Chapter Twenty-Two - And I've been working like a dog

I arrived back on the shop floor just as the front door opened, giving me no chance to brief the others. A young woman, quite non-descript and unremarkable, the type you would see on the street and forget about the moment you blinked, stood in the doorway. “I heard you’re hiring?” she asked. I nodded, still trying to take her in, to find anything in her appearance that would help me recognise her again tomorrow, and she stepped in.

The moment her body passed the threshold, it changed dramatically. She shrunk from being so average it was hard to describe to being small and wiry, only reaching up to my chest. Her skin turned grey, with a slightly rough-looking texture like craft paper, and her ears got pointy. Her outfit also changed; no longer unremarkably boring, it now consisted of knee-high straight boots with 4-inch soles and a row of buckles holding them closed, a mini tartan skirt that certainly would show everything was she to bend over, and a black muscle shirt showing a band logo that made no attempt at pretending she had any kind of bust at all.

Had I not seen her glamour first, I may have jumped to the conclusion of standing in front of a pre-teen. But that, and the shape of her face that showed no sign of the roundness we all have at that age, made me cautious not to judge a book by its cover. Also, I wouldn’t expect the system to send us children as workers. I also wouldn’t rule it out yet. There was plenty of bullshit going on with this gamification.

“Mistress prima,” she said, bowing her head. “I’m Kinasteria Koraldorn, at your service.”

“Welcome to the guild, Kinasteria,” I said. “I’m afraid I cannot offer you a seat, we own the total sum of one chair at the moment.” I waved my hand at the store. “About nothing has been set up so far…”

“That’s fine,” she answered. “I can stand for days. Those knees lock.” She demonstrated, and I could hear a distinct clicking sound when her bones did just that. “I’m a stone elf,” she added as an afterthought.

“Please,” I said, “tell us more about you. What position are you applying for, and what are your qualifications? And is there anything about your race we need to be aware of when employing you?”

“Sure. I’m a pureblood stone elf of Scottish descent, but my family has lived in Liverpool for three centuries. I am 28 years old, which about matches with human development, although my remaining life expectancy is about twice that of a normal human, both assuming not gaining skills and abilities, of course. I have no formal training in the human world, but I have worked retail for the last twelve years, and I am a fully licensed alchemist with a specialisation in potions. I’m applying for the customer service desk, which, as I understand it, handles guild registrations, quest assignments and completions, helping sociī and sociae with all their questions and handling sales of items the guild sells. I’m also interested in contributing to those items with potions I can brew, but I guess you’re not yet equipped with a potion lab, so that will have to wait until the guild grows to that level. About my race, we need next to no sleep, only sleeping for an hour or two every couple of days. My diet consists of mostly silicates, excreting odourless pebbles. This means I can handle the front desk full time in the beginning without having to leave to sleep or go to the toilet, although I wouldn’t want to spend that much time at work in the long term.”

I was impressed. She had rattled that down without pauses to think about it and delivered it with a smile that made me want to like her. She also was an NPC the system had probably created specifically for this job, so I saw no reason not to hire her.

“And what are your salary expectancies?” Livia asked. Of course, she would think about that.

“I was thinking about 15 pounds an hour and a 40-hour work week on paper, with the extra time done outside the human system being handled by a 10% commission on all guild taxes from quests and sales I handle. Yes, I know that’s low, but I really want a job where I don’t have to hide my nature anymore. I’m soooo fed up with faking bathroom breaks! You wouldn’t believe how the smells inside there hurt my nose. And I’m more than willing to work or sleep my way up, so please don’t expect me to be a cheap girl forever.”

I coughed. “I don’t think you’ll be getting a chance to sleep your way up anytime soon. We four are in a group relationship, so not desperate to trade sex for favours. But working your way up certainly is a possibility. You’ll be our first employee after all. This will give you a great starting point to stay at the top.”

“Thanks for not pointing out how me looking like a human child grosses you out,” Kinasteria said. “I know it doesn’t change a thing for you, but I am a fully grown adult. Just because I’m not a mammal and smaller than the average human, I may look that way to you, but that’s all—”

“Not a mammal?” Geri asked. “You lay eggs?”

“In a way, yes. It’s more like the larvae of insects than chicken eggs, though. They bury into stone and grow there for a decade, forming their own egg-like cavity before hatching. But if they’re not fertilised, the little critters die within an hour or two and lack the strength to bury. I can show you next month if you wish. They are way cuter than what humans do with their unfertilised waste, I can assure you.”

“Ok, that explains the narrow hips,” I remarked while trying to get the image out of my head. “I’d say you got the job. Gang? Any objections?”

“Welcome, Kina. I can call you Kina, can’t I?” Geri said with delight.

“Fine with me,” was Samantha’s reaction.

“I’ll put you in contact with our HR provider,” Livia said.

“Thank you all!” Kinasteria jumped in place, clapping her hands like a child. Did she really have to act how she looked? “You won’t regret this. Prima, can you put me into your system so I can start right now?” She pointed at a monitor now sitting on the old checkout bench. It resembled the ones I had upstairs but was decidedly smaller.

“Let me see how this works, I said and stepped up to it. As I extended my hand towards it, it sprang to life and logged me in automatically, showing the same desktop I had above, even the still open “Guild Status” app. Neat.

I tapped the HR app, correctly guessing this one was a touchscreen by the way it was angled and the fact that there was neither keyboard nor mouse. It now showed an applicant list with Kinasteria in it. I tapped her name, and it presented the terms of employment. I adjusted them to what we had discussed…or rather to what Kinasteria had dictated, then tapped “hire”.

It presented me with a warning message, confirming the hire but pointing out that I hadn’t yet designed guild badges and name tags. I sighed and followed the link it presented to open the designer app. Having no patience for doing any real design work, I selected a suitable template and fiddled with the background image a bit. Name tags would simply display the name and title on a vellum pattern. Guild badges would have the same pattern, the name of the guild with the city crest—the birdy one, not the council’s mermen—and the member data.

When I pressed “done”, a stack of badges and tags appeared on the table. Thank you, system, for not making us contract with a printer or buy machines to make them. I handed Kinasteria hers, then grabbed mine. “Girls, grab your badges,” I called into the room. I’m the mistress, not a servant.

🙚⚜🙘

We hired two more employees, a cleaning lady and a janitor, both part time for now. They also had some kind of non-human heritage as an excuse for being aware of players, but it wasn’t as extreme or full-blooded as what Kinasteria had, um, was. They got to work at once, and after we four returned from lunch, the shop floor looked presentable. Empty but presentable.

One wall held the quest board, which had those quests we already knew about. Next to it, there were two racks that had been deemed salvageable, holding the remaining stock we had inherited with the store. A hand-written sign, “our junk—your valuables, everything 50p,” announced that we wanted to get rid of it all.

The other walls and the floor space itself were depressingly empty. “Now, what to do with this,” I mused out loud.

“There’s a furniture store across the street,” Samantha suggested. “We could get a couple of mismatching couches, tables and chairs they may want to get rid of.”

“If that were a thing, all people would do that,” I said.

“It is,” Livia spoke up. “They don’t want to lose sales by giving stuff away for cheap, that would hurt their business as people would expect that to be a regular thing, but other store owners? We’re not really customers and they know we know how it works. Getting rid of some stuff that doesn’t sell while still recovering some cost makes sense.”

“If you say so,” I admitted. I had no clue how businesses operated other than that they sold stuff for more than they had paid for it. Ideally.

We went over there and I let Livia do the talking. An hour later, we had exactly what Samantha had suggested filling the room with some comfort, and it had cost me less than two thousand pounds. That may seem steep, but I had paid some attention to the price tags, and we had paid not even a fifth of the asking price.

I plopped down on a couch that would have cost more than I made in a month in London, enjoying the nice feeling under my but. Livia and Geri followed my example and snuggled up to me, filling the two-seater to capacity. I looked up to Samantha to see if she felt left out, but she just stood there, a hand on her chin.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked.

“Something’s missing…” she said. “But I’m not quite sure what.”

“Coffee,” Kinasteria chimed in. “We need a coffee maker and some cookies so people have something to do while sitting around.”

“That’s it!” Samantha said. “Should I organise that?”

“Sure.” I was happy to sit around idly here for a while. “Just give me a sec; I’ll put you on my bank account so that you can pay for it with guild funds.”

I had fumbled my way through the bank’s app earlier in order to pay for the furniture and noticed it offered to add employees. I did so for Samantha and texted her the access data. A couple of moments later, she had the app up and running, allowing her to pay by phone. Modern tec was a godsend in our situation; even five years ago, we would have had to wait a week for a plastic card to show up in the mail.

Twenty minutes later, Samantha returned with a huge carton in one hand and two shopping bags in the other. I hoped people had assumed the carton was empty and didn’t weigh the 17.8 kilos it said on its side. I wanted to get up, to help her, but she waved me off.

“I can handle this. It’s the same model my dad has at the office,” she said. She indeed seemed to know what she was doing, as it took her only a couple of minutes to put it up on the reception desk. Two boxes of cookies finished the ensemble.

“Is that ok for you, Kinasteria?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “I quite like coffee beans.” She snatched one from the counter that had escaped when Samantha filled the machine and chewed it. “Thanks for not getting a capsule machine. That ground stuff is boring,” she said to Samantha. Ok, she liked the beans, not so much the drink. Got it, not human.

“How do you girls like your coffee?” Samantha asked in our direction. “I need to test this.”

“Black.”—“Black.”—“Black and strong.”

Samantha paused for a moment. “What are the odds,” she murmured, then started to pull four black and strong coffees from the machine. It was quite good, but I would have preferred it a tad stronger.

“Can you make it stronger?” Geri asked. “Or has it only one setting? We need to think about others here.”

“I can and I will. It has plenty of presets.”

But that reminded me of something. “Kinasteria, can you set opening hours to match the mall’s and open the guild hall, or do I have to do that?”

“I can,” she said. “I have almost full control of the Guild Hall operations as your first employee. Aaand done. We are open for business.”

“I got a notification about it,” Geri piped up. “It says where the guild is and that the quest tab is now gone. Hihi, people will have to come here for their quests.”

I also checked my notifications. I got the same information about the guild and that monster spawn locations would no longer be announced. I also had a quest notification notice instructing me to pick up my quest reward at the guild hall.

“Kinasteria, it seems I have a quest reward pending?”

“Let me check,” she tapped around on the computer for a second. “Ah, yes. For successfully establishing an Adventurers’ Guild, in record time, first one on the planet, you are awarded 10,000 coins as starting capital for the guild, two skill points for each member of your group, and a title for all of you. It is ‘membrum condita’ and gives you access to the services of all guild halls planetwide, no matter what. That is quite a title, I have to say.”

“How much is ten thousand coins?”

“A system coin is worth about 50 pounds, but that comparison is very flawed as there is almost no overlap in wares and services you can buy with the two currencies," Kinasteria answered as if reading off a prepared script. Which she probably was doing. This must be a commonly asked question. “That’s enough to buy some of the cooler guild upgrades earlier. Stuff like an infirmary, alchemist lab, training room, and a library. Actually, it’s enough for all four and you still have plenty left for running it all.”

“Hold your horses,” I said. “I’ll ok the lab, seeing how we have you on staff for that. But the rest I want to wait until we have a need.”

“As you wish.”

“Why hold off?” Livia asked. “They sound useful.”

“Because people will take them for granted if we have them from the beginning. I set a very low tax rate, and I expect we will have to raise it for the guild to grow and run those facilities in the long term. If we combine that with adding them, people will complain less than if we raise taxes for no apparent reason.”

Livia grabbed my head and studied my face, turning it left and right. “What are you doing?” I asked, trying not to smile.

“Checking that you’re Jane and not Sam…”

“Goofball!”