How to Succeed In Business in a New World

Homecoming

    In terms of cash right now we were rolling in it, not literally of course considering our riches could fit comfortably in the palm of my hand, but it was still a heck of a lot to us. As much as the consumerist voice inside me, and the voice beside, tried to convince me that it was time for another shopping trip I would resist for now. For the time being I wanted to get a lot of work done on our upcoming theatrical debut. The sooner I could get the scripts finished the sooner we could start reviewing our lines and maybe even have a dress rehearsal depending on when the puppets got finished, I was really trying not to put any pressure on Marie to finish quickly considering that her work was frankly a lot harder than mine on account that this was her first time seeing the characters whereas I just had to remember things and write them down, not to mention she had already been working so diligently at her task. I had heard from friends about how when their grandmothers or moms start knitting or things like that they really almost fall into a hypnotic trance. I wasn’t sure if that was what was happening here or she was actually just excited to be working on it naturally, either way I was somewhat impressed with her process, instead of running each project straight through from beginning to end she did have some sort of an assembly line process going on. She had an array of half finished puppets with fabric swatches hanging off of them, it made it hard to judge her total progress but it sure made her look busy. In a way we both were rather busy though it didn’t seem like it because we were just doing the same thing for the whole day but we really were working hard.

I wasn’t going to put a firm estimation on when the process would be a hundred percent completed but it probably wouldn’t be all too long now. Especially with a good financial nest egg we shouldn’t need to worry about working for a while so it was extremely possible that our first show could be going on before this time next week. A solid day of work or two and I’d be done with the script but then I would have to start work on the theater. It wouldn’t be too elaborate, just sort of a frame with a board to hide the people operating the puppets, it should be well within my admittedly weak carpentry abilities. Though I would like to decorate it a bit, it would probably help distract from the poor construction if we just painted it a solid color and maybe put some swirls or stars on it. Looking like something of legitimate operation would be ideal, at least enough to fool kids and maybe their parents. That was one pitfall I hadn’t anticipated with this plan, the target demographics weren’t exactly as easy to delineate or target as they were where I came from. Not to mention the niches weren’t exactly as chiseled out. Having a guaranteed audience just for including certain themes wasn’t exactly viable here but at the same time since there wasn’t as much choice people probably wouldn’t be as picky with what entertainment they consume. I did not have a mind for marketing at all so I reassured myself that I could just try again until I plagiarize something that’ll be a real hit here, and I can always get some feedback on this one to inform my decision as to what to work on bringing to the small stage next. There weren’t all that many options that I had in terms of things that I could parrot nearly word for word but general plot lines were abound in my head. As much as I would love to have an absolute juggernaut of a series that had new episodes coming out every week or so I wasn’t quite confident enough to do that yet, but at some point down the line being a live-in entertainer and putting on a show for a nobleman on the regular would be an extremely favorable set up. Though having deadlines like that may stress me out far too much to actually get the work done, and disappointing those types would probably not end well. For now I would just pluck away at the task at hand. 

End of Day Report

Start:       ¤ 610.00

Change:  ¤ 0.00

End:         ¤ 610.00

We didn’t have any plans for today to make it any different from yesterday. Just do more work but depending on how much of a groove I got into I may be able to finish up on the script. I was keeping a mental eye on the possibility of burning out so I wasn’t going to push myself too hard, and I especially wasn’t going to push Marie to meet any draconian and arbitrary schedule. She was doing this mostly as a favor to me, even if she had just trusted in my crackpot scheme and given me moral support I would have gotten more than I deserved out of her so anything more than that is just gravy. But definitely by tomorrow afternoon it’d be time to pick up the supplies to construct the stage and when we did go in I’d be sure to treat her to lunch or something, we should probably do something just to avoid going stir crazy at some point soon. There wasn’t much I could think of to do as a leisure activity or as like an outing around here and it might seem a tad tacky to ask her to find something to do. Though I didn’t really know what people did together for fun in the first place from a lifetime of not doing anything and not doing anything with anyone. Though there was a bit of a culture gap too, I knew going flower viewing was a popular outing but I had no clue if that was a thing people did here let alone if there were any flowers to view, even forgetting about the timing aspect. It did make me miss my old life somewhat, the little things that I would never do again were what seemed to hit hardest, never riding on a train again, never hearing those songs I hated, never getting the consolation prize in a shopping district lottery again. I don’t know why I was suddenly feeling so sad about these things but it wasn’t really the first time either. A few times when I was drifting off to sleep I’d feel a tear well up as I remembered the games that I would never finish and all the accounts that would be forever left dormant. It felt sort of like moving away from your hometown but knowing you could never go back to visit, leaving everything you knew behind. There wasn’t anything that could be done about it so I guess the only thing to do was to learn to accept it and maybe find some way to fill the void with things in this world. Just to grow and adapt to the new environment, it was supposed to be what humans were good at but I never thought of myself as being particularly good at being a human. I needed new aspirations and to form attachments even with benign things here. Having a second life was really rather troublesome the more I thought about it. 

End of Day Report

Start:       ¤ 610.00

Change:  ¤ 0.00

End:         ¤ 610.00

I probably stayed up much too late last night but I really just wanted to get the script done and I was on something of a roll. Granted my concept of time was thrown way off without a clock nearby and no electric light so “much too late” probably ended up being around 11pm. Regardless of how late I actually stayed up I did end up finishing, it was one of the most abnormal feelings to experience the emotional c****x of one of my favorite pieces of media through my own pen. I could imagine it felt like the difference between m**********n and actual passionate s*x not that I was much of an authority on the matter. Whenever I read it back I only got a fraction of the same swell of emotion I had gotten before, maybe it was because I hadn’t written it as well or maybe it was because by writing it myself I had taken away a portion of its power. Hopefully I could recapture some of the emotional weight when it was played out live, more for everyone else than for my sake. After all if just writing it drained it of some impact then being the one to act it out would probably leave it almost completely hollow. Though it’s not like I was too concerned about artistic integrity or anything, after all I had stolen another person’s work pretty much wholesale, though it didn’t feel like much of a crime if the victim didn’t exist here and was committed by a dead man over there. The only way it could be much more of a perfect crime is if I was guaranteed success and also didn’t need to do any work for it. For now though I’d chase this opportunity, I had already sunk so much time and a good amount of money into it so what was a few more dollars and a few more days. Besides, it was starting to feel pretty therapeutic to just sit down and write whatever I could remember for hours at a time, I was starting to see why journaling was recommended for people that were stressed. I had never done journaling outside of school assignments about what you did over summer vacation and the like. But I had never had much stress either. In fact the journaling assignments were one of my larger sources of stress in life. I guess journaling was more effective for people that actually had something to write about. Writing the same singular sentence for days on end about how I played the same game or watched the same show all day today wouldn’t achieve much. But now I was being productive and it felt pretty good to be frank. It didn’t feel good to do something productive but being productive felt nice. Though that may have been largely influenced by the fact that I hadn’t done it before so I was still getting the full high from the most mundane of tasks. For most people this would have probably been barely enough to feel anything, though to some extent the same thing was true for relaxing and taking it easy. I had gotten to the point where when I had to do anything it seemed like a titanic inconvenience. If given the choice though I don’t think I would hesitate to go right back to old life, after all wasn’t that what all of this was for? My long term goal was to become enough of a success, in anything really, to return to my easy going lifestyle by retiring on whatever laurels I could get my hands on. I was never given any sort of goal like to take down a Dark Prince or to fight off evil forces and save a princess, I was thrust into this world without an ounce of direction so I can’t really be judged too harshly for my only aspiration to go back to my life of NEETdom. Of course no one else in this world was given a grand destiny to fulfill before they were born so my excuse didn’t hold much water. But that had exactly zero chance at stopping me from using and abusing it to the fullest. If anything it was probably the most ambitious I was going to get so society should be happy that I’m willing to contribute to it at least temporarily. In fact it was just about time to pay into the local economy and get the supplies for the theater. From working at the lumberyard when I first got here I had a decent idea of how the process would work, my plan was to show up and put in the order for the sizes I needed and then come back later in the day and pick them up. Since we were going to be waiting for the wood anyway then we might as well plan some ways to use the time in a manner that didn’t completely feel like a waste. We could go to the library and see what was happening with the approval of the suggestion, and assuming it went over well then we could do something of a read through of the script so that everyone can get an idea before we actually start planning to put on the show. We should also do some discussion of marketing or something. After all if part of the point of this was to get more traffic for the library then it would make no sense to just depend on people being there coincidentally when we decided to put it on. At least a sign out front ahead of time letting people know that there would be something to see other than the same dusty old books on the weekend. It’d be good for kids and people that didn’t know how to read or whatever. I felt like there was some pretty universal appeal to puppets though it did definitely slant younger. Maybe if there wasn’t much of a precedent for puppet shows then maybe we could get off to a good start and captivate the range of everyone in the audience, though my designs may have been a bit too simplistic for that. Maybe the cute appeal would still touch the hearts of old and young.

The lumberyard was bustling with orders being filled but it seemed like there weren't too many more coming in now. The man behind the counter was aggressive but it seemed like he wasn’t at all selected as someone personable and rather as the laborer who was closest to the counter when we came in. When I had asked about when it would be ready for pick up his aggressiveness flared up enough to shine through his patina of customer service and he pretty much just told us that it’d be ready when it was ready. Without an estimated time of completion though our time killing would have to spread pretty far. Maybe we could go to the guild too and see what was going on there, thinking about it specifically we had never eaten at the restaurant area before so maybe we could check that out. It seemed like it fairly accurately captured the atmosphere one would expect from an adventurer’s bar, and while I had never really been interested in the idea of bars as a place to hang out and socialize but I do think I would be able to appreciate the authenticity of the environment, and from the corner of the room it seemed like it would be enjoyable to just observe the personalities that would come in and clash in the arena that was any establishment serving alcohol. I had some fairly lofty expectations of how the characters in an adventuring guild would behave, particularly when drunk. Though it was explicitly possible that it wouldn’t actually be all too exciting since everyone here was an eternal beginner so they probably wouldn’t have the bravado and hot blooded tempers of seasoned veterans of the profession who have as many stories to tell as scars on their face. But maybe there would be something of a humor in watching the callow greenhorns get a little too confident after a nip or two and get reckless with each other. After all I mostly just wanted to see someone making an ass out of someone, it’s fine by me if they were making asses of themselves. But maybe we could also get some work scouted out for when we had the time, after all we had scheduled our last job ahead of time and that had ended up treating us pretty well but it was exceedingly possible that it was just luck as ironic as that may be. There was a part of me that also just wanted to see if the bounty had gone up on the sea monster again. I figured it hadn’t been taken down yet or else there would have been something more of a stink made about it, but what did I know? I had spent a large portion of my time at least a mile outside of town and no one was employed to come and tell me about it. 

The library was devoid of conscious life as I had come to expect when we came in. I decided to let her know the good news that I had finished the script before asking her about the status of her request in some hopes that seeing that we were serious about this would make her have a more fortunate answer. I slapped the stack of papers on to the desk jolting her awake. I could probably be called more than a little cruel for how often I did this to her but you could also say she deserved it for falling asleep at her post. She always seemed to either be so stressed she was on the verge of snapping or just a hair too relaxed. Once she gained her senses I gave her the good news.

“We finished the script and the puppets are coming along nicely!” It seemed she could have used an extra second or too as she looked up at me with a confused glare as if she didn’t even recognize who I was but as she flipped through the pages that had been unceremoniously plonked in front of her she started to get the idea. 

“Really!? That’s great! You did all of this since the last time we talked?” While I had wanted it to seem too good to be true I didn’t want people to actually not believe it, everyone should think that I’m some sort of a prodigy. I didn’t want people to think that I was actually cutting corners or anything like that, even though I was pretty much cutting the only corner that there was when it came to writing. 

“Well yea, the idea has been in my head for a while so it’s not like I just came up with it all in the past couple of days, but I did work pretty hard on it. It felt good to get it all onto the page though.” I wasn’t really lying in any part of that so I felt like I had achieved some sort of victory there. 

“I have to say, I’m impressed that you were just able to write this much so quickly, whenever I try to write anything I can barely get a few words out before I clam up and can’t figure out how to get any further.” I could only imagine her sitting down and trying to write a few sentences given her performance on the day we met I can’t see it going any way other than her changing and revising the same few words back and forth between near identical phrasings until she really just had a major breakdown and threw the paper across the room. Considering how much she loved books and everything though it must have been one of her dreams to write something worthy of these shelves, so I really shouldn’t try to rub her nose in the fact that I accomplished a lifetime goal of her’s within a week. But I would still take all of the praise and adulation that she could conceivably pile on to me. 

“So have you gotten any word from your supervisor on if we can put on the show here?”

“When I asked him he didn’t really seem to care so he probably wouldn’t mind if we did it!” She was more excited than I was frankly. But remembering how she had griped about her superiors to me I figured it was probably an equal part reveling in the fact that their firm disinterest in her department had finally worked out in her favor. 

“That’s great! I knew you could do it!”

“We should be ready to go by next weekend if everything keeps going according to plan.” Marie was right to celebrate a small victory but we still had work to do, we were nearly done with the bare minimum requirements but we would still need to keep our noses to the grindstone if we really wanted to put this thing over the top. I had spent the past few days fantasizing about how well this would turn out so it would certainly be worth it to keep going and actually get it there. “Speaking of, why don’t we do a read through of the script, we don’t really need to memorize it or anything since we can have it in front of us while performing but we should still know how to deliver our lines.” I could very well imagine any of three of us saying the final line of a scene with the complete wrong intonation so it was best to reduce that chance anyway we could. 

“Sure thing!”

“Mhmm!” I started to lay out the papers so we could all see them and go through the table read with as few interruptions as possible. It felt pretty exciting to actually be doing something that professional entertainers actually did, almost like I wasn’t a complete fraud. 

“Which parts should I be reading for?” 

“Oh yeah me too, who am I gonna be?” I really hadn’t thought of that. We were all going to have to play a number of roles but I never really gave it any more thought other than that I’d be playing the guys and they could play the girls between the two of them. This really wasn’t my directorial strong suit, particularly because I knew my actors personally so they could be personally offended at my choices. Not to mention what would they think of having to play a love interest? Everything I had ever seen about school plays had led me to believe that inevitably someone will end up taking their role as part of a relationship too seriously. Though that seemed to mostly be a fabricated plot point in fiction there was really no reason it couldn’t happen here. Especially if I was the one who assigned them the part of my dearly beloved then they may take that as a bit too much of a signal from me. The best way to solve this would be in a way that made it seem like I didn’t actually plan on anyone being any one part.

“How about whenever a new character gets introduced you can alternate who plays them, that way we can avoid having one person playing multiple parts in the same scene right away.” The reasoning sounded firm on the surface but just because we could avoid it at the start didn’t mean it wouldn’t be a problem down the road. Really the best way would have been to look at the busiest scenes and divy them up so that they didn’t require someone to have four hands. I specifically edited a few scenes so that there would never be more than six characters on screen at the same time but I paid no attention to their makeup. Worst case scenario we’d have to voice puppets that weren’t actually on our hands which might be a bit of a challenge but not really.

The first read went pretty well, there were a few scenes that were a bit more awkward than I had realized but for the sake of our art we were able to get through it, maybe I’d even end up cutting out those scenes not just for our own comfort but also just to keep everything family friendly. But I felt a lot more confident about how well we would be able to pull this off, there were plenty of verbal stumbles and awkward deliveries but we had the benefit of do overs now so it felt good to get the flubs out of our system now. We made plans to do a dress rehearsal once the puppets were done and then we would hopefully be ready for the real thing. While we finished up the physical components Catherine promised that she would get to work on putting together some promotional materials to be put on the door of the library and the town bulletin board at least. I wasn’t sure how much traffic that would attract especially considering how I had no idea where the bulletin board was. But once we had the fliers it would be easy enough to put them up elsewhere or maybe hand them out or something. Though it had been a few hours and we were well into the afternoon now there still wasn’t really any good chance that our lumber was ready to be picked up, it was a relatively small order so that could mean it was either of the lowest priority or that it would be quick to do. Either way it wasn’t really worth it to go and check now when it would most likely just be a waste of our time. Besides we had made plans to go get lunch at the guild as just a pleasant afternoon out. We had been working pretty hard lately and we finally had the money to show for it so there wasn’t really any reason not to. In fact I was wondering now if Catherine would want to come, she probably shouldn’t be leaving her post during business hours but I feel like she may be able to benefit from getting out of there every now and then. Though then I guess attracting more patrons wouldn’t be the right move but it seemed like it would help her feel fulfilled in the long run so it seemed like it made her happy. There was always a bit of a debate of when you should stop enabling someone with something they enjoyed but wasn’t exactly good for them in a more abstracted sense. I had never really faced the dilemma myself but now that it was here in front of me it was hard to say which side I would be falling on to. It was only complicated by the fact that I also stood to benefit from this so was it that I was only saying that it was fine because I wanted to use her space to launch my hopeful career as a big time puppet show writer and performer or because I actually judged it to be okay in an unbiased way? As a total stranger to almost all social situations this one was a real doozy. For now it would probably be best to stay the course but keep monitoring the situation and be ready to make sacrifices for the well being of a friend. 

We put our orders in at the bar style counter off to the side of the main guild hall, the menu seemed rather limited but they did have a few specials in addition to the standard low budget fare. It seemed like the Guild bought the meat from returning adventurers and served it up throughout the day. I couldn’t say I was exactly excited to try any of it considering the facts that it could very well have been something gross like a giant rat, or that it could still have arrowheads or caltrops or God knows what still in it from the dunderheads that took it down. As someone that could be called a coworker or colleague of sorts to these people I didn’t quite trust them even if my interactions with them had been somewhat limited up to this point, namely because I just assumed they were like me. It did make me somewhat curious if an animal killed by a spell would be distinguishable from one killed the regular way, it seemed very possible that it wouldn’t be safe to eat. For all I know it could have residual energies or something in it, and if it can take down a moose then I’d hate to see what eating it would do to my stomach. I played it safe and got something that sounded close enough in description to a hamburg steak that I wouldn’t be too thrown off when I had it in front of me. While we were waiting for our orders to be prepared we had plenty of time to check out how things were doing around the guild. It wasn’t too busy at the moment, there were a few of our fellow adventurers hanging about but they mostly seemed to be parties that were staying in the rooms they had in the back. Now may be a good time to look into renting one of them after all if there was a down or required advanced payment required. It would probably be better to spend this money on something useful before we ended up blowing it all in a moment of consumerist weakness like we did last time. Sure we had a place to stay right now but it wasn’t exactly convenient to walk into town every time we wanted to run an errand, not to mention I was still sleeping on a kitchen table which wasn’t exactly a preferable arrangement for myself or the table owner. Granted it would be asking Marie to move out of her family home and leave her dad to work the farm by himself, ideally we would be able to send money back to him or something so that he wasn’t just down a set of hands. It seemed that the world of society came with an overabundance of double edged swords and pro-con situations that I had never really comprehended until now. It made me miss my former life as a recluse a bit more seeing the heavy load I had been dodging this whole time. But it was nearly impossible to duck out from the vicious encircling ring of social trappings. Even in my ideal eventuality where I can break out of my economic class and get into a position where I don’t have to work there’d probably only be even more frequent and severe social conventions to be followed, rubbing shoulders with nobility and landowners seemed like a sort of personal hell for me. These were people that had a dozen forks so I could only imagine how restricting their ideas of how one should act towards those who they had social obligations to. All the bowing to these people and calling those people by that title, seemed like a real headache to me. Though for now it was still my best bet if I wanted to not have to work so I’d forge on ahead and try to get as much financial tinder as I possibly could so I can burn it comfortably for a while. I couldn’t help but be drawn to what was quickly becoming my pipe dream, the thing that would be lain gently on my mind every so often as just the one fallback that had a chance to completely change your life forever. I had always been able to survive on fairly meager amounts of money due to my lifestyle of rarely going out or really buying things at all so the amount of money I would get from killing that sea monster would easily be able to sustain me for a long while, probably a year at least. Though I couldn’t imagine being able to do it without a significant investment, maybe even a magnitude more than the amount I had on hand even considering that I was the richest I had been since coming here at the moment. I feel like the best way to go about taking on this quest would be to study the skills and spells I could learn and see if there was any way I could use one of them in a broken way. Like if there was something that could turn large quantities of water into wine then I could use that but that seemed like it would be a pretty high level spell for the scale I wanted it at. I could only imagine the size of this thing, after all whaling was still probably a decently sized industry so if they weren’t getting a crew trained for that to do it then they must be improperly equipped for it. So there was no way I would be able to do this with just brute force, I needed some gimmick to leverage before I could even consider getting involved in this. I had been meaning to study my options seriously for some time now so I could pick some more options for my tool kit. There was a list that just had all the names but I remember reading somewhere that the Guild had a veritable encyclopedia about every skill, what it did, what classes it was available to, and at what level it could be learned. Now seemed like as good a time as any to look over it since we were already here and it was on my mind but when I went up to the counter to ask for it they seemed to recognize me and they stopped me before I could get my question off. I was almost immediately worried that I had done something intensely wrong and that they were going to kick me out or throw me in jail or something equally disastrous. The clerk went in to the back and the whole time he was gone I was sweating bullets, was he going to get security or something? Was he just sick to his stomach from looking at me after a rumor got around that molested a kitten or something? He had a shocked tone at first which was surprising enough considering all of the people working the counter had been emotionless bureaucrats from what I had seen so far. When he came back out he was holding an envelope and a small wrapped package. My first thoughts were that he was serving me a subpoena or something and that I would be arrested and tried for treason. 

“This came in for you and your partner there a few days ago.” It seems like he wasn’t paid enough to know what or care what was in the letter. 

“Oh, well thank you.” I didn’t know I had a PO box of sorts here but maybe this was a one off exception to the rule. Completely sidetracked from my previous planned task I returned to the table where Marie was sitting so we could read the letter together after all they did make it seem like it was for both of us. She looked a bit confused when I came back with something that was very much not the book I left to get.

“Is that the skills list?” She curiously pointed at the letter and package.

“No but it’s apparently for us, they said it was dropped off for us the other day.” I stuck my finger under the lip of the envelope and broke the seal, the paperstock seemed rather sturdy and all around high quality as if it had some cloth woven into it. I only spent so much time observing the material of the stationary because the outside contained no indication of who it was from, maybe the wax seal would be a give away to someone who knew that kind of thing but I was far from knowledgeable in that field. Though there wasn’t much point trying to figure out the details based on the outside considering the fact that we had full access to the inside, it wasn’t like we were intercepting someone’s mail and we couldn’t leave any trace. Inside there were a few pages folded into thirds to fit nicely in the envelope. I began skimming the first page, reading aloud any part that particularly caught my interest. “Thank you for helping the other day with the transportation of the egg… I know I can come across as rather cold… You’ll be glad to know that I just recently received word that the egg made it safely to the institute up north… However it is with deepest regret that I inform you that the mother has passed away… common for their species… no one is to blame… With my obligations in this town coming to an end I am now free to take my leave… emotions are mixed… Traveling up to oversee the incubation and raising for the foreseeable future... As something of a thank you for being so helpful despite my crabby attitude… The building I was staying in is now vacant and I would like you two to have it…” Though there was more to the letter I had to stop reading there to let the message sink in and I even reread it once and then twice. Was he really going letting us take his house? It made sense that he would be leaving it to someone else now that he wouldn’t be needing it but it was most shocking that we were the first in line. Reading further it wasn’t even just an arrangement where we would be looking after the place for him, there was a deed enclosed and everything. The place was ours to keep. I guess we had really been there for him when he really needed it, some people needed someone to talk to more than they needed property. It made me feel extremely strange that he had thought so much of our interactions when we didn’t even spend a whole afternoon with him. I didn’t even remember his name yet we had meant enough to him to merit all of this. Even just a thank you letter would have been a bit more than I expected to be perfectly frank. After sharing my surprise with my co-adressee of the letter I continued reading the conclusion of the letter, though it didn’t seem possible for it to take any turn as interesting as the previous one I was still looking for any explanation of the package that had come with the letter. It was about the size of my hand so it seemed unlikely that it was a set of keys. The remainder of the letter did illuminate the contents, it seemed that he saw it fit to further reward us. Though the second part wasn’t quite so lavish it did probably mean more from a sentimental standpoint. It turned out to be one of the fragile glassy feathers that we had been told about that was taken off of the mother that had passed away. I was rather interested to see what it looked like, from the description it was extremely beautiful, not to mention the power it reportedly had of creating a major cold snap when it was shattered. Even just placing my hands on the box I could feel it was noticeably sapping the heat from my hands so I really wouldn’t doubt that it was true, but I would have to consider it heavily whenever I did want to use it. I don’t think I could exactly count on getting a second one so it was important to make it count, though it may just make more sense to put it up for sale and let the highest bidder worry about what to do with it. In theory that would give me the most immediate benefit but if I really wanted money that badly then I could just sell the property. It did seem wrong to do something like that, I had never really been the type to be sentimental about gifts and things but it was hard to not be ashamed of yourself at the thought of not cherishing a gift that came from such an emotional place. Besides I had faith that I would be able to come up with a more creative use for it than anyone I would be selling it to so the there would be some value lost to me, though maybe that was just how I was reconciling the idea to myself to avoid confronting the fact that I wasn’t as much of a solely rational person as I liked to think of myself as. Either way both of these gifts would no doubt be extremely useful, whatever we ended up doing with them. It seemed now was our lucky period, after our recent big payout and now this I had no question that we needed to do something to press our advantage a bit. At this rate my top priority should be to find a lottery or something because at this rate I would be able to hit the jackpot with extreme ease. Maybe this was all just a prelude to the puppet show becoming a monumental success and our first step to fame and fortune being a massive leap, or it could very easily be all of our luck being used up now so our debut show will be sparsely attended and even more sparsely enjoyed. My eternal pessimism was making lean toward the latter but there was more evidence for the former at this point, maybe I was a fool to hope but if so I might as well be the biggest fool I could be. Being a cynic had never really helped me out in any significant situation so maybe it was time to just believe that I would get what I thought was coming to me for all my hard work, or at least all of my work. My only concern was that our good luck streak wouldn’t last until next week when we would be ready for the first show, would it be better to make a mad dash to complete the preparations to have it fall within our window of fortuitousness or to find some way to profit with a shorter turnaround time and move the project to the back burner for now. I may have sounded like a superstitious nut but I couldn’t help but feel like we were closing in on what could be a critical juncture in my journey and maybe even my whole life. There was a definite feeling that a make or break decision was on the horizon, it may even be a matter of life or death. I don’t know what it was but there was a feeling in my blood that I’d either end up hitting the jackpot or going bust to put it in a manner of speaking. The choice that presented itself to me now was whether I would rise to the occasion and take risks or go and hide until the air lost this bitter taste of fate’s edge. 

The hamburg steak I ordered wasn’t particularly flavorful but the consistency was what I expected and the sauce that it was served in was surprisingly tasty. I really wasn’t going to complain considering that I ordered it for the predictability. I should probably branch out some and try some foods that weren’t in my repertoire, not even just things that didn’t exist to me previously but also just things that I never saw the need to try. I was a creature of convenience previously so processed and packaged foods made up the bulk of my diet and those weren’t exactly abound around these parts. There were plenty of more “grown up” foods that I had never even thought of trying that I should probably develop a taste for if just to open up my options a bit. Though I had been able to survive so far so maybe it wasn’t really pertinent enough to worry about. I had nearly forgotten about it until now but Catherine had made curry the night I had met her, and she said she even got it from a cookbook, if that was the case I should look into getting my hands on it. It may be a matter of convergent evolution but there was the slimmest of chances that there were other recipes from back home in that book, maybe there was even someone else who had been sent here from my former world. Of course it was entirely possible that even if there were others that had come from the same place as me that they were long gone by now, though if I could just confirm that the author of that book was also a transplant even if they’re gone then there would be hope to find others and I still wouldn’t mind just having some familiar recipes. It may be something of a longshot but I did need something to occupy my time, maybe it could be my long term project. At least it would be more fulfilling than just trying to get rich, it could have a concrete conclusion at least. I couldn’t very well just put out an ad in a newspaper asking for people that had died and woke up here so I would need to employ some tact, even if I did just cast a wide and obvious net not only would I get some false positives but I may even get some who had come from a different world from both this one and my own and we just shared this one as a stepping stone. That would be quite the discovery even if it would have next to no effect, sure we may be able to have something of a support group or something but it would get nothing productive accomplished. Their world would be just as forgein to me as this one and it would have the minor caveat that I wouldn’t be able to go there either. Maybe that world end up being next on my path of reincarnation but I didn’t even have a guarantee that I’d be getting another do over. If ever I found some sort of revival item or spell then maybe I would try to make another venture into the realm of death and ask around before having someone back on this side pop the revive. It wouldn’t really change anything but it would be a sizable weight off my shoulders if I knew what came after death. If any sort of Life Stone or Greater Resurrection Scroll existed I wonder how common it would be for people to try that. It probably wouldn’t be a common weekend activity but surely some philosopher had gotten a little too curious to resist the urge to try it out. I guess I really shouldn’t get too risky with it considering I already got one more chance than I had expected. Making a few mental notes of things I’d like to get around to we were on our way out after finishing the meal.

We decided to stop by our new property before checking back in at the lumber yard, this way we could just bring it back here for now instead of carrying it all the way back to the farm. Though I had access to a set of tools there I’d really rather not have to break my back schlepping it all at once. It did bring us to the question of when we would actually move in, if at all. I had pretty much all of my earthly belongings on hand right now so if it somehow became necessary I could move in as soon as we got there. There would be a little more concern about the one of us who actually had to move out of their old place. Not to mention that we should make sure that the new place was actually hospitable, or at least that it had some furnishings, or if we would have to go out and get some. Though going back to the fact that I was sleeping on a kitchen table there weren’t too many ways that I could be getting a downgrade. If the old man was leaving us the house I doubt he would be attached enough to the stuff inside the house to take it with him. Of course it would have only been equipped for a single resident, and a bird that he seemed to care for greatly. It was even something of a sweeter deal than I had realized, we only saw the downstairs but there was a whole nother floor to the domicile, and on top of that it was in a rather lavish part of town. Worst case scenario the land it was on was probably worth a good amount alone. Once inside we could see that everything was pretty much left where it was the last time we were here save for the complete absence of the books that used to occupy so many of the shelves and floorspace alike. It seemed rather empty and it really highlighted how empty the room was. It felt like I was breaking a rule or something but I peered into the door at the back of the room and saw a set of stairs, this must have been where the mother bird was being kept. After another door at the top of the stairs there was an enormously vacant room, it wasn’t any more enormous than the room downstairs of course but it seemed cavernous because it was absolutely devoid of anything other than a circle painted on the floor, presumably that was what was able to keep the room so cold. The whole room did have the gentlest slope that fed a hole in the floor against the wall. Presumably this was where the egg dropped through, we wouldn’t need it for its intended purpose anymore but we could probably at least use it as some sort of an intercom system, saving a trip downstairs to deliver a message may be handy on the rare occasions that we had something urgent to say but not quite urgent enough to merit taking a flight of stairs. I felt like anything outside of that narrow window we could just use the classical methods of telling each other things, either wait until we see each other or actually do it face to face. I suppose it would matter slightly what arrangement we ended having, like where we decide to have bedrooms and a living room I guess you would call it. There was even another floor to the building though it had a dormer ceiling, it would probably be worth it to set up a sleeping quarters up there so that we wouldn’t need to share a sleeping quarters. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about living in the same room as someone, let alone a girl. I wouldn’t really have any idea what to expect, especially considering the fact that Marie was something of a wild card all around so I wouldn’t be able to imagine what expectations she might have and that I would be forced to comply with. I’d much rather deal with the constant minor annoyance of the slanted ceiling rather than be constantly on edge about walking in someone changing or something. It wasn’t even the big of a trade off even, as long as I had a personal area with enough space to keep things and sleep then I would be fine. The second set of stairs ran right above the first which I figured I should go up and investigate the space before I made any declarations about being okay with living there. My first impressions was that it was a lot brighter than all of the other rooms, which made me realize that it was the only room so far with real windows. I think the last floor had one but it was heavily blocked out in order to keep the room cool, the basement had those ones that were up towards the ceiling and super short. There were a few candle holder sconce type things on the walls, I didn’t know the exact term for them but frankly I don’t think I would know their name if I had lived here my whole life even. It wasn’t the type of thing I would prioritize knowing about extensively. It just wasn’t something that was important to me or even remotely related to my interests so why would I bother knowing something if I can get my point across just as effectively without knowing what to call some lighting decor. Though I suppose now that I actually owned a home I was about to be plunged into a whole new world of having to care about inane things. My one major hope for now was that I wouldn’t have to learn what escrow was or any of those other trappings. I was pretty sure that only came in during the sale or maybe if a mortgage was involved but I had absolutely no way to know now. I wondered if they had banking concepts like that around here, I’m sure it would be somewhat profitable to introduce the ideas but I would need to have at least some concept of them first so it looks like I would not be their prometheus on this account, most likely for the better. I rarely heard pleasant things about the process of homebuying so it was pretty relieving to totally skip all of that and to just be given one out right. Hopefully repo guys wouldn’t be showing up at the end of the month and evict us or something. Though if that were the case then it’d just be a sum zero game in the end, easy come, easy go and all that. I figured I would go back down to meet up with Marie and tell her that I would take the top floor and she could have the middle floor but it seems she was one step ahead of me. When I reached the halfway point to where I left her she was already there with a very serious face on, hand to her chin and everything looking over the empty space, presumably mulling over the possibilities of what she could do with it. 

“I don’t suppose it much matters to you but I figured that I would take the room upstairs and you could have this one.”

“Oh is there a room upstairs?” So she was already contemplating what she would do with the room even though she didn’t know that there would be one left over for me? Though I guess she had made it clear that moving out of her childhood home wouldn’t weigh too heavily on her conscience

“Alright, so I take it you have no objections to the plan?” She seemed to be lost in her own design fantasies so I took my leave and figured I could start to do some planning of my own. I wasn’t exactly sure what plans still needed to be laid but I’m sure I could figure out something to do with the door that had just been opened to us. There had to be a litany of new options for me with as big of a change as this being added to my pool of resources. The first thing to come to mind was renting out space but it didn’t seem like I would be able to get anymore than a square foot out from under the queen of decor that would surely be going to town on the space right above me as soon as she got even the slightest whiff of something she could use in it, regardless of price range. For the past few days I had been acting more considerate to her figuring that she had been doing work for me without so much as a peep of a complaint but now I had probably paid her back with interest, even if I wasn’t in any way directly involved with getting the house she was still benefiting from it so I’d say we were officially and unequivocally even for the time being. It would be back to business as usual unless she did something pretty major and pretty quick. I wasn’t going to tell her this or anything but I was making a mental note to myself that would be executed without hesitation. That didn’t mean I was going to be an unrepentant dickhead to her at every opportunity but certainly the trend of treating her to lunch and what not would be coming to an end in short order. Of course there was always the possibility that she could curry my favor again but it wouldn’t be easy so for now it seemed her fate was sealed to get an aggressively neutral treatment from me. 

It took at least another half an hour before the grand redecorating planning session came to a close, in the meantime I really couldn't help but just sit down stairs and try to get the whole situation to sink in. It sort of felt like one of those scams where you’ve won a fabulous prize from a contest you didn’t enter or your grandma needs some money, maybe both of them combined. An old person that we knew was giving us a fabulous prize. The only thing that really disproved that this was a scam was that we hadn’t been asked to give a down payment or a verification fee or banking information. Though it may be that the house was under mortgage and he was just fleeing the scene when he realized he couldn’t pay up, but again they could just take back the house and we’re out an afternoon to move everything out. For now though it seemed like we were masters of our own domain. The thought of mastery and our subsequent freedom only made me think of how to leverage the asset. Now if I wanted to start a business I could do it out of here so I wouldn’t need to pay rent. I hadn’t the slightest idea what I would do but I rather liked the idea. Namely the appeal of testing my business acumen and being in charge of stuff. Having a boss who expected me to put his priorities before all else would be intolerable to me so it’d be infinitely better if I could be the boss. I probably wouldn’t want to count on my managerial skills alone to carry any operation so I’d really rather have something completely unique, and I was in a unique position to deliver that something. Of course I still had to find an idea or product that could work with what I had access too and with what I could remember. The stairs creaked a bit to let me know that the lady of the house was done with her fantasizing and was ready to enter the real world again. 

“Can we see about getting a heater for upstairs?”

“Why do you want a heater? The room was designed to be kept as cold as possible. Don’t you think it would be easier to reverse some of those changes?” I was glad that I renounced my kindness because I don’t think I could have held my tongue at this moment. I wasn’t sure everything that had been done to keep the room insulated but I’m sure it would be easy enough to tear up the floor and uncover the window. Only after we make some of the cheaper steps should we be considering buying something pretty expensive like a heater… Wait a moment… “What do you mean a heater?” It may have undermined my anger a bit but I really couldn’t help but be immensely curious at what exactly she meant by a heater. Did she just mean one of those braziers to have a fire in? That really seemed like the only way that they’d be getting any significant amount of heat.

“Well this house has mana hookups, or at least it has one on the second floor.” well now what the hell did that mean. Would be immediately outed as an other worldly being or at least an absolute moron.

“What do you mean?” 

“He must have used it to keep the spell circle up there supplied, but now we don’t need it for that anymore so we can use it for a heater.” I still wasn’t 100% sure what it was so it looked like I was going to have to swallow my pride and play it off like I’ve been living under a rock for the past few decades. I got the idea that it was a flow of mana that could be used to run anything that needed magic, what I didn’t really get was how it happened I suppose. 

“How does it work I mean?”

“Well some parts of town have got these like pipe things that carry magic energy and they can use them to do anything that magic can do pretty much. I don’t know exactly how it works but its supposed to be amazing, you can do all sorts of stuff with it. Did you not have them where you come from?” It sounded like they pretty much had electricity in a way, it seemed like it was a lot more cost intensive especially considering that we could generate electricity with all sorts of stuff but to my knowledge the only thing with magic, at least that you could control, was people. So was there just a place somewhere on the other end of the pipe where there were a bunch of wizards siphoning their mana into all the basic appliances for rich people. It would explain why the old man was living here, he would have needed some place with running mana so he could keep the temperature under control even though this neighborhood seemed to not exactly suit him. It really just got me thinking about to what extent did their appliance technology reach. If they had heaters that ovens and stoves might not be too far fetched, and once you have those then a fridge would be a fairly logical step, after all the upper room could have been a pretty effective fridge already. On one hand there might just be a limit of what would be reasonable to pay for, but on the other there were no doubt people with more money than sense. 

“Where I came from we didn’t really have much magic around frankly.” I continued my long running streak of half truths about my past. “How much does something like that cost?” I had never paid for my own utilities but I wasn’t looking to make up for lost time, if there was a line of wizards giving their own energy somewhere I couldn’t imagine they were doing it for cheap and whoever constructed and maintains the operation probably wouldn’t be too keen on doing it at charitable prices. Not to mention the investment of actually buying the appliance in the first place, you were pretty much buying another bill to pay. Maybe I was being too cynical about the whole thing but I feel like I could be forgiven for forgoing such a luxury purchase when we were still on the rise so to speak. 

“How should I know? I’ve never had one before.” She sounded surprisingly indignant but I guess I had maybe poked at the “being poor” sore spot.

“All I’m saying is that we need to be reasonable, just because we caught something of a break with this doesn’t mean we can start acting like this is our normal life.” She started pouting as I continued on with my point.

“I guess you’re right…” I wasn’t going to let her melt my heart but it did sound like it’d be a nice thing to have especially if I were to reclaim my carefree life I’d want every modern convenience I could get. 

“We can see about getting one down the line okay?” I felt some small need to console her and it was a decent meet in the middle promise. Maybe we would be in a better position to get one before winter. It may seem sort of far off now but I should really start planning ahead a little, though I should probably start with plotting a course on how to get into a better financial position by winter. Also I couldn’t imagine I’d really want to be going out and doing quests in the snow so having a comfortable place to stay inside would be nice, but we’d also need to be in a comfortable financial place if we were going to lose our main source of income. I felt like some sort of animal that needed to stock up for winter now. It wasn’t exactly a feeling I liked so I would much rather stop thinking about it.

After some more time spent discussing measurements of the rooms and other various things it was just about time to pick up the wood. I could only assume considering we had never been told a pick up time but they would have to be closing at some point soon so now would be the time if ever there was one. When we got there they grumpily handed over the materials we had ordered along with giving us some attitude for waiting until the eleventh hour to pick it up. The yard wasn’t too far from the new house, and the house was a heck of a lot closer than the farm so carrying it back wasn’t much trouble at all. The only bit of trouble I ran into was getting the longer pieces down the stairs and through the door. I hadn’t really thought about it but surely there had to be a reason why the only entrance to the building was below the street level, a reason other than to just be inconvenient at this very moment. As soon as we got them in, even without any tools, I couldn’t help but start laying out the pieces how I would want them. After a fair bit of delicate leaning and holding the banner board in place I was able to get something of a look at what the finished product would look like. It was hard to believe that a few days ago I had just been idly sketching schematics for this and here it was now taking shape in front of me. Of course as soon as I stepped away it would return to a pile of wood but it was still a joy to the achievement sensitive portion of my brain. Once I was satisfied with my fussing about we headed back to the farm, while we did have the house here we weren’t quite prepared to sleep in it. There was only one cot and while in theory we could have split up for the night and I could sleep here while she goes home it didn’t quite seem fair, plus I wanted to bring the tools back here tomorrow morning and get to work. I should be able to get it done in a day if I could figure out what I was doing with any efficiency but if not I was fully prepared to work on it until the weekend when we tentatively had our opening night planned. Though it would most likely be in the afternoon. Though I may not be able to get all the time I would like to work on it with the burden of homeownership thrust upon me, not to mention a co-owner who would be rather keen to start getting furnishings and decor, which seemed like both an expensive and time consuming hobby to have.

End of Day Report

Start:       ¤ 610.00

- ¤ 15.00 Lunch

- ¤ 40.00 Wood

Change: -¤ 55.00

End:         ¤ 555.00