Farmer

by Tom Larcombe

  “Tell you what, I'll have the guys here not split some of the trees they're felling for me and you can get started with those. You still want the rough hewn for the sawmill though, right?”

  Paul nodded.

  “Yeah, thanks again for the help. That's going to make all of this so much faster.”

  “You're welcome, but it's enlightened self-interest. The sooner you get the sawmill and your house done, the sooner I get my inn.”

  “Well, at this rate, if this spot works out, I'll be able to start on the inn in a week and a half to two weeks. That work for you?”

  Eddie held up a hand palm out.

  “Don't rush anything on my account. I discovered I'm doing better than I thought after I paid you for the coffee and booze, plus I have a real world income now.”

  Paul cocked his head.

  “What's that?”

  “They fixed the problem, but liked the idea. So now I'm doing close to the same job as I was, only for the right company now. Can't say any more. This time it's an actual NDA that I signed.”

  “Got it, and good for you, I'm glad things are working out. But now I need to take a bit of a walk, anyone want to join me?”

  Paul looked around the room at the four people clutching cups of coffee. None of them seemed to want to do anything else at the moment.

  “If you want to wait a few minutes, I'll give you a ride down on the cart so you can get the lumber you wanted,” Eddie said. “First I need to finish this cup of coffee, then grind up a bag of those beans. The reaction of these three, and myself, to the coffee made me think that this is a luxury that people won't mind paying out the wazoo for. I'm still in this for the money, even if I have found a number of things to distract me from that sometimes.”

  He took a deep drink of coffee and sighed happily.

  “You can bring the cart back with the lumber and do your alterations to the bunkhouse. Then drive it back down and drop it off with me and you can go on foot from there. That work for you?”

  Paul nodded.

  “Yeah, I almost forgot I wanted to rough out and build those rooms first. Kind of eager for the rest, you know?”

  “I get it,” Eddie said.

  He remembered how eager he'd been to get in the game and start doing things. Admittedly the eagerness had faded when he discovered what they'd intended him to do, but it had returned in force after he'd become his own man in the game. That eagerness had made him a lot of gold already.

  And there's so much more to be made if things go according to my plan, he thought.

  He quickly finished his coffee and started grinding. Before he'd finished the whole bag his arm was cramping up and Tiana took over for a few runs. By the time they finished grinding the entire bag it had taken more than half an hour, but Eddie was salivating over just how much money he could make from it.

  The beans cost a gold a bag and, if my estimates are correct, that should make about fifty cups of coffee if I'm careful. If I charge a silver a piece, that's five times my investment. No-one's going to bitch about it either since I pretty much charge a silver for anything I sell. Besides, if they do, I'll just tell them it's a luxury so it's got a luxury price tag attached. Two bucks for a cup of coffee isn't unheard of even out in the real world, so no big deal, right?

  He closed the bag tightly, making sure it would stay that way. Then he grabbed the percolator and headed out for the cart. Everyone was going with them so Paul and Eddie hopped onto the seat while Karl, Tiana, Allie, and Jern climbed into the bed of the cart along with the food. It was a heavy load for the ox, but it didn't complain, just complacently stomped its way down the road, pulling the cart in its wake.

  Surprisingly, when Eddie had told Lucky he was going, the bobcat had apparently been torn between going with Eddie or staying with Becky. He'd ended up just telling the bobcat to stay and look after the farm while was gone. Lucky had whined a couple of times, but then settled back down on the ground near Becky.

  Ingolf and his two cousins helped Paul load the cart once they got there. Eddie saw Paul slipping them a few coppers after they were done and figured the older Carpenter had bribed them to help. He, himself, had been too busy to help when Paul asked, setting up a way to brew the coffee while still cooking the meat had taken a little bit of improvisation on his part.

  By the time Paul headed back east with the cart and a load of rough lumber, the smell of coffee hung in the air and had already attracted several adventurers.

  “You can drop the cart off on the way down to your site later,” Eddie called out to Paul.

  Paul nodded and waved as he drove off. Meanwhile Eddie was getting down to some decent profits. As he'd expected the silver piece he charged for a cup of coffee was taken in stride by most people. By the end of the night he'd had his most profitable evening of food sales yet.

  ~ ~ ~

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Aaron stared at the message in front of him. Normally he'd just go into the game and tell Eddie and Karl about this, but he still felt bad about some of the requirements he hadn't mentioned and was sure they'd be able to tell that he was keeping something from them if they saw him.

  Eddie:

  The contract is solid, the pay I told you is good too. Here's the one catch that wasn't in the original document. The contract is only good until you log out of the game.

  If we have to log you out because we detect any sort of problem with the extended game play, you'll still get paid and have the opportunity to go back in to continue testing, but the bean counters decided that if you log out on your own, that means you are voluntarily terminating your contract as of that point. I think they were pissed that I just offered you guys the contracts without going through HR and they're taking that out on us now.

  I thought I should let you know, just in case. I don't expect you'll want to come out of the game for quite some time after hearing this. We will monitor your vitals though and, as I said, if we have to pull you out you will still be employed and have the opportunity to continue testing after we isolate and fix whatever the problem may be.

  Aaron

  Aaron sent the message via the PM function of the game, deciding that Eddie and Karl could read it at their leisure since it wasn't exactly urgent.

  He looked around his office.

  It's not a cubicle. Even if it is the size of a broom closet, I've got an office! he thought.

  There wasn't much in it yet and probably never would be due to the size of it. But just getting his own office, and having employees that technically worked under him, felt wonderful. The raise that had come along with it was nothing to write home about, but he still wasn't complaining.

  The only problem is that I'm technically middle management under Cynthia, but I know she likes her people to run their own show. She doesn't micromanage like Crenshaw always did. As long as I get results for her, she'll let me do things my way. So far, it's working.

  The only changes he'd made so far were to get Eddie and Karl signed on as actual employees and shifted the work schedule of the techs to a start time of several hours later. He'd asked and that was their only complaint. So now they came in at ten in the morning instead of seven and he'd already noticed that they were more productive this way.

  Figures, they're probably up late coding, gaming, or whatever techs do nowadays. If only I had the same option, Aaron thought.

  His biggest problem was that he felt responsible for the two men testing the game under him, so he was spending more time at work. He monitored their vitals, doing spot checks at random, and went over the work the techs were doing. At the same time, he still hadn't been relieved of some of his in-game duties so he spent an hour or two in Light Online each day as well. It tied him to the office more than he wanted, but he didn't quite feel trapped by it, yet.

  ~ ~ ~

  Eddie spent the next few days split between adventuring and running his businesses. In between the two he got some updates from Paul. The sawmill had gone up quickly, al
though Eddie needed to let Ingolf take a day off of clearing his lot to help Paul finish the setup. Eddie also knew that he couldn't keep selling coffee as he was, not if he wanted to keep enough of it for his own usage until trade started up. He decided to try to cut down on how much he sold, and doubled the price, then still found himself selling an entire bag's worth a night. He could've sold even more, but he refused to bring more than one bag's worth down to sell at a time.

  He spoke with Allie about her not wanting to adventure more and got some clarification. She wouldn't mind doing a second village of the same difficulty each day, or take out more patrols, she just didn't want to go deeper into the woods. Evidently the villages farther in became progressively more difficult and she'd had a very bad experience at one with a prior adventuring group.

  When he finally got her to talk about it, she was in tears.

  “I used my sword more than my bow back then, so I was in the front line going for the village. There were two of us on the front line, the other guy was a tank, but for whatever reason he wasn't ready. They swarmed him and he went down fast. Then I was stuck trying to hold the front line by myself. I was a decent melee fighter, but no tank.”

  She stopped and stared into the distance, then spat before continuing.

  “The assholes in the back line of my party were still shooting and casting spells at goblins, just not the ones on me. At least not until I went down. The goblins dogpiled me and I couldn't move. When the back line idiots realized that, they broke and ran. They just left me there. I was still alive and the goblins kept me that way.”

  She broke down crying and Eddie had no idea what to do. Allie leaned in towards him and Eddie opened his arms. She fell against his chest and he hugged her. It took a minute or two for her to stop crying before she continued.

  “The goblins were all over me, they took me prisoner and started torturing me! Why did this stupid game think it was a good idea to allow things like that to happen? Did you know the experimental medical pods didn't used to allow you to log out at will? I was stuck there with them torturing me, and doing... doing other things to me for almost three hours before they finally killed me. If I ever see anyone from that group again, other than the tank that went down right away, I'll... I'll... Well if I'm level twenty and they're in a PK zone I'll kill them on sight and then camp their corpse. I'll kill them over and over until they think it's my career!”

  “You know that wouldn't be the case now though, right?” he asked, making sure his voice was soft and calming. “You're not in the front line any more and our group would never run and leave you.”

  “I don't want to see that village again. Ever!” she answered.

  “Okay then, I'll just tell them you won't go deeper but we can do more than one village on the outskirts?”

  She sniffled and nodded.

  “Yes, we can do that. I'm sorry I'm holding you all back, but I just don't...” she trailed off.

  “I don't know,” Eddie said, “it might be therapeutic to burn that village down, no?”

  Thinking of what she'd told him had happened he added something a bit more bloodthirsty than he normally would have.

  “Maybe burn it down with all those goblins still in it?”

  Her eyes lit up at the thought.

  “It might help if those assholes from my group were in the village when it burnt down,” she said. “I hate this game.”

  “Why are you still in the game if you hate it that much?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I thought you figured it out. I'm like Tiana, it's a medical research thing and if I leave before they finish the tests on me I'll have to pay for all the time I spent in the game. Both pod rental and access fees.”

  “I know what her problem is, she told me. What happened to you?” Eddie asked, curious.

  Allie stared at him for a moment, shook her head, and didn't answer. Instead, she turned and walked outside. A few minutes later Karl came barreling up to Eddie.

  “What the hell did you do to Allie?” he demanded. “She's been crying and said she was just talking to you.”

  “Whoa dude, do you know why she doesn't want to adventure more than she does?”

  Karl shook his head.

  “No, what's that got to do with it?”

  “Let's just say that I do know now and it was pretty traumatic for her. Maybe talking about it will have helped, but that's why she was crying, because she told me what happened.”

  “So what was it?” Karl asked.

  “Oh hell no,” Eddie replied. “I'm not going there. If she wants you to know, she'll tell you. Or maybe she will if you ask her, but it's not my place to say.”

  “Come on, tell me.”

  “No,” Eddie said, then he turned and walked back into the kitchen.

  A pot of coffee split up between everyone calmed down some of the tension that had been building, and then Eddie told everyone the compromise he'd come to with Allie.

  “So that's the deal. We can do multiple villages, the nearest ones in the forest, or add in more patrols. Either of those is fine.”

  The group was mostly understanding. Although once they were done talking and they split up, Eddie heard Allie asking Karl if he'd like to walk to the trading post with her.

  I wonder what that's about. She should have enough arrows still, we found that barrel of them in a village just yesterday.

  Eddie promptly forgot about it a few minutes later when Paul knocked on the door of the farmhouse.

  “Hey, want to take a trip with me? I need about a half hour to work on it and my house will be finished,” Paul said when Eddie greeted him at the door.

  “Sure, I can do that. That was fast.”

  “I hired on a few helpers. Once I've got the blueprint up I can add helpers in and get things done more quickly. Although there are some things the person with the Skill needs to do themselves, they can haul all the materials to me and just hand them to me. Then I can just place each of them one after another. Made it a lot faster and only cost me a couple of silver. Evidently there's not much work around here.”

  I should fix that, Eddie thought. I could claim the hamlet as my own if I hire enough of them. But do I want to do that yet? What if there's another announcement like when I hit level one. I don't want people to know what I'm doing here or someone's liable to steal the place out from under me.

  “That's great. How about I give you a couple of gold so you can hire helpers to do the same with the inn. Will that make it faster?”

  Paul nodded.

  “Yeah, it'll take maybe three or four days if I hire on five helpers like I did for my house. Cut the time almost in half.”

  “Sounds great, let's do it that way. Give me a minute and I'll be ready to go down and take a look at your house.”

  Paul waved.

  “Take your time. I need to bring my wife and daughter too or they'll never forgive me. The bunkhouse is comfortable enough, but it isn't what they were expecting.”

  “Meet you at the road then?” Eddie asked.

  “Say, half an hour from now?” Paul said. “I don't know how long it'll take them to get ready.”

  Eddie refrained from chuckling, just in case Allie or Tiana were in earshot and had heard Paul's comment.

  “You got it,” he said.

  ~ ~ ~

  Eddie had already seen Paul's work since he'd built everything at the farm, but he was significantly more impressed by the house and was comfortable in telling Paul that.

  “Well, they got what they paid for, what they said they wanted,” Paul said. “The farm is all rough work, but it's sturdy and it suited what they asked for and were willing to pay for. My house, on the other hand, that's for my wife and daughter and I want them to be comfortable.”

  “So are the plans for the inn closer to the farm or your house in quality?” Eddie asked.

  “It's somewhere in the middle, probably closer to the farm for the common area, but closer to the house for t
he guest rooms.”

  “How many of those are there?” Eddie asked. “You hadn't said.”

  “Here, I'll show you.”

  Paul pulled out a set of blueprints and unrolled them on the coffee table in the middle of his new living room. As they pored over the blueprints, his wife and daughter came back downstairs.

  “Working again already?” Delilah asked.

  “I did tell you I had to build Eddie's inn as soon as possible after the house,” Paul said. “We've got all the basic amenities now though and after we make a list of what else we want, I'm going to buy that from Ingolf. He's got a better hand with furnishings than I do, I specialized in making the buildings themselves.”

  “Well then, I guess I'd better get started on that list, hadn't I?” Delilah said.

  “If you would dear,” Paul answered, then he turned back to the blueprints on the table.

  Eddie saw the fond look on Delilah's face as she stared at Paul. She caught Eddie looking and shook her head while holding a finger to her lips.

  Wow, he's got it good, Eddie thought. It's like his wife knows him inside and out. I bet that's nice.

  “So, twenty-five guest rooms plus the suite for me?” Eddie asked.

  “Plus this area downstairs where you can house some workers. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to run the place by yourself, so...”

  “You hadn't mentioned the barn.”

  “Well, I got to thinking about you using the ox and cart. Thought you might need a place to stable them if they were going to be there overnight, and if one stall, why not make a barn and add more. Sooner or later you'll need them if your desire for trade actually happens.”

  “I'm not complaining, I was just surprised.”

  “Oh, yeah, that and the spring house I just added in on my own. Keeping food fresh will be important also since it will eventually spoil in-game and that's the best non-magical refrigeration I could come up with on short notice. You said Tiana had made the spring that's there, right? If she can make another one, we can put the spring house wherever you like.”