"Alright boss," Gladys said. "Near as we can understand, the city has started to make safe zones where they're sending people to..."

"Is that what this is becoming?"

It wasn't the first bus load of people. In fact it was the first of ten. After that, the bus parked itself in the bus lane in front of the guild.

"You're buying up land so the city is putting people into your apartments."

"That makes sense. They want to take advantage of their investment."

Gladys finished her cup. " I'm glad that that Frank gets out of this coffee stand, but the cups are ridiculous. This anime girl yelling at me to drink up her hot stuff... Anyway, I've got the boys out giving people assignments to rooms. They won't be able to get them furniture but they'll be able to stay there. And we can work on the shower system somehow. That's your other thing. People don't think that the water is going to keep going the way it is. The NYPD put out a quest for a bunch of people to go Investigate the the aqua ducts."

"Isn't the water right there in the East River?" Bagel said.

"Yes, but that is technically an estuary of an ocean, so it's all salt water and we can't drink that without treating it. And setting up a treatment plant is going to be something so expensive that... Well actually it's more attainable right now because of who you are." Gladys sighed. "I've got somebody looking into it if we can figure out how to make a water treatment plant because the current system even though it's working seems like it's going to need maintenance and who the heck knows where the maintainers are?"

"The city hired the maintainers before?" Bagel said. "They can find them correct?"

"If they're not already doing something more important for the cause."

Where will I have been observing this excitedly from behind the counter. Gladys had giving them both the information that had sent him spiraling.

"It sounds to me like me to do a big old public works project proposal or something," Raul said. "And who else would have the money for that besides Bagel or jelly side layer?"

Bagel considered taking over this project. In fact, his entire thing was taking over the physical plant that were the buildings that were in the city. But creating a new building just to do something the city wanted? He had to consider that. In the back of his mind, the system gave him some information that water had to be filtered or something. There was something called a water processing plant that made water better so that people could drink it. Water plants needed maintenance, right?

"I feel like I need more information."

Twenty minutes later Raul Gladys and Bagel conferred again.

"So there are two reservoirs that fill the city and they both go miles upon miles to reach this destination and this hasn't become a terrorist Target for some reason... Gladys, this has to be ridiculous if somebody knew how insecure the water situation was here..." Raul said.

"But it's two reservoirs. And if we can just make sure that the aqueducts are clear of monsters then no one can poison the supply. They don't even treat any of the water until it gets right by the city. I think that's where the city needs to start but for us? It sounds like we need to figure out an alternative electricity, we can make with solar panels. Water? I can't make water," Gladys said, holding out her tablet.

"Water, water everywhere and all of it stinks to high hell," Bagel said. "You were saying that the East River should smell like salt water but it just smells like shit."

"Well, when we flush toilets the water has to go somewhere right? And we're flushing waste so... Do we need to make a plan for that too?" Raul said.

Raul and Bagel looked to Gladys who shrugged. "I'm not civil engineer. I was a goddamn accountant before this all happened. I'm glad to find the right person now that I'm able to fix her, but I don't think that I alone have the answers. And we don't just need one engineer. We need like a team of engineers."

"Sounds like we need to put up a guild bid for engineering talent. We can ask NYPD to put up feelers for that as well..." Raul said. "Boss do you want us to put out a recruiting one or are we just looking for people with the skills?"

"What's the difference?" Bagel said.

"If we're looking for recruiters then maybe they know somebody. But if we're looking for people with the skills then we have to tailor to those people directly."

Gladys nearly slammed her tablet down. "We don't even know what we need. It's going to be ridiculous."

"We just need people to know what they're doing and then we need somebody with the right cards. Everything after that? It's just credits," Bagel said. "And we have credits."

"I think that they're going to need a little bit more than credits. If you can get people a secure water source post-apocalypse? They are going to think that you are legend," Raul said.

"The fact that they already see him in some sort of you know..." Gladys waved her arms around. "New age prophet of the corner store."

Roll and bagel both stopped and looked at her as if she had eight heads.

"Oh please, don't tell me you guys haven't heard that one before. I'm not the only one that's gone to that little meeting that is sprung up for... Am I the only one that's gone to that meeting in here?"

"What meeting?" Bagel asked, his hackles rising.

"You guys had an ad for them and III was feeling lonely so I went there and it sounded like a bunch of gibberish but they... It's like they welcome this new system of integration and took all the weird parts from religions that I was used to and they're trying to make sense to the world."

Gladys this was all of a sudden sweating as if the heat Bagel, who kept the way I get it very comfortable 65° set Fahrenheit in most times. Wanted to turn up the heat immediately to get at her but he knew that that would not help with his stock.

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"I think we need to get more people inside of the groups if they're going to make claims like Bagel is the Messiah or something like that. That is a very far-fetched claim," Raul said. "But fuck I've been like just coming to work and killing as many miles as I can and I guess this hadn't come up on my radar. How packed was the meeting?"

"Pretty packed," Gladys looked resolved.

"I think it's clear what we need to do here. I don't know how we can respond to a religious group. I don't want to be Messiah. I just want to be the best business cat on this block. If we can stop anything from happening then I would appreciate that."

"I should go to another meeting?"

"Yes but not alone. What you need to do is bring two trusted allies who can take notes. I don't think that is going to be sort of violent organization, but if they are then I want to be prepared."

Gladys crossed our arms. "They didn't seem violent. They just seemed lost."

Bagel thought about the time that you felt directionless and lost. He had taken some time to assert himself as the owner of the bodega with the knock-on effect of him now being one of the few business owners in his entire neighborhood. It wasn't enough for him to take out with a bodega. He had to figure out how to make a profit out of it and then he had to figure out how to keep himself safe. It was very complicated but in the end, it gave him no small bit of satisfaction to reach the heights that he reached.

"People are getting desperate. I've seen several people who look so gaunt that they should just be eating straight sugar to maintain their weight," Raul said. "I can only carry so much food out of the safe zone to give to people. It's not like we've got a whole soup kitchen set up. Between us and the Amish market. We can only support so many people and I feel like we're going to be a capacity soon without the other store opening up."

"How's that going by the way?" Bagel said, turning to Gladys. The change of topic seemed to relax her.

"At least with the new gate installed on both sides we'll be able to get our deliveries easier. I was having to think about how I would do loading and loading. Unless they start making a homeless encampment in the center of the street, we should be fine. But really they should just set the homeless encampment in the parking garage. It's sheltered there and we should be done with the construction of the building above it very soon, right?"

Bagel hadn't checked on that construction in a while. He has decided to retrofit a five-story building over two separate buildings that were unrelated. One was a single story, Chinese food restaurant and the other one was a parking garage that went down two levels. They were both some of his first purchases once he had gotten the bodega.

"I haven't actually gotten a report on that recently, but Raul?"

"Khaleesi's been a bit busy with everything else so she hasn't been able to finish up and the building guy has to check off on the electric wiring and plumbing before we can finish everything."

"What happens if he doesn't check the electrical wiring or the plumbing?" Bagel said. "Does the thing turn into a pumpkin or something?"

Raul shrugged. "He could make us rip it up?"

"How the heck is he going to do that? He isn't even a deck bearer? What if we start moving people in because we closed it up..." Bagel said.

Both humans now looked at him horrified as if he had just asked them to cut off their least favorite leg. It wasn't his problem that humans were weird about these kind of things. How was he supposed to know that he was not supposed to do that. Humans had all these stupid rules that he didn't want to follow and then sometimes they had rules behind the rules about why they did things. They were never quite clear and it was never spelled out anywhere. He hated that about humanity.

They were both looking at him.

"Bagel if he wanted to be on the good side of the city, I think that we should just listen to what they're saying and then do what they want us to do. It's not... We can have them here tomorrow and have them review it but Khaleesi's been busy with the operation Warehouse. You would think that would take priority?"

Bagel blinks several times, trying to remember what that was about. And and she needed to work out the kinks so that they could actually pick up stacks of cards and make life a hell of a lot easier for the average New Yorkers. If they have more houses then the warehouse would supply food, but they weren't available anywhere close to the city. The closest ones were almost an eight hour drive away before everything had happened.

People had died trying to get those cards. It wasn't enough that they needed them. Basically everybody on Earth needed those cards and the problem was that the more people killed the warehouse mobs and bought up land to fear warehouse mobs would spawn means there'll be less cards. Not every place within a good distance spawned a mantle card had such specific powers.

Bagel was resigned to actually getting long-term viability somehow. "I guess that is a priority, isn't it. Not much I can do about that then."

"There isn't really much, yeah. You just have to let Khaleesi do her job."

Gladys grabbed a bagel from the counter and began to eat. "You guys have a lot of faith in that girl. She needs to be in more of these conversations."

Bagel could not agree more. "Well, next time we'll bring her in. I don't think that should be a problem. If we can't bring her in then we'll go to her because of her important job."

"Mom and Dad are going to be pissed but... If there's no other way than there's no other way."

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