Chapter 11: Buying Company (Patreon)

“This must be the place,” Jeb said, glancing up at the sign. ‘Otto’s Slave house’ hung over the door according to Smartass, but it wasn’t sleazy and written on a plank of wood, it was carved into marble and gold, hung above the fancy looking building by thin strands of some kind of indestructible silk.

The only thing that gave the place away as a den of scum and villainy was the stench of hopelessness and the subtle change in the flavor of local Myst and spirits. They were darker, somehow.

“Yeah, I’m not too sure about this place,” Smartass said, hiding in his collar as he walked into the main lobby. It was like the entrance to an opera house, all red carpets and snooty staffers.

The entire place was lit with a warm glow, which did little to offset the unease that Jeb felt as he approached the main desk. The keegan watched him from behind the desk brow raised.

No matter what happened now, the most important thing was to avoid getting added to the merchandise.

“I’m sorry sir, but we do not serve human –“

Jeb slung three cases of bulbs, a hundred and twenty of them in total, onto the desk with a satisfying thunk. Over seven pounds of gold.

“How about we skip all of that shit and get to the part where you sell me some people?” Jeb asked, giving the guy the do not fuck with me look he’d developed in his time in the army. A well-timed staredown was often better than minutes of useless explanations and haggling. It allowed the other guy to fill in their own blanks.

“You must be the human who bought the Linnorn manor.” A keegan said, approaching from the side. “Please forgive my employee’s impudence, your money is good here.”

Of course it is, Jeb thought, slinging the cases back over his shoulder

The new keegan motioned to the side with delicate fingers. Jeb tried to figure out if it was male or female, then decided he didn’t care, following alongside the slave-trader.

“My name is Colus, I assume you’re here to look for staffers for your new home? We have some young women who would be perfect for a virile man such as yourself. There hasn’t been much time to train them, obviously, but there’s been so many humans selling themselves and each other for a meal that it’s a bit of a buyer’s market out there. As such we can simply use the power of numbers to search for people who most closely match your tastes.

“Are you looking for a project, perhaps? A girl that will take some time and effort but be rewarding to tame? Or perhaps you prefer a more docile, bookish type? Or a matronly housewife to care for your body and soothe your spirits?”

“Are you working me right now?” Jeb asked, frowning. “Never mind, of course you are. Nobody’s ever called me virile before. Feels weird. Just arrange for me to view everyone you’ve got,” Jeb said. “I’ll do the rest myself.”

“As you wish.” Colus stopped him in the hall for a moment and sent word to gather everyone in the courtyard.

They chatted for a couple minutes, and Jeb made sure not to let anything personal slip, especially not the reason he was here.

Sure, people to help run his mansion were helpful, but they weren’t the actual reason he was here, and since he couldn’t directly lie about that, the conversation kinda went in circles.

The worker gave Colus a nod, and the keegan led Jeb out into the main courtyard in the center of the complex.

There were a staggering amount of slaves here. Jeb had no idea where they even kept all of them.

The courtyard was maybe half the size of a football field, and it was standing room only. Every race, age and gender stared back at him, a full representative sample of America with collars around their necks, staring back at him with apprehension.

Jeb couldn’t help but notice there were some very pretty young women.

Goddamnit. Jeb mentally kicked himself for even entertaining the notion. Lizard brain being stupid. Time for big wrinkly human forebrain to step in and take care of this.

“Everybody under the age of thirty, out.” Jeb said, motioning with his thumb. “I don’t wanna deal with your hormonal bullshit.” Or give my darker side control over someone I find attractive.

Men and women over the age of thirty were far less likely to try and stage a coup out of some misguided need for rebellion against the man. In this case, Jeb was going to be the man.

Colus nodded, and people began to filter out of the crowd, led away by the friendly neighborhood slave handlers.

Jeb saw women under the age of eighteen and children that must have been only ten or twelve escorted out. He wanted to save each and every one of them. But there were dozens, hundreds of children. He couldn’t stomach saving one and not the rest, and besides, they were more of a liability than anything else.

So Jeb left them to their fate.

That one condition substantially reduced the volume and physical attractiveness of the people he was presented with.

Instead of ten thousand people, he was offered with only a couple thousand.

“What’s the going price on these people?” Jeb asked.

“Ten bulbs for unskilled labor, twenty bulbs for young unskilled labor…although you seem to have already cut off that option. Twenty-five bulbs for a skilled craftsman, and forty bulbs for a high expert or low Classer. High classer prices are determined individually, and I’m afraid we don’t have any in stock today.”

“That’s it? Would a schoolmarm count as skilled or unskilled?”

“Unskilled.”

Well, looks like I’ve got more spending money than I thought.

“Raise your hand if you were a teacher in a high school.”

About a dozen hands went up.

“Over a decade of experience.”

“If I may ask, why schoolteachers of the high schooling? Are they actually high experts?”

“Not exactly.” Jeb said. “High school isn’t actually high schooling, that would be college. High school is the proving ground where teachers deal with hundreds of adolescent humans going through the heights of puberty every weekday for years. The absolutely most disobedient, rash, stupid, malicious stage any human goes through. Any high school teacher with a decade or more of experience managing teens is tough. I’m looking for a pair to put that experience to work managing my property and the people living there.”

Jeb failed to mention the children that would be living there, but the rest of it was the truth.

“Interesting logic.”

“You taught AP classes.”

More hands went down.

“This is a difficult one to answer, but just go with your gut, I guess. The kids respected you.”

A lot more hands went down.

In the end, Jeb narrowed it down to an English teacher and a history teacher. Both of whom had cultivated contradicting airs of friendliness, sarcasm, and no-nonsense attitudes, which was exactly what Jeb was looking for. People who could both relate to children and handle them were rare.

The English teacher was a balding man with white hair, one Mr. Everett. He had a glint of humor in his eye as Jeb motioned him to the front, despite the situation.

“Mr. Everett, how do you feel about being a butler?” Jeb said, putting his hand out.

“Good a job as any, kid.” The older man said, shaking his hand.

Mrs. Lang, the history teacher, was a brunette with short cropped hair and a somewhat boney body in her mid-fifties. Her gaze scanned the situation and seemed to take in everything and add it up behind her eyes.

Both of them were sharp. Good.

“Mrs. Lang, how do you feel about being a butler?”

“Honestly better than I thought my fate would be, given the circumstances. Old slaves in many cultures were simply left out to die.”

“That’s not my scene.” Jeb opened one of his cases and slipped out two tubes of ten bulbs, well over a pound of solid gold.

“I’d like them to start immediately.” Jeb said, holding the cash out to Colus.

“Usually we’d sign them over first, but I don’t see why not.” Colus said, taking the leather tubes and slipping them in his robe.

Jeb turned back to the teachers.

“I need two cooks, two janitors, and a handyman. Find me the best you can.”

“Got it,” Mr. Everett said, his gaze already picking out specific individuals.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Lang said, nodding, her eyes watering.

“Go, go.” Jeb said, shooing them.

What is it about teachers that makes it impossible not to put a Mrs. Or Mr. in front of their name? Even in my head?

The reason Jeb had given them leave to pick out the rest of the employees was so that they could:

1. Pick out any family members they wanted to stay close to. Mrs. Lang picked up on that pretty quick.

2. Pick people they were familiar with and could work well with.

People the teachers would be familiar with were school lunch ladies, school janitors, etc. They existed in the same realm as the teachers themselves, and therefore knew how to deal with children, even if it was in passing.

Allowing a certain level of favoritism was good for an organization, and bringing their whole family together would keep them tight knit.

For this con, Jeb needed them to be tight knit.

Oddly enough, the handyman that Mrs. Lang picked out was mid-fifties and had Lang for a last name. Weird.

One of the cooks was a white haired woman with an amiable grin.

Last name Everett.

Jeb overlooked it.

They filled in the remaining positions with people from their old schools, which was exactly what Jeb wanted.

Each of the positions technically counted as unskilled labor, so all told they ran him another fifty cool, leaving Jeb with just fifty left.

That’s the skeleton crew I’ll need to take care of the kids I’mma kidnap. Honestly cost a whole lot less than I thought it would.

He glanced at the last five tubes of gold, when he felt a spark touch his mind, revealing the jet fuel bulb resting back in his newly purchased mansion.

“Quick question before I go. Are there any astrophysicists, roboticists, rocket scientists, NASA people in here?”

One hand went up near the back.

“Come on to the front.”

It was a skinny old man with a shock of unkempt white hair, his gaze somewhat manic, unlike Mr. Everett’s.

“What’s your name?”

“Eddie Davis.”

“And what do you do?”

“A little bit of everything, but robotics and AI are my speciality. I was in the middle of working on walking rover designs and programming its AI to deal with unexpected situations more efficiently.”

“You think you could fix a Roomba?” Jeb asked.

The older man stared at him.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Colus leaned in. “Excuse me, Mr. Trapper. I do not know what a Roboticist, astrophysicist, rocket scientist, or NASA is. There hasn’t been a specific request for any of those things in the entire time we’ve been selling humans, and I noticed only one man raised his hand. Would it be correct to assume they are high experts?”

“Yeah, they’re high experts,” Jeb said with a sigh, pulling out four tubes of gold.

“To hell with that, son. You want me to play housekeeper for some schoolteachers while an entirely new set of physics just got dropped in our laps? I gotta science, man. If you try to make me tuck sheets I’ll kill myself. Do you have any idea the kinds of things that are possible now?”

Jeb leaned in and whispered in the old man’s ear.

“Magical infinite energy sources that weigh half a pound.”

Eddie jerked away, his eyes wide. He searched Jeb’s gaze for a moment.

“Fucking buy me. Fucking buy me right the fuck now.” Eddie said, holding his shackles out and wiggling his fingers.

“What did you tell him?”

“I made him an implicit offer of something his nerdy kind has been seeking for a thousand years.” Jeb said, handing over the money.

Jeb took his eight new staffers to the paperwork room, signed a bunch of papers and made his ownership official, then paused when he noticed something odd.

“Where are the slave collars? The Myst ones that control their behavior?” Jeb asked, pointing at the simple leather collars on the middle aged slaves.

Colus chuckled. “If you like we can lease one of them to you for a bulb a month, but most of these slaves aren’t worth that level of insurance.”

His gaze flickered to Eddie.

“How much is a Myst slave collar?” Jeb asked.

“I told you, a bulb a month.”

“How much to buy one?” Jeb clarified.

“Oh. Two hundred and fifty bulbs is the typical amount we add if a client intends to buy the collar outright with a particularly expensive and valuable slave.”

“What if I just wanted the collar?”

“We do need them to keep control over the most unruly, powerful individuals, but we could spare one or two for say…three hundred apiece.”

Jeb sucked in a breath through his teeth. Almost twenty pounds of gold each. He currently did not have that much, but he would.

“I’ll revisit that subject soon.” Jeb muttered, finishing his signature. He didn’t want the slave collar so much for the slave collar aspect of it. He wanted the big Control lens for his own creations along with the other Myst-based guts to hand over to Eddie, his R&D department.

“Of course.”

“If any more NASA, Astrophysicists, roboticists, or rocket scientists come into your possession, I’d be happy to buy them,” Jeb said.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Colus said. “If we find such a person, we will contact your staff at the manor.”

Colus laced his fingers together. “You know, most human men who come by are far more interested in purchasing attractive young females. You are a welcome outlier, in that you seem to be purely motivated by practicality and profit. I think you’ll make quite a splash in Solmnath.”

“You better believe it.” Jeb said, standing and leaving without another word. It was probably a bit rude, but Jeb didn’t want to be buddies with a slave trader.

He led his group of eight back to the mansion. A few of them flinched at the rough state of the exterior, but most seemed to be happy simply to have a place to sleep.

“Yeah, it’s a fixer-upper. That’s what you guys are for.” Luckily there was a lot of overlap between a janitor and a handyman. Mrs. Lang had basically gotten him four people good with their hands by ensuring cook number two had some carpentry experience as well.

Mr. Lang himself was a contractor, which suited Jeb perfectly.

Jeb took them inside the mansion and closed the door.

“Alright everyone, gather round. I’mma ‘bout to give you the speech.”

They gave him their attention.

“Okay, first of all. We will never be friends.”

Jeb scratched his head, chuckling as the room full of middle-aged men and women frowned at him.

Jeb cleared his throat. “I believe that there are certain doors, certain possibilities in a relationship that close permanently upon one person purchasing another person. friendship is one of them.

“I don’t want any of you pretending you like me for fear that I’ll beat or resell you. I am your boss. I do not care if you like me, and now that you’re here, you will not be beaten or resold, regardless of what you do. The only thing I care about is making sure the job goes off without a hitch.

“So contradict me, second guess me, tell me when I’m fucking up...but as soon as I tell you to do something, I expect you to do it.”

The assembled people watched him intently, paying careful attention to his words.

“For my part, I will make sure you’re paid and cared for until the job is over, at which point I give you my word, I will set you free and give you the mansion. Make a school out of it or something. I don’t care.”

Mrs. Lang frowned. “What do you mean by ‘the job’?’”

“Ladies and gentlemen, you may or may not have noticed that the vast majority of you have a background in education. This is not by accident.”

“There is a killer stalking the streets of Solmnath. This particular killer has been targeting at-risk children, snatching orphans and children separated from their parents, picking them off...killing them in order to raise their level. Unfortunately, children that fit those criteria are pretty abundant recently.”

Mrs. Lang’s jaw dropped. “That’s horrible.”

Mr. Everett simply scowled, his usually cheerful demeanor turning ugly.

“Now, I have been deputized by an Imperial enforcer to handle the problem.” Jeb pulled the copper plate out of his pocket and flashed it at them before they looked at it too closely.

It might be hard to take him seriously when his deputy badge looked like a mudflap girl

“The job is this: I am going to relocate several dozen at-risk children in order to lure out the killer. When he sniffs around for the person intruding on his territory, I am going to kill him. Your job is to take care of the kids and keep them in the mansion. This job could take several months, but in the end, we’ll get several dozen homeless kids a place to sleep, and hopefully murder a serial killer. Fun, right?”

“This would never fly in America.” Mr. Everett said. “You can’t just arbitrarily kidnap children for the sake of laying a trap for a serial killer.”

“Good thing we’re not in America.”

“Can’t you just…investigate?” Mrs. Everett asked, clutching her chest. “Kidnapping children seems…”

“Extreme?” Jeb asked. “I never said I wouldn’t be investigating. I’ll be doing that, too. If it helps, don’t think of it as kidnapping. Think of it as pulling these kids out of a killer’s crosshairs.”

“Being abducted can do serious damage to a kid’s mind. It can impact them for the rest of their life.” Mrs. Lang said.

“More than starving on the street or getting murdered?” Jeb asked, raising a brow. “Besides, mental health is what I bought you guys for,” Jeb motioned to the two outstanding teachers. “I assume the two of you have master’s degrees in developmental psychology?” he eyed Mr Everett and Mrs. Lang.

“…True.” Mr. Everett admitted.

“But dear. Kidnapping them?” Mrs. Lang asked, looking up at her husband.

“Sweetheart, I think this is one of those situations where it’s better us than them.”

“What about me?” Eddie asked.

“This Myst lens converts magic into jet fuel,” Jeb said, pulling the lens out of his backpack and tossing it at the scientist. “Knock yourself out.”

A manic giggle rose in the scientist’s throat, and he began petting the lens like Gollum with The One Ring.

“First thing’s first,” Jeb said, clapping his hands. “Get this place ready for company. Mr. Everett, Mrs. Lang. You’re in charge. Eddie, you’re with me.”

Jeb took out his remaining tube of gold. “Supplies,” he said, handing it to Mrs. Lang. He also took out the deeds that proved he owned them and passed them over to their respective person.

“Also, take these. You did more to earn them than I did. Carry them on your person, hang them in your room, whatever you want. I’ll sign the release when we’ve got the guy I’m looking for.”

That taken care of, Jeb spun on his heel and went back out the front door, Eddie trailing behind him. Jeb broke into a light jog, clomping his way around to the back of the mansion, where he’d parked the jeep and trailer.

Right beside the mansion was what appeared to be a storm cellar. Two big double doors on rusted hinges. They led down into a rather large basement, about thirty paces in either direction, plenty for a single man to set up a small lab/production facility.

Jeb needed somewhere to grind out the gold bullion once he really started spending. Somewhere preferably out of line of sight. There would be enough people wondering where he got his money from.

He also wanted to see what a real scientist could do with Myst Engines.

Note to self. Get more Myst engines.

In all likelihood, a Myst engine was incredibly valuable, given that it could be used to power a lens-mine.

“Welcome to your new lab,” Jeb said, motioning to the musty expanse. A spider skittered up one of the stone support beams. “Whaddya think?”

Eddie sniffed, glancing at the ceiling. “Needs ventilation. Unless you want us to suffocate on carbon monoxide. And a light source. Tools and a workbench. And a computer for coding and drafting. And a generator to run aforementioned drafting computer.”

Jeb glanced at the smooth stone ceiling.

“Start a list of what you need, then give it to Mrs. Lang.”

Eddie nodded.

“In the meantime, help me unload the trailer.”

Eddie’s eyes bulged when Jeb started unloading boxes full of jewelry and lenses from the back of the small trailer. His peg leg made carrying heavy things extra awkward, with only one foot to balance on. Jeb used his Myst to steady himself and stop from toppling over.

He’d gotten stronger over the last few weeks, but he was still only able to lift thirty or forty pounds with his mind. A Myst attribute of sixteen was good, especially compared to the average Joe, but not great. Especially compared to the average Myst user.

I wonder if I can get some new rings. I wonder if they would work. Jeb’s previous rings had simply stopped working after the powwow with the gods themselves. They’d been little more than paperweights by the time he’d gotten back to the real world.

They had funded his first couple weeks in an inn before The Spike started nagging at him again.

Jeb wasn’t sure if the rings didn’t work because he was no longer connected to The System, or if it was because they’d been burnt out, but the guy he’d sold them to had said they were nonmagical and paid him a handful of silver for the two rings.

Jeb had to assume the guy wasn’t lying, because as far as the salesman knew, everyone could use the System to identify objects, and lying would be ousted in a matter of seconds.

So assuming I didn’t get shafted, I could probably buy some new ones.

Still, what about contact with the gods had caused his rings to lose their juice?

Speaking of attributes, Jeb thought, glancing over at Eddie.

“Eddie, what’s your Class?”

“What Class?”

“Your level?”

“Zero.” The scientist said, holding up a circled thumb and forefinger. “I went through the Easy tutorial and listened to a bunch of safety talks and whapped a straw man with a wooden sword a couple times until they let me go. When I got back to Earth, I immediately put myself out of harm's way.”

“Why?” Jeb asked.

“Because on average, every actual fight I saw, twelve percent of the people involved got murdered.” Eddie said with a shrug.

“It takes about ninety life-threatening fights to achieve level twenty and get a Class. Extrapolating from that information by using the point eight eight survival rate raised to the power of ninety to illustrate the total number of fights reveals I would have a one in one hundred thousand chance of surviving until the end.”

“You realize the twelve percent goes down as people figure out what they’re doing, right? That number doesn’t account for experience.” Jeb mused.

“That number also doesn’t account for the fact that I’m goddamn sixty years old, with weak muscles and slow reflexes. I can barely lift fifty pounds. I’m not a young man full of piss and vinegar. Whaddya say we call it square?” Eddie said, setting the box down against the wall and rubbing his back.

True, he’s not exactly adventurer material. But…

“Eddie, if you want to figure out how to combine human and Myst tech together, we’re going to need to get you a class.”

The skinny old man puffed up his chest and heaved out a sigh. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

A thought occurred to Jeb. “You think you could modify a bomb-disposal robot?”

“Does a bear shit in the woods?”

“Excellent. Add bomb-disposal robot to your list. I’m sure they’re not in high demand right now. In the meantime we need to pawn some of this stuff.”

I need to go on a shopping spree.