NOVEL NEXT 64. Building Inspector
It was another day that bagel had received one of the things that he was itching to not have to deal with.
Email was now something that he was going to have to consider in his plans.
There was one big problem with email. He could pretend he hadn't received it but he couldn't unlearn that the visit was coming.
Also Khaleesi wasn't going to let him forget.
She was trying to project manage him, the situation and anyone that came in.
"I'll be a project manager!" She said, striking a pose. It was the classic Wonder woman pose, according to his system knowledge.
"Again, I understand the words. But what does it mean?" Bagel said, groaning.
Having email taught him was that the building apartment was going to be arriving no matter what he did at noon the next day. That meant that his building had to be up to code for inspection.
"I have studied the code! I know things!"
Janet beeped. "You took my summarized code information and picked up builder cards."
"That's what I said. I stand by that."
Khaleesi flashed the cards.
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Concrete Bro
Fighting, Builder Mob
3 Fighting Energy
HP 140
Attack 60
Weakness Psychic
Concrete Bro can build according to a physical plan that the deck bearer understands. Concrete Bro has the builder type.
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Foreghost
Ghost, Companion
2 Ghost Energy
HP 80
Attack 30
Weakness Metal
Foreghost can stay in play indefinitely. Beginning combat with the Foreghost will cause it to be in a one minute clock, after the time passes, it will be unsummoned. While Foreghost is in play, any builder also summoned by the deck bearer can stay in play.
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Bagel had seen the combination in action before. It was a potent one.
The five minute time limit of summoned mobs has made loopholes and intentional designs that caused synergy a regular occurrence.
Khaleesi knew what you was doing. She had her summons going back and forth doing the thing that was going actually generate the actual building. She'd had plans made up by chat GPT that had been further refined by Janet GPT.
It wasn't that Bagel didn't trust her. He did. It's just that he didn't expect things to work out correctly and that he was going to have to explain things to an irate City employee with a reason to grind someone's gears.
"So you're sure that these salvaged materials are going to be able to hold it up?" Bagel said.
"They are concretely reinforced concrete. I had to figure out a way to get concrete and then special order to get delivered here. Of all the things, I knew that this was going to be the hardest sell."
Bagel turn his head all the way up to look at her the city streets or the sidewalk but for now he wanted to actually look at it with his own two eyes. He wanted to see things happen but he wanted to see some change and the big support beams that add extended down, despite looking strong was nothing more than scaffolding for the new building.
"Does a new building even have to touch the old building? Can we just have a floating apartment building?" Bagel said.
"Technically it has to have some sort of support to be up in the air, but like where you're going with that. Maybe for the next version we can have floating cities or floating apartment buildings. Or airships? How cool would airships be?"
He could picture it. Ships that were large enough to fly around slowly and could be moored on docks.
"We could get a blimp or a ship? But what you're probably going to want is some kind of bus that is electric or something long term."
Khaleesi was speechless. Then she came back hard. "I haven't thought about that. We should steal one of those electric city buses and use it."
"That was entirely not what I meant at all. But I'm so glad that you took that this way."
Khaleesi flipped her hair back. For a human, she definitely had a lot of hair. It was one of those things that he hadn't noticed until he started comparing humans.
"Look. The plans are sound. It just looks like an art piece because of how it was made. I'm not the only one who noticed it. But it's going to have rooms for like an extra three hundred families who would otherwise be outside of the protection area."
"The plan is fine. I just need you to talk to him okay?"
Bagel was adamant that the building inspector wouldn't like the new additions.
"Is this all up to code?" The man said. He'd come from downwind, of course. There wasn't much that Bagel could do about that. He knew that he was coming he just... hadn't expected the punctuality or the follow through.
Follow through was difficult with the mobs around.
"This is actually covered in code and due to the fact that Mister Bagel here owns the property, we can legally make this attestation. I've filed for my general contractor license to take this up professionally."
The straight laced city bureauocrat looked at the Brazilian girl and did a double take. "I can understand a cat as an owner, but aren't you a little too young to be working?"
"They let child actors work in New York City, but I can't be a lady entrepreneur? I thought this was the big apple!"
He was waving his arms around like it would make a difference. Bagel had never seen that work, but was excited by the possibility.
He took a minute to get his composure back and he looked at both of them. "Don't you have a sassy artificial intelligence that works for you? Why isn't she here?"
"Oh Janet?" Khaleesi said. "She is out ride."
"Our what?"
"I love them," the artificial intelligence dropped a net as if it were a hot air balloon basket. A little sign said for one person only.
They had tested this extensively. The net could carry one person or one person and one cat up to the second floor. If they didn't take the giant elevator they would have to go after the second floor of the bodega building and then come out through one of the windows which wasn't really an option when it was a residential window. But the second floor that was being built above the Chinese food restaurant and the single story parking garage had not yet been hooked up to a regular stairwell or elevator.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
"You know that you're going to need to have two Stairwells out of here right?" The building inspector said. "Do you expect me get into that thing?"
"You're not going to fit through the window that's currently available, so if you actually want to inspect this building that you can take our AI drones help to get you to the second floor where you can do your inspection."
"So you just want me to step into this thing? This stat that you just dropped your 45th Street and expecting to just get into it so I can take a ride to the second floor?"
"Yes?" Bagel said.
"Okay. Well elevators are not my department so let's head on up, then."
As soon as a man was inside of the net, Janet began to providing Jesse right him on a forest to pull them to the second floor which was about thirty feet off the ground. Due to the nature of how the ability that they had to connect it to several buildings and provide load bearings. And oh there were three large scaffolding poles that were going to be there rather permanently in order to hold down and provide counter weight to the rest of the building.
"I did not expect him to get in that thing. How do you get him to get him there?" Khaleesi whispered to Bagel while they waited for their turn.
None of the walls in the second floor were done. Because they were all unfinished interior walls, they were going to need the building inspectors inspect it. Because this was such an unusual case, he wanted to inspect the second floor before they moved on to the the floor that was going to be the third and fourth floor.
Bagel was going to want more eventually, but this was a proof of concept designed for one of the levels of this modular housing unit. They would be able to add more. The fact that most of the parts they got were interchangeable was a boon.
It was like the universe had wanted him to have this. It wanted him to be able to build things up and then slowly add more and more. Really only wanted was to be able to build in the street and close it off but that did not say that it was what I haven't. Sorry to fact that the street had effectively been closed first days that.
"I've got to admit this is way more saw that I thought it was giving how my understanding of your operation is. How did you get the concrete up here? Oh no wait never mind. How did you get all this framing done when it looks like it had to be pulled up the same way?"
A taxi cab honked.
"The city is healing," Khaleesi said.
"What?" The building inspector said.
"I said it's healing. It's been a day since I heard a honk."
"And you're keeping track of these?"
Bagel walked along the edge. He could see it below. "They've got to make money too, huh?"
It was of course honking at Khaleesi's foreman. As was custom, Bagel hissed.
The damn things were everywhere when he grew up. Now? This was a rare treat.
"It's moving fast enough, huh? Really trying to move through that refractory period," the inspector said.
"Refractory period?" Khaleesi said. "Doesn't that mean the time..."
"It's the time after the monsters spawn before they're deal with. Yeah I know."
Bagel was not going to say anything but his brief check with the system knowledge made him chuckle. She might have jumped into that but he wasn't going to rise to the occasion.
"Maybe we need more cab services," Bagel said. "But that would require people to be crazy enough to actually want to drive a taxi now."
"More crazy than they usually are?" The building inspector said. "Or more crazy than the end of the world people?"
"I keep forgetting about those. We haven't really encountered any. If people are not nice we just don't serve them."
"What do you mean? You don't just serve them? This is a crisis!"
If this was a crisis then it was a crisis sandwich with apocalypse bacon carefully curated from a cut of card nonsense and things that humans put upon themselves. It was then sprinkled with the knowledge that they had really put themselves into late stage capitalism on their own or at least that's what Bagels friends were telling him. The way that they said that society hadn't made sense to him, but he'd understood that they'd not been perfect. So many people had not been perfect that it had caused many market opportunities that would have otherwise not happened to just arrive.
Bagel saw the market opportunities to sell to a captive audience. He's sold to the police officers that set up shop outside of his Bodega. He sold to the adventurous guild that set up shop in the building he owned once it was cleared. He even sold stakes in his investment apparatus that cause to adjust invest credits into the buildings around him until he would be able to own them all on behalf of the city at least on paper.
Until then, or until the city came by to claim what was their due, he was going to be charging people rent even at the reduced rate to live in the safety of the buildings on his block. That meant that even as he was selling his services to buy of the land, he was also selling the rent on the land and that money he would be investing more into his TSA fund.
Of course, it all had to be on the off and up which is why he allowed this human to show up and inspect his building.
"This does not need to be a crisis," Bagel said. "There are enough deck bearers that we can win this. They're just not all on the same page about it."
"Ah, but the ones at the top..." The man said. "They don't like that."
Bagel felt a chill.