Amelia, Ch 289- Janet
"Grocery delivery!" Crystal shouted cheerfully as she walked into our dorm. Oh wow, that was fast.
I scrambled out to help her, but I clearly needn't have bothered, she was dragging along a hovering cart loaded up with fruits and leaves. "Oh, wow, you really went all out this time," I responded, looking at the various plants.
"Yeah, I just grabbed a couple of everything," she shrugged. "We've been creating a lot of variety lately. I think Amy's finally starting to get bored with the food, so she's making more just to have something different. Here, try the turkey plant," she lifted up a large, tanned leaf.
I accepted it hesitantly. Turkey plant? It was thick, and little like cabbage in its shape and texture. Well, I've tried all the other crazy stuff, may as well add this to the list. I took a bite. Oh, wow, this really does taste like turkey. "The vegetarians are going to love this," I stated with absolute certainty. "It could use a bit of salt, but yeah, it tastes more like turkey than lunchmeat that's supposedly actually made of turkey."
"I know," Crystal agreed. "Apparently salt isn't easy to do, some metabolic process shit. I'm in school for accounting and business management, not biology."
"Pretty sure you're breaking some business rule, giving away all this free product," I joked with her.
"Are you kidding?" she smiled. "You're the only person I know who can cook this stuff. Everyone back at the base just eats it raw. They don't even own a stove. The only reason they even have a kitchen is because they needed somewhere to put the coffee machine and that thing that grows disposable cups, plates and silverware. And the only person who uses the coffee pot is Lisa. Everyone else just uses the plant that grows coffee."
"You can't be serious," I laughed. "Half the fun of food is making something amazing out of the base ingredients!"
"Truly, it is a travesty," Crystal agreed with a sage nod. "Now hook me up with that pie Tyrone promised."
"You just use me for free baking," I sighed dramatically, but I was already going to get her a slice of the fruit pie that Tyrone baked. The man was an expert with that sort of thing, and after we discovered those apples that tasted like tart watermelons, the first thing thought was 'pie'. I handed her the slice we saved.
"No, I use Tyrone for free baking," she corrected, accepting the small plate and fork from me. "I use you for your friendship with Tyrone. Mmm, this is delicious."
....
"So how did your citizenship test go?" Tyrone asked. He was in the kitchen clicking away at the laptop. I could smell something in the oven, probably some of that experiment in banana bread. One of the fruits was something like a hybrid between banana and peach, and Tyrone was seeing what he could do with that.
"Not bad," I replied. "Didn't have any problems at all. Oh, and I signed up on your group imigration code. Did you get Mike and Jo to go for it, too?"
"They're still chewing it over," Tyrone replied. You know how it is, the whole 'we'll see how it turns out for you' shit."
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, kinda expected it. Oh well, if they don't want to be part of this from the beginning, we can find people who do. I bet Aly would go for it."
"Aly's a poli-sci major who can't even make ramen noodles," Tyrone smirked.
"She'd still do it!" I insisted.
"Yeah, if she thought it'd help her get into your pants," he countered.
He was right, though. "Yeah, not a good idea," I sighed, slumping onto the couch. "So what are you looking at?"
"Just possible places to move to," he responded. "We want to stay close to the portal, but everyone wants to stay close to the portal. That's why Avalon set a thirty mile stretch of non-colonized land around it, so no one could monopolize the whole area."
"So what do we have to pick from?" I asked. May as well find out what we're looking for.
"Crapton of French Canadian separatists to the north," he answered. "I think we can rule them out as an option. We're not French, we're not Canadian, and while they legally have to accept our citizenship if we move there, there's no law forcing them to come to our restaurant."
"If we get really desperate, maybe I can get Crystal to talk Amy into making a species of snails that produce maple syrup?" I joked. He laughed as well. "So, got any that aren't completely horrible?"
"Well, a pretty big 'personal freedoms' group that's 'founded on libertarian principles'," he answered. "They've clustered mostly in the Boston area. It's actually surprising how many people they're getting. I would have thought they'd freak out a bit about the whole 'all seeing god Empresses' thing going on. But it looks like they really like Avalon's hands-off Imperial government structure or something. Hell if I know what they're thinking. Politics is just choosing between a giant douche and a turd sandwich, far as I'm concerned."
"We might be able to work with that," I agreed. I popped open my laptop to find out what a libertarian was. Specifically the ones on Avalon. Blah blah, USA corrupt, blah blah abuse of power, blah blah colonies will be abused and exploited. The list went on, but they had a couple of the videotaped interviews with Khepri and Gaea and the Avalon constitution on their website. Plus promises of a plan to claim all eastern North America. Kinda nutty, but you have to be crazy to leave your home world for another like this, so who was I to judge? Meanwhile, Tyrone kept talking.
"There's a puritanical religious freedom group that's also got a good chunk nearby, but I think I'd rather not," he responded. "A little too 'traditional', if you know what I mean."
In other words, the openly gay black man wants to avoid living in the racist homophobic country. I wasn't going to argue. "We'd probably be better off with the French," I agreed. "I don't want to be burned at the stake for the sorcery of cooking something without the use of a deep frier."
"And a lot of tiny clusters nearby that are too small to qualify as their own territories," he added. "They'll either form up into something together, or be absorbed by their neighbors in a year or two. No one really seems to want to move inland right now. If we're willing to go out a couple hundred more miles, Dragon has some mining cities that have the population, the money, and would probably be happy to see some home cooked food."
"Pass," I answered. "The mines won't last very long. Sure, it'd be good for a while, but once that dries up everyone will move out."
"So, New Boston looks like the winner," he responded.
"New Boston?" I asked incredulously.
"Hey, they're a society of political activists, you expected them to be creative?"
"Touché."
....
"What's wrong?" I asked Tyrone. He looked like he hadn't slept at all.
"We're asking for too much," he replied. "The New Boston city-state isn't willing to give us space for the restraunt in the city itself, and we sure as fuck can't buy the amount of land we need."
"Don't give up yet," I insisted. "We can go somewhere else, maybe? The mining towns if we have to. It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing." Fuck.
"Maybe," he sighed. "There's one option to keep us nearby, if not the city itself. You're not going to like it."
"What?" I asked.
"We'd have to get married," he looked at me like he was apologizing for killing my pet goldfish or something. "They're offering incentives to get young couples and families to move in. Even more if you're willing to adopt children. We have the first half of that down. It would mean, essentially, we'd have enough space that if we were willing to, we could turn our house into the restaurant. While still being close enough to the population centers to get actual traffic. If we get Mike and Jo to take up neighboring slots, that'll be the space we need to make it work."
"Okay, we'll do it," I agreed. "The marriage part, not the adoption. And you'd better not fool around with any more of my boyfriends."
"It was just that one time!"
....
I looked at our books. Fuck, this was such a mistake. The idea itself was sound, of course. But we made one crucial mistake. We opened a business that provided food, in a place where everyone already had enough food for free.
Supply and demand, with almost no demand at all. We had a few regular customers, enough to keep us afloat only because our supplies were, essentially, free. It's remarkable how much less you spend when you don't have to pay for most of your supplies, or to feed yourselves. But the electricity and gas for cooking was costly.
Crystal had given me the 'seeds' that let us grow almost everything Gaea designed thus far. That was a huge help, since one of Avalon's policies was that a given individual got the seed code for exactly one type of plant. The rest would have to sort itself through trade, or buying extra seed types. Because of that, we could provide mixes that others couldn't and had enough food growing to provide for more than ourselves and an immediate family member or two. That was just barely enough to keep us afloat.
"Don't worry about it too much," Tyrone insisted. "This is the most difficult part. Restaurants are always high risk, especially early on. Once we start gaining a rep, and the city gets large enough that this area can't rely on the Yggdrasil alone to supply the population, then it'll get better. Right now, all we need to do is stay afloat, no more."
....
I stared at the clock. Two in the afternoon. Anywhere else, this would be the lull before the storm. Here, it was just the lull before more lull. Mike rushed in. "Guys! They're here!"
"They who?" I asked.
"They! Them! The Empress! A few others."
I shot up. Holy fuck. "Tyrone!" I shouted. "Get in here!"
"What?" He rushed in, looking at us.
"Remember that break we needed?" I smiled. "I think we got it."
================
A/N- Random Avalon Citizen chapter. Requested and delivered. That'll be tree fiddy.
Also: two South Park references in one chapter!
the emperor is going to learn the hard way that he pissed off the wrong person.
