Summoned Again?

After that slightly harrowing and almost completely boring day spent in a courtroom, life seemed to go back to normal for everyone. Nat and I finished the limited run of the pendants that we had planned and they completely sold out as soon as we made them available. Everyone was scrambling for them and the resale value on them started to skyrocket. We announced another run in a month and it didn't make a lick of difference, because people wanted them right now.

According to the guy that made our website, we were being bombarded constantly with hackers and attempts to learn our secrets. It made Nat and I laugh, because we had nothing except the website online. There were no corporate mainframes or computers for them to hack into or penetrate. That lack of electronic hardware had been something that had come about naturally, because I wasn't computer inclined and it never occurred to me to invest into something like that.

The new smelting equipment showed up at the mines finally and they shipped me all of the old equipment that they had. I had to buy a nice industrial warehouse complex to hold them all. The equipment still worked and that was great, because it would be perfect for my use, even if it wasn't top of the line and would take longer to operate. I studied up on how to work the things and it was a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.

I decided that I had to hire several crews for maintenance, because I would be using them a lot and didn't want them to break down, just because I had almost no clue what I was doing. I wasn't surprised that there were a lot of people qualified to work on and run them. The best part was that they were willing to commute and even relocate to work for outrageous pay to do basic maintenance and operate the machinery.

Of course, as soon as they said that they wanted to move to work, I offered to buy them houses in the residential neighbourhood that was just outside of the industrial area. The next day, I somehow had fifty maintenance workers, their families, and even some of their friends who begged to come along for cleaning and office work, had signed up and agreed to my ridiculous terms.

They would need to stay in hotels and motels until the houses were bought and cleaned up or renovated. Not surprisingly, the local motels and hotels loved having the extra unexpected business, as did the food businesses and restaurants. More people meant more money going around and that made everyone happy.

As the workers and their families arrived, I gave them signing bonuses to cover their expenses for several months, which made them very happy. When they saw that I had six full sized mining smelters and all of the related equipment used for smelting and forming metal bars, the men and women that would be working on them drooled.

I had to hire some administration people to work in the office to handle the paperwork and things, like ordering replacement parts and machine tools for the workers to fix the machines or to make their own parts if necessary. It took the workers a week to make sure everything was cleaned and in working order, then I started delivering the ores at night when they went home.

I had gold, silver, iron, copper, nickel, lead, aluminum, zinc, platinum, and tin. I also had a lot of it. I had gifted ten percent of them to the wolf pack and that hadn't made any significant change in the amount in my inventory. Iron had the most with copper right behind it. Gold and aluminum were behind that and silver was a very close fifth. There had been a lot of ore in the dragon's mountain and I had to decide what ones to smelt first.

After talking to the people that would be operating the machines, they said that each time I changed the metal to smelt, they had to change the settings on all of the equipment and clean it. We eventually decided to smelt the metals that had the least amount to them, which left gold, iron, copper and aluminum to be done last.

Since silver was pretty close to the larger amounts, We left it for use in the first smelter as the others worked through all of the nickel, lead, zinc, platinum, and tin that I had delivered into the stock rooms at the back of the building. The workers were shocked at how much ore there actually was and the extremely high quality of it, especially since they knew that these were the smaller amounts of metals I had access to. The funny thing was, none of them asked me where I got it all.

They estimated that it would take almost a month to get the smaller ore piles smelted into metal bars. It was pretty great to look into several storage rooms and see stacks and stacks of metal bars on pallets as they built up. Most of them gleamed silver-like under the large overhead lights and there was almost no significant loss of weight between the ore and the smelted bars, because the ore was so pure. It made everyone quite proud of their work.

Barely two weeks after we started smelting, the place was visited by two safety inspectors that they claimed had been anonymously called to check on what we were doing. Luckily, I was there supervising that day as I made sure that nothing was stolen from the storage rooms and checked the inventory log with the office. I went out through the office and blocked the two men at the building's main door before I asked them for a warrant.

“We're safety inspectors and don't need a warrant.” The man said and tapped his badge. “You can't refuse us entry.”

“I'm not breaking any laws and we are all following stricter rules than what the government has set out for industrial workers.” I said and nodded to the men behind me. They shut and barred the door, as well as locking and barring the large loading dock that was nearby. “That's assuming you really are who you say you are.”

“Sir, please step aside or I will have to call the authorities.” The man said.

“Go ahead and call them. I want to see you try to enter private property without my permission.” I said and used Detect to find two hidden cameras. “Also, you aren't allowed to record anything without my permission.”

“We record everything for our own records.” The other man said. “We need proof that we conducted your inspection and if you pass or not.”

“No, you want proof of what I'm doing in here, even though you already know what I'm doing in here.” I said and neither of them denied it. “I noticed that you aren't offering to identify yourselves.”

“You don't need to know our identities for us to do our work.”

“I need to know if you're fake or not.” I countered. “I'm not going to let just anyone walk around in an industrial area. If you really are safety inspectors, you'd know that already.”

One of the men sighed. “Why are you making things so difficult?”

“Because I honestly think that the two of you are plants from the Secret Service or the FBI and you're trying to pin the crime of smelting my own coins on me, just so you can threaten to confiscate everything I own again and make me cooperate with your idiotic agencies.”

Both men looked surprised.

“What? Did you think I wouldn't realize that's the first thing you'd try to do when you tracked six industrial mining smelters and all of the related equipment coming into the country on overseas air freight?” I asked with a chuckle. “Come on, give me some credit.”

The two men exchanged glances.

“I see you're not calling the police to gain access.” I said and took out my cell phone. “Let me call them and see if they can make you tell them who you are, then maybe we can get to the real truth of the matter.”

“Sir, that's... not necessary. You can hang up.” One of them said.

“Don't say anything.” The other man said to his partner.

“We were warned it might not work.” The first man said. “We should have waited until you weren't here.”

“Everyone has orders to lock up completely and call me if anyone like you shows up unexpectedly.” I said and they looked surprised. “Yes, anyone. Power company guys, gas leaks, cable guys, water maintenance guys, plumbers, inspectors, and even police claiming there's noise complaints or trespassers.”

The two men let out sighs and I put my cell phone away.

“Go back to your boss or whoever you want to report to and tell them they can suck my balls.” I said.

Both men instantly became angry.

“There's no need for that kind of language.” One of them said.

“There's no need for you jerk-offs to keep messing with me, either.” I said. “Get lost. If I see you again, I'll stop being so nice.”

“That's a clear threat of harm.” The other man said, I assumed to accuse me of something to get me out of the way.

“No, a clear threat of harm would be if I said that I'll break your arms and legs and hold you in the infirmary that I've set up inside until you heal with them still broken.”

Both men took a step back from me.

“Isn't it great that I didn't say it and that I'm being nice?” I asked. “Don't come back and don't send anyone else. I don't care if it's for a legitimate reason, either. You keep everyone away from me and my people. I mean it. Stay away from all of them.” I gave them a glare. “I don't want to talk, I don't want to negotiate, and I definitely don't want to work for you idiots.”

Neither man said anything in response.

I bent over slightly to look into the hidden camera on the closest man. “I hope you get all of this.” I said with a deadly smile and bared my teeth at it. “Fuck. Off.”

The two men stared at me for a few moments, then they climbed into their car and drove away.

I knocked on the door and it was unbarred and the workers let me inside. “I suppose I have to hire a security firm to protect all of the buildings I own and the people I employ now.”

“You can't watch everyone.” One of the women said. “You'll just go crazy worrying over us all.”

I sighed because I had to agree. “I want everyone to tell me if you've been approached by any agents or strangers wanting information. Either before now or from now on. These assholes have wrecked my life once and I won't let it happen again.”

“What are you going to do about it?” One of the men asked. “They work for the government, don't they?”

“Yes, they do. Perhaps not for long. It all depends on...” I stopped talking about that and changed what I was going to say. “Is the zinc done? We can get that changed out and start working on the gold.”

“Just about. Another day I think.” One of the men said. “It's surprisingly easy to manipulate.”

“Great. The sooner we get some gold smelted into bars, the sooner I can get the other mines to prepare their smelted gold for pickup.”

“Why didn't you do the gold ore first if you needed it so quickly?” One of the other women asked.

“I didn't realize I needed it this quickly.” I pointed with a thumb over my shoulder. “I wasn't really in a rush until they showed up.”

The workers exchanged glances for a few seconds and then they all smiled.

“Why don't we have all the smelters switch over to gold as the other metals finish?” One of the men asked. “If you want a lot of gold bars quickly, having all six of these big bitches churning them out will give you a good pile in a few days.”

“What's the schedule like for the others?” I asked and six of the workers went to their machines and brought back the timetables and estimations of the length of time they needed to complete. “All right, we'll do that. I want as much gold bullion bars as possible, all with the corporation logo stamped on them with the quality content.”

“That's not a problem. We've been putting them on the other metals as tests.” The first woman said. “They all came out perfectly.”

“Excellent.” I said with a nod to her. “I'll have a load of gold delivered tonight.”

One of the men looked at me with a confused expression. “Don't you mean ore?”

“Sure.” I said with a knowing smile. “It'll be the same purity as the other ores. I'll probably have a bunch of scrap gold to throw in as well, so I'll come by with that when the first smelter is available.”

“Are you going to crush it first?” He asked.

“The gold content on the items is really high, so I can probably just skip that part and put them right into the molten gold.” I said. “The jewels and things that might be in the items can be popped out beforehand or ladled out if the molten metal's not too hot to damage them.”

“I'll get the straining racks ready under the spouts, just in case.” He offered.

“That's an even better idea.” I said and he nodded. “See you tonight.”