New Ideas

Vera thought for a moment and looked at both men. They looked honest enough, but honest enough was not the same as safe. Still, Kate knew them. Her husband had saved Vera in the book, which meant his family’s character was not poor. 

Dan had helped Kate, and Caleb was offering actual property as security. Plus, if this was a scam, Vera could get two buildings out of it. Not a terrible outcome either way.

“Okay, here is the deal,” Vera said. “I want the carrots, onions, and your seeds. If those seeds are promising, you get stock first. The pricing will be the following. I am giving you potatoes at two thousand per bag and pumpkins at three thousand per bag. You will send Anna how much you can actually store for a week. Each week, I will come, collect the money, and give you more stock. I also have peppers, rice, grain, rice flour, and regular flour. Those will be ten thousand per bag. One bag can last a month for a family. The ground flour will be twenty thousand.”

Caleb and Dan were both staring at her now, but Vera lifted one finger because she was not done.

“Anna is going to share our set pricing with you. Since you are a store, you do not need to sell at a loss. I am only giving one bag of potatoes and pumpkins to my old clients at the same lower price. After that, the price goes up to avoid resale. You can price your stock at our second-bag price, which means you can make money too. Dan gets fifty percent of the profits for selling from the second space. The rest goes to you because you own that space.”

Caleb’s and Dan’s eyes lit up. The pricing was fair, and it was much more affordable than what the galaxy had been charging Caleb before the supply disappeared. It also gave both men something they had clearly not had in a while: a real chance.

“I agree,” Caleb said. “But I am not sure about rice and the other things you mentioned. No one has ever eaten those.”

“Leave that to me,” Vera said. “I am going to promote it. Both of you clean your spaces, set up webpages, and send the links to Anna. You will be our official distributors.”

Kate drafted the contract with all the terms, and everyone signed it. Anna stayed quiet through most of the call, but her eyes were bright as she updated the numbers. Based on Anna’s forecast, each store could bring Vera around fifty million in total income. 

If her direct sales also went well, that number could get closer to one hundred fifty million. The real hope was rice and grains, because those could bring her much higher returns once people understood how filling they were and how long one bag could last.

Vera said goodbye to Anna and Kate, then went back to her room. Now, if those seeds were promising, and with carrots and onions added, each week she could sell more. Tomorrow, she would be going live and doing a livestream.

When she received the photos from Anna, she knew she had a pretty good deal. The grains would grow and be ready by next week as well. Peppers would grow too. In the next two weeks, she should have lemons and apples, and that would add even more to the list. With new locations to sell from, she was definitely getting closer to her target faster than expected. Three visits, maybe less if the stores worked properly, and she would not need to push the land harder than it could handle. 

The bigger issue was the workers. She needed more. A lot more. Cleaning the garbage could take too much time, and they were not adding enough new space yet. Every clean plot mattered because every clean plot could turn into food, but clearing each one by hand was too slow, even with free labor.

“Uhh, I need more people,” Vera said.

She went on the web to check robot prices and closed the page right away. It was too much, and those things would not speed up the process enough to justify the cost. Sure, they could help the bandits, but the men would need to be trained to operate the machines, and if she needed to get one robot for each group, it would cost billions. 

She was technically broke, even if the numbers in her head were finally starting to look better. Belinda said Vera could take her money, but at this point, Vera did not want to. She wanted to do it herself. Not because she was being noble. She just knew that once she used someone else’s money, even from a good person, the land would not feel fully hers.

So the only way was to start looking for other areas and the people who could potentially still be alive in that sector. Maybe they had more free soil patches she could use. Maybe there were other small settlements trapped past the destroyed roads. 

Maybe some of them had tools, machines, or people who still had enough mind left to work if they were given water and food. The garbage sector was too big to assume the part she had seen was all there was. The book had ignored most of it because the original Vera had been too busy suffering to explore, but this Vera did not have that luxury. If a place could hide healing soil, worms, bandits, and old stores of useful scrap, then it could hide more.

Her thoughts were interrupted when her receiver pinged.

When she opened the notification, her expression changed immediately. The message said her hospital had been changed, and in five days, a new driver would arrive to pick her up. Her rations would be given to her at the hospital.

That goddamn Blake.

It was most likely him who changed her hospital, and that broke all her plans. She had visited Sector One before to work in that stupid restaurant and, of course, to chase after men. Xen would not do this. She was sure of that. Valerian would probably cut off his own arm before helping her, so that left Blake. Maybe that place was better. Maybe he thought he was doing something useful. Maybe in his doctor's brain, moving her to a better hospital sounded like care, but in reality, it would kill her schedule. 

The new guard would come, take her to Sector One, then probably refuse to drive her around to store locations, the market, and her own selling area. The timing was awful. The route was awful. The whole thing was awful.

This whole mess was so inconvenient. She had just made a business deal, and now her plans were simply going out the window. She was pissed, but a small part of her was also glad to get the opportunity because Blake was making a move, and that could work better for her long-term plan. Still, damn it, the money was more important right now than getting another man. That could wait longer.