"The Verrazano bridge? No shit. Wait no. Let me tell him. He'll be excited to hear this. Bagel they've got a foothold."

Bagel regarded Gladys as if she had just told him her social security number. It was information but it meant nothing to him. He had an idea that he might be able to do something nefarious with it, but other than that? It was meaningless.

"What does that mean?"

"It means we're taking back the city. Oh and I'll be cooking up some barbecue out front. Someone got a grill and we're celebrating when the ferry gets back."

Bagel salivated a little bit. "Barbecue? That sounds delicious. I think. I want to try all of your human flavors."

"Well I doubt we'll have a chance to try every little flavor ever but uhhh... I'll make this good."

"Good. I want my mind to be blown."

Could I have to explain how she was going to pull it in and use the combined kitchens around to start this large feeding operation.

" This is what you need to do bagel. You need to shake hands and kiss babies. Now. There aren't a lot of babies in this god-forsaken system apocalypse, but there are a lot of people that are hungry and who will show up and cue up to eat food. So we get some meat from the Amish market. When they restock we cook it up. I'm thinking we can get a pig and smoke it..."

Bagel's tongue balled out of his mouth. Imagining all the meats that they was going to experience soon.

" And then we use it as a public relations event to gather support for what you're doing so we can buy up more of this property even faster. We're already halfway through Tudor City and it looks like we're going to be able to use a community garden up there to actually make an impact."

Bagelhead for the first time ever been told by Gladys that he needed to hire a gardener or at least somebody with a green thumb. Whoever had been minding their little community garden in Tudor City had not been doing the upkeep. And despite it being late October, it was still hot in the city.

" Oh there's something else you should need to hear about."

Bagel groaned. Every time she said something along those lines, his life got more complicated.

" There's a company that charters. Yes I'm serious. They charter cruise ships and as it turns out it's a great place to hold up because who would have thought it but cars don't spawn on cruise ships. Anyway, this ship has been out at Sea for so long. It had picked up enough food for a month and now they're on their last legs and they are begging the city to be able to land and restock."

" Pardon me but what the heck is a cruise ship?" Bagel said.

"0 If you imagine a giant floating hotel in the sea, you wouldn't be too far off. Except it also takes people to places. This one just happened to be full of gaming nerds who had chartered it to do a month-long LARP event. Unfortunately, they were all out at Sea when everything happened and it took them this long to figure out a place where they could actually dock."

" They're going to need to get me supplied. How much food is that going to be?"

"There's no way that we can just resupply them with what we have here. There's a"

Bagel pause for a minute. If the ships did not have any dungeons appearing on them or cards spawn put people. If they docked what they have people spawn on them? He had to take back to when when they first grabbed the ferry. It had been to his recollection empty. And he'd never seen a bus that had a spawn point. Plenty of places had stationary cars that had mobs spawn inside of them but this was the exception, not the rule.

"Do you think that if we had one of those big old ships parked up here that we could house people in there? Because if it's a floating hotel then..."

Gladys eyebrows went to the roof. "If we could get them to moor their ships here under the pretenses of supplying them, then I'm sure that whoever is operating the boats would be very happy. There are hundreds of people that got stranded here because the airlines aren't taking off anymore."

"Well if we have the cruise ship then we can just... Charge them to get back home, can't we?

"So long as they live along a coastline. Yeah, that should not be a problem. Oh God is. Is this a legitimate business idea? I can't imagine what people would pay to go back to their home and the Midwest America. That that would have to be something astronomical..."

"What would you pay to get home?" Bagel asked.

"Hundreds of credits. But we can't take advantage of them and it's going to take much more of an investment in our time and resources to get people home."

"We just got the roads back open then people can find their own way home. If they're so far away that they need to get onto a ship then maybe they can figure that themselves. But if I can get one of those cruise ships over here? If they don't eat it? I will buy that stuff off of them. We've already secured a ferry with the blessing of the city. Whatever corporation that was in charge of these cruise ships, they're going to want money too and they don't have new money."

"I'm going to talk to Vince about this. But if you can solve the food issue for their resupply then I'm pretty sure that everything else is just details. And I love a little game of solving the details,"

"I'm going to let you to handle that. If we get that great, I'm a little bit worried about what Copernicus is doing. I think he's going off the defend recently."

Gladys looked out. "I'm less worried about him. He seems to know he wants to do. I don't think it's going to be effective. I don't think it's going to make any money but that's not my problem."

Bagel nodded. It had been a few days into his experiment and Bagel wasn't sure if the cat was making money or not. Bagel was making money paw over tail, but that was because he had learned how to deal with humans. Copernicus seemingly did not want to deal with humans directly. He wanted to use his intermediary.

There was a good reason he was an intermediary. His ballet had hands and good use. Bagel didn't have hands. He could move things inside of the bodega using talent telekinetic power but outside of it? He relied on everything else. Anything that he couldn't move in his mouth or on Janet was too much.

Humans were way too convenient.

" I don't know if he wants to save money. I think it's the same thing as the barbecue."

" You think that he wants to Garner community support for whatever he's doing next? When he's basically a nobody because he has been sitting behind doors and running dungeons only with cats?"

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Bagel hadn't heard about the only with a cat's portion of it. All he knew was at Copernicus had been running dungeons or taking care of mobs when it was necessary. He was definitely taking cats on his excursions. But doing it without any humans? This was news to him.

"I didn't know that."

"Well he's been doing it. He joined the guild and he has been faithfully reporting dungeons that he's been clearing with his all feline team."

Bagel considered who else would be on it. Meatball was on it for sure. And there were other cats at Copernicus. Might have awakened that he didn't know, but were they already for dungeons?

They must have been.

"I was unaware of this. I need to talk to Meatball. I haven't seen her in like three or four days."

Something flashed across Gladys face quickly. Her eyebrows tightened. The wrinkles remained.

"I don't know if she's been doing the right thing. I feel like she's been hanging out with Copernicus a lot recently."

"I don't see an issue with that."

"I don't think it's bad whether you see the issue with it or not. She needs to have a diverse group of people that she's with. Especially if she's going to be your assistant or whatever."

"She's not my assistant. She's never been. I'm just the person who helped her get through the rocky initial start of her awakened life."

"But you can imagine what she thinks about you. You basically saved her her from having to deal with Copernicus or from having to deal with all the stuff alone. And you got her set up with Paulo and Liza."

Gladys tipped back a Blue Ox as the door opened.

"I'll talk to her when I see her," Bagel said.

"Just a minute I wanted to talk to about a large and interesting engineering problem. Vince, how much do you know about cruise ships?"

Vince was entirely taken aback by this. He looked to Bagel then back to Gladys.

"I know enough to avoid them? They're just like big floating virus containers. Why? Are you about to make my life very difficult for no reason?"

"I wouldn't say that. I would just say that the city is asking us if we could potentially moor a cruise liner over at Roosevelt Island."

Vince took a second to really steal his face. Bagel could see the man's eyes working behind the scenes and the gears in his head started to turn.

"I feel like what we need to do is head over to Roosevelt Island and then I can tell you how many reasons this is going to fail. Would you guys humor me with a little walk over there?" Vince said.

Gladys and Bagel exchange the look. Gladys shrugged and made room for bagel to get onto her shoulders.

"Oh and just because you guys made my day really weird just for entering here, I'm going to ask for a Italian sandwich and a blue box to go. Is that okay?"

"It's on the house."

It took them less than ten minutes to walk the four blocks to the north side of the United Nations headquarters where they could see into the East River.

"All right. So what you guys are talking about here is installing a pier or a dock here so that people can get off. Is that what you want to do?"

Just north of 48th Street, there was a road leading from the East side highway. From there, they cut across to a playground and we're able to see the island. It was only roughly two blocks away from them though there was water between them and the highway.

"That sounds like something that we could do. Now. The question is could they stop there and unload passengers and also pick up supplies?" Bagel said.

"They would need to be able to get supplies there but in theory that shouldn't be a problem. The East River had big ships passing through it daily. We just need to make sure that the water was deep enough that the ship could be docked. Again, there are some ports on the south side of Manhattan that are specifically made for this that we could utilize. We just need to get our supplies over there if that's what we're doing."

"From the email that I got from the city, it sounds like there are more boats or cruise liners than there are spots available and they're looking for ways to give these people a permanent berth. It also sounds like they want to repatriate the people in the cruise ships and this would be the great time to get anyone back to a foreign country that is stuck here. So long as the country that they want to go to can take them and the cruise ship agrees to go there."

Vince climbed up onto one of the swings.

"That's of course according to president for Life Beyonce's agreement that we try to get all these travelers back to their homes of record. We're going to make an attempt on their behalf but really it's not up to us, is it?" Gladys said.

"It's not our problem but we can help. For a price," Bagel said. "You both are very expensive so I need to see if I can cut some of my losses."

"Do you both mind if I just take some notes real quick?" Vince said.

"By all means go ahead," Bagel said.

He took that opportunity to explore the playground. Though. Due to the equipment have a design for little kids, he took no small joy and sliding up and down the equipment.

He play a little bit, trying to try every little piece out. It felt joyful. And for the first time, he wasn't taking sure. He thought about the deals and he thought about things he was going to be doing but this? He could forget about the life. There were several people there with children who were also playing. Bagel fell for them. It was hard enough for him to deal with meatball and she was for all intents and purposes and adult cat

He couldn't imagine dealing with a child.

Children smelled. At least these ones did. And he wasn't about to go and challenge them for dominance to be the king of the playground. That was nice.

He just wanted to see if he could fucking mess with their parents day by landing a cruise ship there and then fill them up with food and drink.

But in the end that wasn't his problem. It was a good sign that people were out with their kids playing. He doesn't even more them to go to his shop and pay for his goods. And maybe he would spend the credits on buying out this little bottle land. That would buy him a lot of Goodwill.

And by Copernicus, he wanted to get as much Goodwill as a kid. It was really going to help him in the long run

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