[Intimidation, Urban]
“Sure Paula, if you need ten trillion dollars you can have it, but because I have been screwing up massively lately. I’d like to talk it out, and maybe take some time to consider. But like I said, if you need ten trillion or a hundred trillion dollars you can have it, however I have a few questions. First is why dollars are useless here, I suppose they’re the right size for privy paper but not much else, ten trillion that’s a lot of trips to the privy. Are you planning to move back to earth?”
“No, I don’t want to go back to earth, my life is here now. I want to solve world hunger, on earth.”
“That’s very ambitious. Let me tell you what happened to me, when I wanted to solve hunger in just Wyldwood with unlimited funding and magical power. First Arthur is given an ultimatum, stop handing out free food and shut down the portals. Then my counter move, the farms, almost creates another class of wealthy landowners, due to magic gone astray. Then, because the rich didn’t get what they wanted, they hired an army to attack the town, take over and replace the town government. We fought said war and I almost got a dear friend killed, because I won’t let him hurt anyone. Oh and just today, as I’m trying to improve the estates for affordable housing, I drag Opal into a house of horrors and have her wander around inside it, alone for an hour. Not only could she have been killed, something much worse could have happened to her. That’s me trying to fix one very small town, a town that is nowhere near as broken as earth is.”
“Rose, I’m sorry I had no idea. Is Opal alright?”
“Yes, I think so, but it was just dumb luck, I could have just as easily dragged her back in there tomorrow if Sparky hadn’t noticed that something was wrong. But tell me what your plan is?”
“I didn’t have a plan, per se. Moreover I was inspired by you, I saw what you were doing to make a change and I just thought, I was thinking about that ten million dollars you gave me. And if I’d asked for ten trillion I could save the earth’s hungry population. But I’m not naive enough to believe that it will truly end world hunger, just hopefully put a dent into it.”
“From my point of view, a view mostly informed by fiction. The main issue on earth as it is here is greed. I don’t know how to solve that on a planetary scale and still allow people to have agency. A lot of humans have tried to solve the basic problems of living on earth but most of those attempts were religious in nature. Trying to create a religious utopia, I think they fail because people still crave power over others and religions are hierarchical in general, the ones that aren’t aren’t really any better because any scam artist can step in and use the framework of the religion to dominate its members. Epicurious set up a pretty good attempt designed to make people happy, but the christian religion came along and broke that up, once they had the power of the Roman empire.”
“So we can’t do anything you are saying.”
“No, we could create another fictional world, where resources aren’t as limited, but somehow you have to beat greed. So greed would need to be outlawed, not celebrated. Advertising would be illegal, creating artificial desires, making people greedy for the next big thing, it’s a subtle form of mind control. So we create this fictional world, without any or as little greed as possible, then you give every person on Earth a choice, will you give up the fashion industry, the tech industry, the sports industry, music industry, entertainment industry, gun industry, jewelry, fancy watches. In return, you’ll have a nice safe place to live and a healthy guaranteed supply of food you can work at a fulfilling job that benefits your community. If you have an artistic bent like a musician you could be a musician but you’d never be a worldwide superstar, but you could be a musician for your community and receive the same compensation as the guard who protects everyone, or the doctor who heals everyone or the bureaucrat who helps keep it all running or the baker who keeps us all fed.”
“I’m sure you’d get a lot of people to sign up for a world like that, Rose. It sounds lovely actually, it sounds a lot like here.”
“But we have, or had a rich class of people who tried to impose their will on the entire town, so our fictional world will have no accumulation of wealth, it won’t be possible, because we will make wealth expire, just like food, money will have an expiry date. Our money will rot.”
“How could you make money rot?”
“If it was electronic you could just have it delete itself a week after it was created, with magic you could just do exactly the same thing, create paper or coin money and when a week is up it just goes poof. Use produce as legal tender, bananas are worth ten dollars until they turn black, lettuce leaves are worth one dollar until they wilt when they become valueless.”
“So you are not going to give me ten trillion dollars are you?”
“No, I told you at the very beginning that I want you to be happy and if ten trillion will make you happy, we can jump to earth and I’ll author it for you right now. But earth does have something that Emain Ablach doesn’t have, computers. I trust Maz. I'll ask Maz to go to earth and run some tests on the computer to see what would happen if that kind of money were to suddenly appear. Who would you give that money to and could you trust them? If this is about the richest man on the earth taking all the funds away from a charity so that he could save money on his taxes, we could triple the amount of money that he took away and give it to that charity. But like I said, we can go to earth right now and I’ll author you the money, no questions asked. I just wanted you to know how hard a time I’ve been having here with a similar problem.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“You really mean it, we could go to earth right now and you’d write me ten trillion.”
“Of course I want you to be happy, that’s why I told you that stuff, I’m afraid the ten trillion will make you miserable but it’s your call.”
“Thank you Rose, I’ll be building my new bakery close to the Harris mansion if I can get board approval and I want it three stories tall, floor one the bakery, floor two living quarters for me and I plan on asking Eldara to move in with me, floor three for all the kids I want.”
“Well don’t wait on asking, because Eldara was talking about buying a house on the estates. You also don’t need board approval, they, meaning you haven’t even started yet, so I’m still technically in charge so tomorrow let’s go out stake out the land and get the gnomes started on it. It’ll be slow when you first open, but you’ll still have a gnome colony very close by. But I wanted the bakery and the winery up and running before people moved in, so that plentiful food would be readily available. I still need to find someone trustworthy to run the winery. Would you ask Lily and Eldara if they have any ideas, I have to ask Mossbeard if he has any ideas?”
Lu was sick of listening to these two. They have been arguing most of the afternoon, each thought he was right or the reverse their drinking partner was always wrong. No matter the opinion. Lu just thought they were drunk and stupid. Neither of these idiots knew what he was talking about. First they had argued over the free food in the marketplace being a bad thing, next they had argued over which farmers were exploited the most. The new farmers or the farmers on the estates.
It seemed that no matter the opinion, these two always had to be on opposite sides. A good fifteen minutes before closing Lu had told them to drink up, the pub was closing. She’d also recommend nearby taverns where they could go and drink the night away. Just a portal hop away.
Now instead of arguing with each other, they decided to argue with her. The owners were stupid, a pub shouldn’t close at six, it made no sense. They’d take their time and finish their drinks, Lu would just have to wait. Lu walked over to the till, took out the cost of two ales, walked to the drunk's table, dropped the money on the table and grabbed the two mugs.
“There is a refund for your unfinished beers, we are closed. Either leave now or you will not be allowed back in.”
One of the drunks picked up his coin and stood, making ready to leave. The other stood and pulled a knife from his belt.
“No girl tells me what to do.” Get me my beer bitch.”
Lu smiled, this arse didn’t know how true that statement was. She moved toward him, to take away the knife when the drunk who was ready to go intervened, grabbing a hold of his buddy’s arm that held the knife. In a struggle to control the knife, the drunk holding the knife stabbed his drunken partner in the gut. Lu walked over and hit the attacker as softly as she could in the stomach. Rose would never know how much harder she’d made Lu’s life by making her so much stronger. She’d never know because Lu would never tell her.
He dropped the knife then puked. Nim heard the commotion and was already tying the attackers hands behind his back while simultaneously yelling for one of the Wallace twins to get the watch. Lu grabbed the smiling drunk and portaled to the clinic, trying to hold the blood in with one hand, while holding him upright by the collar.
Bhizzie wasn’t at her desk and no one was in the waiting room. Lu yelled for help, but it appeared that the clinic was closed for the day. Lu thought frantically what to do, he could go to the tower to see if Opal was home or the Journeys End to see if Arjun was at his inn. Lu tried to keep a strong pressure on the wound and portaled to the tower, Doug or Elmer would know if Opal was in the tower, if not she’d portal to the Journeys End.
“Doug, Elmer is Opal here?”
“No, she was, but Rose came and took her out again."
“Wait Miss Wolf, I can be of assistance, I was made for just such a purpose. Just put me on yon drunks chest and I can stop the bleeding.”
Lu remembered Rose telling her about the artifact she’d found, Rose had said ‘Hal’ was designed to keep Shakespeare safe in the inns and taverns of his day. That had killed another famous playwright of the same period Kit Marlowe.
Lu picked up the tiny shield and placed it on the bleeding man’s chest. Then very carefully, she pulled her hand away from the knife wound, while the victim was still covered in blood, it was no longer bleeding from the wound.
“Hal do you stop internal bleeding too?”
“I’m not sure what you mean Miss Wolf, I just stop the bleeding, I’m not sure what internal or external have to do with it. I stop all the bleeding I think. This is the first time I ever had to.
