Chapter 544: Day 5,006 – Tour Of The Farms

Chapter 544: Day 5,006 – Tour Of The Farms

“Doctor Katz,” I greeted the man.

“Emperor Michael,” he replied with a nod.

“A 100 buildings so far?” I asked.

“Actually 120 buildings. We do them in 12 building blocks as you can see. Two deep, six long, and four stories tall,” he replied. He led me into a building. “Each building has a caretaker, or manager.”

“This entry in the corner, is for supplies, crates, and the elevator between levels. Expensive, but it the most efficient,” he said.

“Why not bigger building blocks?” I asked.

“Keeping the streets open. Also, the ground floor is for living and businesses, the top three floors have the farms. The idea is that the farms feed the people living here and support the local businesses to reduce shipping concerns. Also elevators require crystals, so best used for large cart transports. Basically an apartment block with farms above,” he said.

“The housing block is kept separate from the farms?” I asked.

“That door over there leads to the communal part of the apartments. Showers, lounge area. The rest of the units are packed in tightly. Let’s take a look. No one is living here at the moment.” He led me into the housing part of the complex. “The lounge, kitchen area, are decent sized. Then we have the cell rooms.” They were like prison cells, only tighter. They were as bad as the airship.N0v3lTr0ve served as the original host for this chapter's release on N0v3l--B1n.

“You are packing people in,” I said.

“Yes. It isn’t a good living, but it is living. And cheap. Each room will only cost 10 points per day. You get a bed, light, dresser, and a roommate on the bunkbed,” he said.

“That would be 80 people?” I asked, looking at the size of the room.

“Yes. Very packed. One would be the building manager or caretaker. They maintain things and report issues. Also regular inspections,” he replied.

“This is very cramped.” I said as we went back to the main hall.

“It is. But better to start packing in people now for cheap than waiting. Down, this side hallway,” he said while opening a door taking me between some tiny rooms, to a room bordering the street. I looked around and saw a counter and several shelves.

“People can keep the outside or inside closed as they like. The front part, can lift up in front of those counters, if people want to sell directly to the street, or that door in the middle can be opened,” he replied.

“How much?” I asked.

“A shop would be 100 points per day. I suspect some of them will be used as washing rooms, mending rooms, and other such things,” he replied. I followed him back out of the store area and he closed the doors behind me. We made our way onto the second floor, from the secured area with the elevator and staircase.

Now this was impressive. Three levels of shelving, with box planters on each shelf and a light above them. “Incredibly expensive to set all this up. Enchanting the box planters, but there shouldn’t be issues. In time crops might be rotated out as needed. For now, there is a mix of stuff growing. Just takes time.”

“And things don’t stop growing,” I said while recalling his reports.

“That is a problem that can be handled with trimming. It is slow steady growth. No burst growth. The normal lifecycle of the plants from Earth doesn’t align to what we see here,” he explained.

“The lights? Are they needed?” I asked.

“Yes, to help the plants grow straight. Just needs a lot of investment for one of these places. The goal being the rental fees for the housing and business, keep things maintained, and then the food can be sold,” he answered.

“This will produce a lot more than people can eat? Or will it?” I asked.

“It should be enough for the people in the building with about 15% extra. A lot of it depends on what is grown, but that should be fairly close. That is why there are three growing levels to ensure a surplus. This will be sold to the businesses and allow cash crops,” he explained.

“That much, really?” I asked.

“Crafting crystals aren’t cheap unfortunately. There is a high demand. And they are worth about 10 regular crystals at the same level. Since the planters are down with level 2 enchantments, that means each one costs about 2,200 points, with four enchantments layered on, materials, and craftsmanship. Also getting the dirt and so on.”

“Then you have 12,000 planters per floor level, with 3 level is 80 million points. The remaining 20 million points are for the floors, lights, and everything else in the buildings.”

“Fine,” I said.

“Fine?” he asked.

“I don’t like charity. And I don’t like this farming idea that much. But I do like you. I will support 5 billion points over the next thousand days. No more from me. You can beg Clarissa or try to make money from the existing buildings, but that is it. Don’t ask me again after that. Also I want shrines for the Power Church in every lounge area,” I replied.

“10 billion and shrines in all the buildings,” he countered.

“You overstep Doctor,” I told him off.

“Maybe, but getting a 100 of these buildings up and running, will let me build more on a regular basis, and completely eliminate any issues with housing, and jobs.”

“For Purgatory. Not for the other cities,” I countered.

“They will base things off my model once they see the success,” he countered.

“Get the other 5 billion from Clarissa’s share of the tax revenue. You are getting that much from me, and you are lucky to get even that much. I think it is a waste of points, but you know I have wasted them on other stupid things,” I sighed, still annoyed at the meta-point user who had scammed me.

“And I can start a charity?” he asked, since I had been so against them in the past.

“Or an actual corporation. Delegate doctor, delegate like Clarissa. Then do extensive audits to make sure things don’t get off track. She has the right idea there.” Work smarter, not harder.

“When things settle down,” he replied.

“We will be leaving on day 5,020 to check out the other nations,” I replied.

“That soon?” he asked.

“That late. I pushed things back on account of you doing all this. Delegate doctor. Consider that an order from your Emperor. I am sure Clarissa will be happy to assign one of her many minions,” I told him.

“I want someone with compassion,” he replied, and I shook my head at this.

“Get someone with business sense and have a metric of their performance, be appearance and how well operations function for these buildings. Trust me, compassion is the death of business. Make the end product rainbows and unicorns, and attach that to metrics, it will work out much better,” I told him, hoping he would take my advice.

“Really? That seems counterintuitive,” he replied.

“It is to some extent. But someone with compassion won’t look for the most cost-effective solutions. They won’t aim to maximize the metrics you set. That is one reason I don’t like charities. They confuse helping people for babying them. Just have metrics and audits. If things need to be adjusted, it is easier to adjust those than trying to find new people to run things,” I explained to him.

Hopefully some of this was sticking. I was no master of management like Clarissa, but I knew enough to be dangerous. Trying to reinvent the wheel, for running a slum required thinking of happiness as a metric. Or at least livability.

I would check back on these places in a couple of years, and hopefully they weren’t crime filled holes of misery and despair. It felt like things would go that way, but the good doctor might surprise me. We were creating about 8 jobs, but creating housing for 80 people. Even if another 8 were for support like mending clothes and washing them, that left 64 people with nothing to do.

Their pay had to come from somewhere. Maybe local guards, business people, and they would go to other businesses in the city. Still it was a lot of people that would get packed in. Perhaps a park building or two would be useful. I would have to follow up with Clarissa’s city planning people to make sure they took that into account. Couldn’t just put people in tight conditions without expecting violence or trouble.