[Boldly, Lively]

  The bell above the door rang as the door swung open, Harvey walked in. He looked more worn out than yesterday.

  “Hi Rose, one of the families is ready to sell if you try to obtain the release of their eldest son, who stupidly decided arson was an acceptable business practice.”

  “Harvey, I can’t do that for a few reasons, first the people he led, half were already sent to the mines for their part. It wouldn’t be fair that just because his family has money, he was let go. Second, even if I agreed, because I was getting something I wanted, the gnome colony and the sixty six farmers would also have to agree. Honestly most of the sixty six used to work for the cartel and none of them have anything nice to say about how the cartel treated them. Thirdly, those thugs who beat the farmers, women and children, everyone knows why they did it. Honestly everyone knows why that judge let the cartel back into town in the first place.”

  “I know Rose, I’ve tried to get them into town so they could negotiate with the Burgomaster, but they are stubborn and rich and think the rules don’t apply.”

  “Well, we’re done anyway. I have a bigger problem than the cartel to contend with. Do you have ten minutes? I have something to show you that maybe even rich stubborn people will understand.”

  I pulled out my portal wallet and portaled to the farms.

  “You were here two days ago, right Harvey. The day they planted this field.”

  “Oh, my god Rose.”

  “Pretty soon I’m going to have sixty six of these farms, I’m pretty sure they are going to be producing enough food to feed all of Emain Ablach, something we can’t do without fundamentally changing the nature of the town. It’s bad enough we have an eight member cartel. I don’t want a sixty six member one. I need someone to manage this Harvey, a non profit with unlimited funds to help feed starving people. Earth has loads of starving people. Later this morning I’m buying the lone cartel vendor left in town. All the vendors in town will be giving away food for free for the next two weeks. They already signed exclusive contracts. I have agreements with the local towns not to take any of the cartel products.”

  “You really did it Rose, I can’t believe it. It’ll probably take a few more days for my clients to admit it to themselves.”

  “Harvey when they do, come run my non profit, you’ll hire the staff and pick a good general manager so that once you have it up and running you only work half days five days a week and the rest of your time you can spend it writing. We get this mess I made all cleaned up, and we’ll go on that writing retreat.”

  “You cost me twenty gold, Rose.”

  “How so?”

  “Dogberry said you’d beat the pants off the cartel.”

  “Ah that was nice of him.”

  “Nice, ha, he’s a shrewd bugger, he just picked my pocket.”

  “So will you do it? Run the non-profit? I’ll make sure you have the best of everything.”

  He grinned, “I’ll let you know tomorrow. Right now I have to go to court, I have a trial starting in an hour.”

  I portaled to town hall. Walked into the back. Michael hopped up from his desk.

  “Hi Michael, is the Burgomaster available?”

  “Let me just check Rose.”

  He knocked once and entered. I sat down to wait. I felt terrible, I’d let winning and the petty desire to beat the rich at their own game lead me to where we are now. Michael came back out and told me to go right in.

  Orin and Arthur were seated having tea, Michael came rushing back in with a cup for me.

  “Please Rose come in and have a seat, I’m sure you are as excited as us. We just returned from a tour of the farms. It's extraordinary, just extraordinary.”

  “Arthur, I’m afraid it’s going to ruin us. We’ll have a huge food glut. The speed at which the farms are producing food, either the price will crash and ruin the farmers or they’ll become another cartel.”

  “No Rose, don’t you remember, one year from now you hand the farms back to the town, we own fifty percent.”

  “Yeah I set it up like that so a rich cartel couldn’t come in and buy up the land from the farmers. How does that help with the food glut? I wanted everyone to be comfortable, not rich. Everyone thinks that if they are rich they will be happy. Sure you can probably find a few rich people who are happy but I’d be willing to bet, if you put them under a truth spell, at least eighty percent aren’t happy. Just look at how they act. Are happy people, snobby, angry, worried someone is coming for their money. No they are not, happy people have enough money for a safe home and decent food, not having to slave all day at a horrible job.”

  “Don’t worry, Rose, you had a stroke of genius when you made it a fifty fifty deal with the farmers and the town. You’ve been doing everything in your power to make the farms a success. But you won’t be doing that a year from now. We have a plan to sell the food for a fair price, the same price that the market was charging before you started giving away food for free.”

  “But that will still make the farmers and the town rich, producing and selling that much food even at a fair price, plus it is year round too.”

  “Yes but aside from the fifty percent ownership in the farms we also get to tax them starting in the second year. If the tax is based on the farm's income, they’ll have enormous tax bills.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “I get that but really what can the town even do with money like that?”

  “No one will get rich, there will be no glut after the first year at least. We’ll have a sliding tax rate, anything from zero tax on a family farm that is just producing enough to live comfortably to a ninety nine percent tax rate on the farms that are producing way too much. The extra money the town does get we can put toward affordable housing and food for the poor. Plus we can hire some of them to help with food transport and we were planning on asking you to help as well.”

  “I’ll do anything I can to help fix this mess that I created. Everyday for the rest of my life I’ll repeat the mantra ‘Be careful what you wish for’.”

  “Rose, if you had done nothing people would have starved, we would have had no choice but to shut down the portals and stop any business from handing out free food. Can you do an off-world portal?”

  “I actually already have two to two different fictional worlds, so yes it really shouldn’t be a problem. What world did you have in mind?”

  “The gnome home world, the gnomes aren’t natives of Emain Ablach, they are immigrants much like the fey, once were. But their home world is rich in metal, iron, copper, lead, nickel. They want to trade metal for food. The ten gnome farms are already donating all that they produce to their home world.”

  “Then let’s let the gnomes have the last twelve farms that haven’t been developed yet.”

  “Excellent idea, that’s twenty two farms that the gnomes will control and won’t be selling food in our world. So we let the sixty six farms over produce the first year and they’ll see the dwindling profits. Then when the town steps in to partner we’ll already have passed the legislation for sliding scale taxation. We’ll show them the wisdom of the sweet spot, producing just enough that the town’s citizens pay a fair price for an excellent product. But not too much that triggers excessive taxes that would eat away at any farmer that produces too much. Too much will be determined if the market price drops too low, for the farmers aiming for comfortable farming levels. Plus in the past farmers were given an exemption for their children attending school, we already passed laws revoking that exemption. So free child labor is off the table, as well as a better educated population.”

  “But what happens if a less enlightened or more greedy administration replaces yours?”

  “Well that is always a possibility in any free society. I say we work harder to get the people what they deserve and make sure to listen to their complaints and concerns and try to address them. But surely the town has been improved in the past year, mainly by the efforts of you and your friends, Rose. A theater, A medical clinic, a portal system to keep us all connected, businesses that help support those that are less fortunate.”

  “For the year that the farms are fifty percent under my control, I was planning on just letting the farmers keep all the profit as a thank you, but instead I’ll donate that to the gnomes.”

  “Perfect, that along with the extra twelve farms will buy a lot of gnome good will and won’t generate any revenue, with gnome metal coming into our economy it should help drive a whole new industry for metal products of all kinds.”

  “Well things are much better than I feared. Thank you both so much, I’m off to buy out one of the market vendors. Where can I find honest out of work workers to run it, anywhere besides the library.”

  “No the library is the best place, plus maybe the vendor you are buying out already has staff that’d agree to stay.”

  I left the Burgomaster’s office feeling considerably better than when I’d gone in. I portaled to the warehouse portals and walked over to vendor six’s warehouse. Where I was was grabbed by two thugs. I jumped to the Hilltop World pit trap and put the men to sleep.

  I jumped back to vendor six's warehouse where I found him, beaten and unconscious tied to a chair. I portaled him to the clinic. Bhizzie helped me get him to Lottie’s trauma room, then she ran off to find Lottie. He started to come around.

  “Rose, I’m sorry, are you alright?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine you just rest easy. I thought the cartel had run out of thugs, looks like they had a couple more. But not any longer.”

  Lottie hurried in and started examining the patient.

  “Rose, please go get the guard and then either Arjun or Opal.”

  “Will do, Lottie, is he going to be okay?”

  “Yes, I’m pretty sure nothing is broken, more cartel thugs?”

  “Yes, I have them safely stored away for now. I’ll be back soon.”

  I portaled to the guard house. Nora sat at the front desk.

  “Hi ya, Rose, how’s everything going?”

  I quickly filled her in on the vendor being assaulted and me being grabbed.

  “Nora, we need a guard at the clinic to document the injuries so the poor man can be healed. Also I have the two attackers stored in a safe location. I also need to find the healers for Lottie. So if you’ll give me hand and ankle shackles, I’ll bring you some criminals in just a little while.”

  I did a locate spell, Arjun and Opal were both in the marketplace so I walked over and asked if one of them could go to the clinic and heal the beaten vendor. Ruby and Opal decided to go. Ruby had never had a chance to watch Opal heal anyone before.

  I jumped to Hilltop World, at the top of the pit trap I wanted to make sure that they were still asleep. I floated to the bottom of the trap, attached the manacles and then floated us up and out. I floated the thugs back over the trap at my eye level and woke them up.

  “Who sent you?”

  “We ain’t talking witch.”

  “Well if you ain’t talking I guess that you are no use to me. Thug number 1, die.” I floated his lifeless body down into the dirt at my feet.

  “Okay thug number two, I’m wondering are you going to be any use to me? I’m really sick of you cartel scum.”