkhouse.”

  “Use whatever you need to use from around the place. It might still be where you're used to it being? I don't know if Ross moved anything around or not.”

&nb
sp; “Okay, well, you taking your cat with you? He didn't seem to take that much of a shine to me last night and I'd hate for him to have a problem with me.”

  “She, actually. I think she'll be fine. She was just nervous from having been near all those adventurers last night. I'm not sure, but I think it was a group of adventurers who set the snare she broke out of. She shied away from some we saw on the road as well. But yeah, she'll come hunting with me. Hell, she'll probably catch more rabbits than I do.”

  Eddie stood and went back upstairs. His first stop was in the control room where he moved the knobs, switching the values for the garden and the crops. On his way out, he noticed a little chalk board over the door with his name written on it. There were three lines on the board and a piece of chalk sitting on the tray beneath it. The board was labeled 'Access'.

  Eddie quickly chalked in 'Karl Rostov' below his own name. He debated adding Paul's as well, but decided that since Paul just wanted to leave as soon as he could that he wouldn't bother.

  Maybe I'll hire someone to run the farm for me. If I do I'll put their name in, he thought.

  He went back to the room he'd claimed for himself and emptied his inventory, tucking away the items he wouldn't need for his morning hunt, then armored himself up, made sure he had his bow and arrows ready, put his throwing sticks and staff back in his inventory, just in case, and headed outside.

  As soon as he whistled Lucky came running over to him.

  “Hunting this morning girl. Let's go see if those bunnies I saw before are still to the north of us, shall we?”

  He headed out in the best mood he'd been in since joining the game. Now he was a landowner, had a substantial amount of currency by his standards, and was out hunting with Lucky on a beautiful morning. He took a moment to revel in just how real the game felt as he walked. The wind on his face was slightly cool and carried with it the scent of the stand of pines he saw a few hundred yards away.