“So,” Shiloh said, “we didn’t have sex.”
“He was able to be that clear with his headspace and needs?” Birch said, nodding her head from where she sat criss-cross on the cot in her very large, very fancy wood-framed pavilion/tent. “That's a really good sign. I mean, sexual compatibility is important, but it sounds like you two matched up on some stuff deeper than physical.”
“Oh, no. He ate me like a four-course fucking meal. We just didn’t have sex-sex.”
“Oh, thank god!” Birch flopped back with her hands over her face. “Holy shit, dude. Everything has been work, deals, and contracts. I needed to talk about something less serious for at least an hour.”
Shilloh laughed. She was sitting in a folding camp chair that made a little nest seat that swung like a rocking chair between the legs. For all that they were out at an advanced site and should be roughing it, Birch seemed entirely unwilling to give up her creature comforts now that they had left the caravan and were stationary enough to receive deliveries.
Her ‘tent’ had wooden frames going up eight feet. Her canvas was thick and treated so that the only way to let light in was by rolling up or down some flaps.
She had solar panels on the roof, an easily assembled and disassembled desk that was better than Frost’s, and she had even managed to set up a show rack where people could change into slippers before stepping onto the thick carpet that covered almost all of the space that could fit with room to spare.
“Has the work really been that bad? I thought you were auditing things as an excuse to get here?”
“That was the plan,” her friend said, not taking her hands off her face. “But then I saw what they were actually doing, and it’s dumb. Like, Shilloh, I know I joked about their hiring process for you, but it actually sucks. Their talent pipeline is ancient; they have no sense of using commonly available certifications to reduce training costs, and the places their recruiters look miss so much talent. And that's not even talking about the legacy software systems they have running this place.”
“Legacy systems?”
“It’s like five different breeds of shity and out-of-date software, and none of it is the same age or type of shitty! I have no idea how any of it works. I thought I was going to be making fake noises about better weapons and equipment, but I bet you ten thousand dollars that I could reduce their operating budget by at least a million over the next twelve years just by getting a centralized management software that's built to be updated and integrate with some new off-the-shelf products.”
They talked about business issues for a while, and it was actually quite enlightening. Birch knew her business and seemed very interested in finding a way to update the Blightbane's supply lines. Especially the ones used to provide treatment to disaster-impacted areas.
Shilloh glanced around at the shockingly comfortable, well-insulated space they were sitting in. “I mean, if I were to trust anyone to get supplies where they needed to be, it’d be you. This all took you, what, three days?”
Her tiny friend waved the compliment away. “It’s all tricks from the caravans. Anyone could do it if they had traveled enough.”
“Sure, sure. But, have you considered that this feeling easy and simple to you, might be more of an indicator of your capability and not of the objective ease of the situation? You kept saying you’re incredibly wealthy; I’m sure that didn’t happen for no reason. ”
“Nope,” Birch said. “It’s absolutely luck. Also, there is a point where you’re just too wealthy to fail.”
She frowned, “I'm sure there’s more to it—“
“Shilloh, genuinely, it’s true. Like, it’s hard to explain, but genuinely, I would need to actively try to fuck up everything if I wanted to merely be obscenely wealthy rather than where I’m at now. Like, I could crash a yacht every week and somehow make money off of it at this point.”
“I hear what you’re saying, but it’s hard to believe. You’re weirdly smart. You and Scotty talk math like it’s a native language, and you seem to know something about every place we ever talk about.”
Birch shrugged, “I’m good at math, and I worked hard. But that doesn’t make you succeed. I could go on about systemic flaws, generational privilege, and all sorts of stuff. But it’s easiest to just say luck.”
“Yes, but it can’t only be luck?”
“I mean, I tried really hard for a while. Like, I mean, ridiculously hard. I spent years barely sleeping. I tracked fashion trends, I spoke in jargon, and I tried real hard to find any incremental advantage I could. At some point, I even memorized sports teams so I could gain a networking advantage at events. And that got me successful, but not rich. Then I got lucky and became rich.”
“That sounds a lot like you positioning yourself to recognize an opportunity and take it for all it was worth. That’d not luck.”
“No, that stuff gave me minimal benefits at best. Believe you me, I’m sure of it.”
“How?”
“Because I had a distant family member die. When the estate was being split up, all my prep let me spot a painting that looked like an original by a famous artist. No one else saw it, so my family was happy to let me leave with it. At an auction I once attended for charity, it sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I invested that money with the best possible business plan I could. I cheated and worked myself to the bone. Advanced information that shouldn’t have been shared, inside connections with major corporations, mathematical modeling on software no regular person could afford, and just every single thing an unreasonable person willing to burn themselves out could bring to bear.”
“And?”
“And I lost every cent. Shit, I went into debt.”
Shilloh blinked, thoughtlessly massaging a small hickey Wade had left under her shirt. She hadn’t been expecting that.
“Then how did you get rich enough to buy your way into learning who Godkiller is?”
“Well, a year into eating discount ramen and researching new side hustles, I was the only person in my office not to get food poisoning from the catering. Seemed like a lucky break, so I bought a lottery ticket to celebrate.”
“No,” Shilloh whispered.
“Oh yes. I had eaten more of that catering than anyone, even hid some in my drawer for dinner. But my panties stayed unstained. So I figured fate was on my side.”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“You won big?”
“I won very big.”
“And that's how you’re rich?”
“Hell no. I’m a level of magnitude or three above being win-the-lottery rich.”
“Was it the side hustle research?”
“Nope,” Birch said, popping the ‘p’ at the end of the word. “After settling my debts, I invested ninety percent of the winnings based on what I had learned from my first attempt. Five percent went into an advanced certification course to progress my regular career, and the last five I left to chance. Literally invested it according to a random numbers generator, and by throwing a dart at a corkboard with slips of paper on it. Cause, luck had gotten me there, right? The new, hard-core plan got the green light from a panel of successful start-up founders and every experienced person I could find. It failed explosively, and I never finished the certification program I bought because I was so depressed. But I won big on my random investments. While I was spending 19 hours a day working and trying to keep the new venture alive, I had set the investment profits to be immediately reinvested. Barely even looked at them.”
“And that worked for you?” Shilloh said, almost more angry than she was surprised. Especially considering what she had gone through with Wade to get enough money to buy a few dozen meticulously researched acres.
“Yeah. And it’s weird, despite that I was absolutely crushed,” Birch said, her tone neutral as she stared up at the ceiling without much expression on her face. “Everything I had hung my pride on was wrong. Every self-affirmation about what made me better, or made me different enough to succeed where others failed, melted away. Graduate early from college, get a high-powered position in your early twenties, and have everyone praise your endless potential. Did it all. But I wasn’t different. Or, at least, not different in a way that mattered. There are lots of early graduating valedictorians who are willing to work themselves like a dog, especially in the circles where I hung out.
I got depressed. Randomly invested the money I had in a sort of self-destructive haze until I had somehow earned enough profits to buy stakes in a start-up. I picked it because their booth at a conference gave out pens that made a good click.”
“Do I know the company?”
Birch smiled, “I guarantee it. Turns out it was a ‘once in a generation’ success. We were bought out in no time.”
Birch took in the way Shilloh was grinding her teeth. She spoke matter-of-factly, “Makes you want to punch me in the face a little, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction, too. Felt like I was embarrassing my own self. I had been licking boots and doing work I hated for years. I made all the right choices, and the only somewhat rebellious thing I had ever done was listen to Agnes when she talked me out of staying with a very rich and popular high school boyfriend who wanted me to choose colleges based on which one would be closest to his school. But aside from that, I had done everything right. I skipped every holiday for years so I could work, and used my off hours to force-feed myself investment books.”
“When I realized it had all been useless, I spiraled. I spiraled real bad. Even though I had just gotten a big promotion, I barely did anything at my day job. Just redirected work to my team, and mumbled jargon at meetings. At the same time, I invested badly. Like really, really badly. I put the money in the dumbest companies I could find to, I don’t know, prove something to myself or whatever.”
Birch’s eyes unfocused, and her voice softened as memories replayed behind her eyes. “And that's when I learned that it’s hard to fail once you have a certain amount of money. My boss was bad at his job and mistook my new apathy for the exact sort of blasé confidence he was faking. Kept giving me raises and more direct reports.”
“The less I cared, the more the over-qualified, under-paid people who worked for me knocked their work out of the park. Without someone micromanaging them, they went above and beyond to try and make a name for themselves. Which got me even more raises for my ‘business and leadership acumen.’ Then, on the side, my self-destructive investments lucked into two more companies that hit it big. All because I pissed away my buy-out’s money on like fifteen different start-ups. All of whom tracked me down because of my ‘reputation for success’ and begged me to invest so they could offer me near-riskless equity paired with board positions. Just by playing the odds and investing in so many, I won big again. When I tried to quit my day job, they doubled my salary and reduced my workload to keep me on. Then other rich people started seeking me out and giving me tips and inside knowledge that most investors would chop off a finger for.”
“Now I’m at the point now where I don’t even know what I would have to do to lose money. Like, the West End Market: I bought that place on a lark. And restaurants are horribly risky. A lot of them have such thin margins that they can barely last two or three months if things don’t go exactly right. But, I’m a rich ‘genius investor’; If I do dumb things, people assume it’s brilliant, and they all pile on, which makes me money. Even bad accountants give me big enough tax returns to pay off my parents' house. And I earned absolutely none of it. All luck.”
Shilloh shook her head slowly, “Now you just use that money to fund hormone replacement drug-distribution and buy restaurants?”
“Yeah. I mean, I try to help out where I can. Because, honestly, the money has nothing to do with me. For all I know, I’ll be poor again this time next year. But I’ve gotten by on ramen and canned veggies before. I can do it again. Until then, I’m rich enough to help out a little and be eccentric. Obviously, I haven’t earned it, but I can be as weird as I can foot the bill for, and I happen to be rich as shit right now, so I might as well.”
At that point, Shilloh couldn’t think of anything better to do than throw her hands in the air and turn to glare at her very, very rich friend. “Alright, I get it. It was all luck. You made your point. You even made indirect points about me, saying I overwork myself and need to relax. I get it, but I’m also not going to stop.”
“I wasn’t telling you to stop.”
“Oh? Then why did you give me a whole monologue about how fucking great your bank accounts are?”
Birch blinked, “You know what, I actually can’t remember. Maybe I should start paying someone to remember for me. It’s not like I can’t afford it.”
“Oh fuck off,” Shilloh said, though a smile started tugging at the corner of her mouth.
“Yeah, I probably will. Not all of us got eaten like the main course at a Michelin Star restaurant last night.”
“I didn’t need to know that.”
Birch laughed, and Shilloh joined her.
“You know,” the dryad said, “one of my first conversations with Wade was about Wild Talents. I said it then, and I’ll say it now, I still think money is one of the best powers you can have.”
“Oh, totally,” Birch said. “It’s great. I mean, it makes having genuine friends hard, but on the other hand, I can get super nice onsies, and I’m thinking about making a publishing company so I can get Agnes to write a book.”
“Really? Fiction or non-fiction?”
“?Por qué no los dos?”
Shilloh’s smile dimmed, and she stood up, using stretching as an excuse to avoid direct eye contact with her friend. “I hope I’ll be able to drop by and see it.”
Birch made a fart noise with her mouth. “Whatever. I still expect you to try and stay nearby if you can, but if God Killer is asking you to move away, I sorta get why you would. If you gotta move, then it’s not like I can’t afford to drop by.”
The dryad blinked a few times before walking over, hauling Birch to her feet, and giving her a big hug. “You’re the best. I can’t think of many other people who would do what you did just to make sure I wouldn’t feel alone here. You’re mine now. We’re going to hang out a bunch and talk all the time. I’m not giving you another option.”
Birch laughed, squeezed Shilloh tightly, hoisted her off her feet, and shook her. “Good! Though, ironically, I’m also about to imminently leave this camp. So we need to get the most out of my last few days, before my ride gets here.”
“Oh! I’m positive we can get Scotty in on a few fun evenings. I bet he had the right kind of chemicals to make a bonfire change colors.”
“And we can prank the ever-loving fuck out of Jasque.”
“Hell yeah!”
The two of them high-fived and started writing out lists of ideas on Birch’s desk, pausing only to jot in a few notes for supplies and equipment that Birch’s ride would bring to them to make camp life easier for Shilloh.
Considering who they were about to prank, it made sense to invest in establishing a mobile version of her Don’t Get Kidnapped Again system.
NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
Piracy Notice: If you’re reading this anywhere other than Scribble Hub, Royal Road, or my Patreon then this is pirated. Please let me know by going to the Jeffrey Nix website’s contact area so I can get really annoyed, complain to my cat, have her tell me this never would have happened if I had just gone back for a Ph. D, send a takedown notice, and get back to writing.
