Farmer

by Tom Larcombe

  The building was usable at that point, but there were still things that needed to be done. The shower stalls and the wooden boxes and sluices that fed water to them still needed to be made, the interior walls had to be made, and then all the doors. What he figured would be the last thing to get done was the fence around the edge of the roof. People would come up to fill the water boxes, so Eddie wasn't going to skimp on the fence. It would keep anyone up here a lot safer.

  But I think it's time for the stalls and associated shower items. Then Tiana can have her shower, he thought.

  The boxes and sluices were separate items listed on the blueprint, although he built them in place anyhow. When he finished the first one, he stared in amazement. Sap and resin flowed out of the wood, sealing the tiny gaps between the planks. The entire box took on a slightly glossy finish when the moisture finished moving.

  Huh, natural sealant. I wouldn't have thought of that.

  He went back downstairs and outside, then selected the first of the shower stalls. Those were easily and quickly made. Then he had to try out his idea. The original blueprint showed metal hinges on all the doors, but he didn't have any of those. Instead, Eddie pulled out some of his rabbit pelts and cut them to shape. Using the hammer and nails he'd taken from the tool shed on his farm, he attached the door with the leather hinges and breathed a sigh of relief when they didn't flash red. The prompt that appeared in front of him was a little irksome though.

  Blueprint: Bunkhouse – modified

  Your use of leather hinges will increase door deterioration rate by 50%. Do you wish to continue?

  (y/n)

  Yes, he thought. Although I'll replace them as soon as I can get some real hinges.

  The stall and door shimmered and instantly the cracks and gaps between the planks were gone, the rough planks now having a firm seal between them. A hint of the same glossy surface that was on the boxes showed up on the walls of the stall.

  He tested the door, swinging it open, then closing and latching it.

  Looks good, he thought.

  He walked inside and stopped when he actually looked at how much progress Tiana had made. The entire fireplace portion was completed and she was stretching up, standing on her tiptoes, to place rocks higher up the chimney.

  “Hold on,” he said. “Let's make a ladder or something so you don't hurt yourself.”

  She turned to him, her grin filling her face.

  “You were right, I can do this,” she said. “It's easy with your blueprint, plus I've gained another point in masonry from doing it.”

  “That's great, let's make you a step stool or ladder or something so you don't hurt yourself getting it that last foot and a half to the ceiling. Once you get to the ceiling you ought to be able to finish it from on the roof.”

  “Okay,” she said, stopping and stretching.

  Eddie's attention was caught as he stared at her. She saw him watching, smiled, then arched her back a little to thrust her breasts out prominently in front of her.

  She came out of her stretch, saw him still staring, and half-turned away from him. He saw that the smile was still on her face though.

  “You're right,” she said, “let's take a break. Is it almost time to start setup on the food stand?”

  “Let's see,” he said, walking outside.

  She followed along, very close to him again.

  “No, it looks like we've still got a couple of hours. That's good, it means you can get paid for helping me,” he said.

  She looked around excitedly and he led her to the shower stall that he'd completed.

  “I just need to get some water into the box up top, then you pull that lever and it opens to let the water down the sluice,” he said, pointing to the appropriate items as he mentioned them.

  “It's really simple, but it looks like it ought to work. Can you control the amount of water by adjusting the lever?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Maybe, I haven't tried it out yet. But I know that the lever had to be held in position and that's awkward if you're trying to get clean, so hold on a second.”

  He pulled out another pelt and cut a thick leather thong out of it. Nailing it in place next to the lever, he tested it. When he pulled the leather and slipped the thong over it, the lever stayed in place.

  “There, now you can set that and have both hands free in the shower,” he said.

  Success:

  You have created a primitive locking mechanism.

  You have obtained the skill Improvisation. (Help improvisation for more details)

  “Yes,” he cried, pumping a fist in the air.

  “What?” Tiana asked.

  “Paul told me about a skill he'd gotten, improvisation. I just got it for making that little locking mechanism for the lever.”

  “Huh, I didn't know about that one. Never heard of it before,” she said.

  “Well, I was hoping I'd learn it. I might've asked Paul to train me in it if I could've thought of any way it could be trained.”

  “Congratulations then, but... still willing to haul water for me?”

  Eddie smiled.

  “Sure thing.”

  “Or you could do something else for me instead, if you want.”

  “What's that?” Eddie asked.

  She walked out into the back yard of the bunkhouse, found the lowest part of it, then pointed there.

  “Dig me a hole about two feet deep and three feet across, right here.”

  Eddie looked at her, curious, but she just smiled mysteriously. He heaved a sigh and then pulled out his shovel.

  I may never understand women. I was sure she was all psyched for a shower, he thought.

  As he dug, she carried out some of the rocks they'd hauled earlier.

  “We had more than we needed for the fireplace,” she said, setting them down behind him.

  Eddie was still confused, but the digging went quick. The soil was a soft loam that wasn't packed down at all after he got through the first couple of inches. Once he was done, Tiana started placing rocks in the hole, leaving the very bottom open. Then she stacked them so there was an eight inch high circle around the hole. The entire procedure went quickly and when she was done, he watched as the stones fused together just like the planks had earlier.

  “I was hoping that would happen,” she said. “I never understood exactly how to use this variant of the spell before, but that part of it works just like the blueprints do.”

  She started chanting and gesturing with her hands. A moment later a deep blue glow surrounded both of her hands and she pointed them at the base of the hole where dirt was still visible.

  The dirt grew darker for a moment, then water rushed up out of it. The level grew deeper and deeper until the water was a couple of inches from the top, then it stopped.

  “Now you can haul water a lot easier for the showers,” she said.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “A Create Spring spell. There are two versions, one is temporary and a lot easier to use, but I'd never used the permanent one before. I thought this might be a good time to try it out.”

  Eddie looked back at the stream he'd planned on getting water from, fifty yards away. Then he looked down at the spring, ten yards behind the back of the bunkhouse.

  “Thank you,” he said. “My god, that's going to make my life easier, and my back a lot happier.”

  She smiled.

  “You can pay me back by filling up that shower.”

  He grabbed the bucket and started hauling water to the roof immediately.

  ~ ~ ~

  Chapter Nineteen

  Aaron got out of bed and stretched luxuriously. Dinner the night before had been great, and the rest of the night had been even better. To top all of that off he'd gotten to come home and get a full eight hours of sleep. He knew there was going to be a price for it somewhere, but at the moment he was more than willing to pay. Aaron felt better than he had in months.

  What was bo
th better and worse was that Cynthia had told him that he wasn't going to be directly under Greenshaw any more. That part was awesome, but the layer between him and Greenshaw would be Cynthia herself, so there wouldn't be a repeat of last night until the current project was finished, which he regretted.

  Either way, he knew he'd be getting a half decent budget for testing. As a result he had to go to work and talk to the techs, telling them to order whatever they needed for the pod conversions. Then he had to go in game and see if Eddie and Karl were interested in a job with Light Online, doing essentially what they were now.

  Although I'll have to push them to do more adventuring, Aaron thought. We'll need the baseline statistics for intense combat as well as those for them just lounging around. Plus anything else we can convince them to do in game that players might want to do after they're in the really long term pods.

  He was pretty sure that Eddie, at least, would jump at the chance. After Aaron was told what Eddie was going to be paid for farming, Aaron was sure of it. He could give them slightly over entry level wages because of their unique position and he already had NDAs from them. If he remembered the phrasing right, the NDAs already covered long term immersion testing.

  He grabbed his cell phone and decided to get the ball rolling as soon as possible. A minute later he was talking to the head tech, who spent most of his life working as far as Aaron could tell, telling him to make a wish list of the parts he needed to soup up the Mark III L.O. PODs for truly long term testing.

  ~ ~ ~

  Once Eddie had the tank filled, Tiana came up on the roof herself. She chanted for a few moments again and this time her hand turned a golden-orange color. She lowered her hand into the water and a few seconds later it began to steam. When her hand came back out, it was no longer glowing.

  “That should do,” she said. “By the way, I found a flaw with your shower setup already.”

  “What's that?” Eddie asked, slightly indignant.

  “You need to put another chamber attached to each of the stalls, with another door on it, so people can get undressed in private.”

  “Shit!” Eddie said. “I never even thought of that, I just followed Paul's blueprints.”

  Meanwhile he was distracting himself as his mind flashed to what Tiana would look like just before getting in the shower, or better still when she was getting out, dripping wet.

  “Well, just make another thing like the stall attached to the front of each stall. That ought to do it.”

  “I don't know if I can call that portion of the diagram back up now that it's completed.”

  “So, just look at the other stall and place things like that? You haven't built that one yet, so you can still see it.”

  “Yeah, that might work,” he said as he regretfully banished the images his mind had been providing him.

  She stared at him impatiently.

  “Oh, you mean now?” he said.

  “Well, my warm water is waiting,” she replied.

  He went back down and quickly grabbed the planks necessary for the job. He tried to copy the outline that showed for the other stall as close as he could and the planks sealed themselves together again once he'd placed the last one. It didn't take very long to duplicate the door either, and once he'd finished that, Tiana pushed past him, closing the door behind her.

  He shook his head, wishing that his work had been maybe a touch less good so he had a crack to peak through, then slapped himself mentally.

  None of that you ass, he thought. You're not some stupid high school kid trying to peek into the girls' locker room.

  Instead, he went to work on building the other stall, including the changing room in front of it like he'd added to the first one. Then he started assembling the doors to hang inside the bunkhouse after he made the walls. The blueprints showed the inside walls being made of woven wood, either willow or springy branches just like he'd used previously, but he wasn't looking forward to weaving them together. He made a stack of the doors in what would be a common area inside when the place was finished, then hung the three doors that already had frames, one in front, one in back, and the last one leading up to the roof.

  By that time, Tiana was out of the shower. She found him inside.

  “There's another problem with the shower,” she said.

  “What's that?”

  She lifted a muddy foot, shaking it in front of him.

  “It needs some sort of floor. Stone would be best, so I suppose I'll have to do that.”

  “Thank you again then and maybe run a stone path to the nearest door too?”

  “Can do, other than that it works like a charm. Now I need to find soap and shampoo.”

  “I get wanting the shower, but the games cleans us up every overnight, why soap?”

  “Because I don't feel clean, my brain knows I get clean every night, but I don't feel that way without scrubbing myself.”

  “Good enough,” he said, “but unless Old Jeffries has it I don't know where you'll find soap.”

  “It's around, the prostitute players in the bigger cities use scented soaps all the time.”

  “The what?” he asked.

  “Don't you know what a lot of female players do in game to get money?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, unable to believe she was talking to him about this.

  “They need to get clean between clients,” Tiana said, “so they made sure there was soap. Whether it was already in game or they just started making it, I don't know. Either way, it's out there though.”

  “Uhh...” he said.

  “Yeah, that's kind of how I reacted at first too, until I realized that they were doing it because they wanted to. It's not like they're being forced to do it, and evidently it pays pretty well. So, to each their own I suppose.”

  Eddie shook his head to get rid of the slightly disturbed feeling the knowledge had generated in him. He couldn't even figure out why it was bothering him. Regardless, it was about time to get the food stand set up for the evening's sales.

  The two of them headed down the road to the field. When they got there, Eddie groaned. Someone had trashed his, admittedly pathetic, food stand. The fire pit was fine, but the counter where they'd done the sales had been hacked and slashed into little pieces.

  “What the hell?” Eddie said.

  “I'm sorry,” Tiana said.

  “It's not your fault.”

  “Actually, I think it might be. That's just the type of thing Terrod or Sombra would do if they were pissed off.”

  “It still isn't your fault. You can't be held to blame for them being assholes,” Eddie said.

  She just repeated herself again.

  “I'm sorry.”

  “Don't worry about it, I can get it set back up in just a few minutes, a half hour tops.”

  Eddie got the fire started first and as it burned down to coals he began to reconstruct his food stand. It did take him nearly the half hour he'd said, but once it was done he had a good bed of coals to cook on. Preparing the meat to roast didn't take much more time and before long the smell of fresh roasted meat was drifting out into the field and he saw potential customers approaching.

  Karl and Allie got back about a half hour after Eddie started selling and Karl, at least, immediately pitched in to help. Allie said she had to go back to her tent for a few things she'd left there. She looked agitated when she got back.

  “Those sons of bitches. They trashed our tent.”

  “Who?” Tiana asked.

  “The rest of our former group, well except Dominic I suspect. His tent was still there, but I know this was his day to be out of game. So I'm guessing the other two shredded our tent. Nothing of mine missing at least, not that I noticed right off, but still.”

  “Wait, were their tents gone?” Karl asked. “You said Dominic's was still there, that suggests the others were gone.”

  “Yeah, just bare ground where their tents were. Like I said, Dominic's is still there, but theirs were gone, and ours w
as all shredded. I got all my stuff, you'd better go get the rest of yours too Tiana. At least those two won't be there to harass you while you do.”

  “Excuse me,” Tiana said, not looking very concerned.

  She did head over towards the tents though.

  “Allie, what are you two going to do with the wrecked tent?” Eddie asked, having realized a flaw in his plan to open the bunkhouse as soon as it was done.

  “I don't know, just trash it probably. As long as we're welcome to stay at the farm, it shouldn't matter. It's just the principle of the thing,” she replied.

  “Can I have it? I just realized that I'm going to need mattresses for all the beds in the bunkhouse if I'm going to rent those rooms out. I can maybe put the tent together as covers for a few of them.”

  “Sure, know how to sew? It's going to need a lot of work. You'd probably be better off hauling the mattresses from your bunkhouse on the farm down for that.”

  “You're right, but that means I'm going to need to build that cart too. No way I can get those down on the wheelbarrow and carrying them is right out also.”

  He shook his head before continuing.

  “Now I know why so few people like to start their own business. If it's this hard in a game, what's it like in read life? Always one more thing to do.”

  Tiana was back a few minutes later and when she returned, Allie went over and retrieved the tent, or what was left of it. Eddie rolled up the fabric as tightly as he could. Even if he used the mattresses from the bunkhouse, he'd need to replace those sooner or later. If his plans went the way he hoped, he'd be hiring a crew to work the farm for him so the bunkhouse would have to be usable.

  So tomorrow I need to find whoever makes mattresses for the village and order some. I'm going to need twelve for the new bunkhouse which I can take from the one on the farm, but then I'll need to replace those twelve. I wonder how much they'll charge me for something like that? Probably just straw tick like the ones in the farm bunkhouse, so it shouldn't cost too much. I should order a bunch for the inn at the same time.

  Eddie pulled up the blueprint of a cart that Paul had sent him. In between customers he examined it, trying to see if he had everything he needed to make one. It looked like the rough planks he'd been using for the bunkhouse would do the trick for the cart as well. He heaved a sigh of relief when he realized that he already had everything he'd need to make it. Although he'd have to modify a few items he already had for things like the wooden axle, traces, and reins.