Chapter 447

Arthur stared at the paper printouts before him. They were all slightly yellow and off-colour, printed on cheap recycled paper rather than fresh or highly washed paper. Most paper was recycled these days, what with the need to help lower worldwide temperature and conserve what little there were of the rainforests.

It did amuse him, quietly, how a bunch of illegal loggers in Brazil had run into one of the first few tribes to have found a Tower, crossed through it, and then come out to defend their homes.  Rumors were that there were multiple Towers deep in the Amazon, a network of both Beginner and Advanced Towers that suited the natives extremely well.

Either way, between rising sea levels, terrible climate change monsoons, hurricanes, tornadoes and flash floods, cutting down trees had slowed down a lot. In fact, a lot of the replanting efforts had picked up steam, especially along the walls where deserts had started encroaching on livable land. In many cases, those with Tower abilities had made themselves known; their greater endurance and inability to starve allowing them to get more work done.

If not for the fact that you had to go into a Tower eventually to get more cores – and the obvious possibility of dying or being trapped within -, the initial decision to enter a Tower would have been foregone. As it was, the trend towards more and more people becoming Tower-enabled was accelerating – if slowly.

Arthur tapped the table again, sorting through the papers, the swish-swish-swish of paper moving across one another as coloured ink showcased the various photographs that had been printed on the work. Most had a single external photo – sometimes, two – and then, a lot of internal ones. He sorted them out in various groups as he went along, from standalone buildings to warehouses and individual floors in office buildings.

“You know, these office floors are mostly not going to work…” He tapped the table. “Unless they’re reinforced over and over again, sooner or later as we go along, we’d breakthrough.”

“You think we buying the place forever?” Yao Jing replied.

“Sorry, you’re right.” Arthur let out a long huff. Of course they would need to consider leaving, though… “Contracts are mostly ten years, no?”

“Can get lower. Three or five, my friend says. But… more expensive.”

“Might be worth paying more,” Arthur said.

“Or can just buy it all,” Jan said, pointing the last pile; a much smaller pile which was mostly blank land or condemned buildings. Not a lot of those around, not in areas that were useful. Except for the couple that were just pictures of the land the government was willing to ‘sell’ to them; which in reality had the words of the various squatter slums scrawled on them.

Arthur had mentally discarded that option for the most part. Unless he could, somehow, pay for the relocation and residence of all the people who were squatting in those lands, he wasn’t about to play evil landlord and kick them all out. Some of those squatter towns had been there as long as he had lived, or his parents had lived. They had figured out electricity, sewage, even basic roads to make the land livable.

Who was he to throw them out? Just because the government wanted to sell / gift him the problem.

“Maybe a different time. It takes years to build a place, right?” He had no real idea, really. He’d seen buildings take only a couple of years to come up, and then others take over a decade from when the first pilings were dug out to finally being complete. He figured speed was a matter of money, which of course led him back to his other headache.

“You think it’s a good idea for Uswah to do the negotiations?” he said, softly.

“Your seniors are helping, no?”

“Yeah.” Thankfully, Leia and Eric had shown up finally. They were still a little tight lipped about what had happened and why they hadn’t been around to greet everyone early on, but from the new ring on both of their hands and the occasionally glance sideways, he assumed it had a lot to do with their burgeoning relationship, marriage and family.

“Then, boleh-lah.” Jan waved a hand dismissively. “They suka triads anyway.”

“Not sure they’re really liking them, as just have been running into them a lot.” Arthur grimaced. The one thing they had managed to get out of the pair was their initial exit had been fraught with peril, having to deal with the Hai San who had somehow caught word of them. While they weren’t exactly kidnapped, it had taken them a few days to disappear themselves and their families. Not that they had a lot of those to worry about, what with being one of tsifu’s students like Arthur.

After that, well, came the big blank spot. It did make him a little worried, about whether they could be trusted a little, but then again; could he trust anyone really? How did you tell? Beyond gut instinct, that is and maybe setting up counter-spying programs.

Which, truth be told, was what Uswah was all about. The woman was the closest thing to a spy he had, after all. Both in temperament and abilities. He only had to mention the reappearance of his seniors and what he had learnt when she offered to drag them along for the current negotiations for the sale of their cores.

Not that the Clan had their own amounts yet, unfortunately, not beyond his own. He could have asked the team to hand over a small tithe, a tax; but had chosen not to. Everyone afterwards would be handing or passing on cores – and the concern and how to deal with those cores not being stolen was paramount in his mind after the pair’s kidnappings – but for now; he wanted his current team as empowered as possible.

“Which reminds me…” Arthur said. “Aren’t you researching other Towers?”

Jan dropped the pile, crossed her arms and pouted. But after a moment, picked up the tablet and returned to browsing the forums, scribbling on a second e-ink pad details as she came across them. Since they weren’t certain which Tower they were going to yet, Jan was doing research on them all.

“So, boss? Got more orders for me, ah?” Yao Jing asked.

“These aren’t bad. But I don’t know if we want to spend so much on things that might be temporary,” Arthur said, his eyes half-lidded. “I’m going to have to work with the government somehow. Tie myself in to them, I think. Maybe promise to help their scholars through or pay a higher tax or give them rooms or something…”

“Why lah?” Jan asked.

“Because they control the exit. If we have them on our side, we can have our people as they exit flagged and brought to us or escorted out.” Arthur tapped the table. “Maybe even promise them a percentage sale of everything as it comes out, so that they get paid right.”

“Could be a big loss that way. Their offers was very low lah.”

At least a 30% drop from the ‘market’ rates, quite often. The government was slow to shift their pricing and because they were the government, could afford to tax people in different ways.

“Not everything is about money.”

“But lots is.”

“Work.” Arthur pointed to her tablet, and Jan threw her hands up. Turning to Yao Jing, he sighed. “Keep pushing on getting more, I’ll mark the ones of interest. We’ll do a few walkthroughs, talk about what I like or don’t, get Mel up to speed when she’s back and we can start the negotiations with Rick and Casey and the government for money and funding. Now, I should get to my meeting with the lawyers.”

Yao Jing nodded, scooping up the papers that had been marked to go over them. Things felt like it was moving slow, but it really wasn’t. They were getting headway, at last with all the bureaucracy, and working out deals with the various interested parties.

If he couldn’t block them all out, at the least, he could negotiate and work with everyone. Give them all little pieces, but be careful not to hand over everything. And some of the pieces – like with the triads and maybe the government – would never be official. 

Certainly not with the corporation, though how that played out in the Towers, he still wasn’t certain. In many ways, he could not hope but Jan found a Tower option they could run soon. At least in there, things were simpler.