Apocalypse: Fairy System by Macronomicon (fox in socks read aloud txt) 📕

Jeb slept like a baby.

******

The next day was a whirlwind of signing papers he couldn’t read, getting his newfound wealth safely insured and tucked away in the city vault.

In a world where people could shoot fireballs out their ass, a box made of solid steel wasn’t quite enough protection to ensure no one steals your cash, so the bank itself was guarded by a keegan security guard who was reputed to be a level eighty-four Mindraker.

Whatever the hell that was.

The bank even had a hall of fame, a glass case where keepsakes from previous would-be bank robbers were housed. It seemed a little macabre to Jeb, but out in the frontier, it seemed like deterrent was nine tenths of the law.

After sorting and selling the substantial amount of pirate booty, Jeb was left with a hundred and eighty bulbs, and a backpack full of lenses they had stolen from local prospectors, worth a handful of bulbs apiece.

When Jeb asked around, he found out that the term ‘bulbs’ was a reference to a psychedelic mushroom that grew in egg-like clusters. They were highly prized among Myst users in the past, and had been worth about an ounce of gold apiece before they were gathered to extinction.

Jeb got a little annoyed when people kept asking him who he was selling the lenses to, assuming he was going to pass them off to a major corporation or noble house in exchange for a quick buck.

It was apparently common sense that a plebian couldn’t make use of lenses.

Jeb had no idea why he would do that.

The backpack was like a little slice of Earth.

There were a handful of Mountain River lenses that made icy cold water on command, several large Stone (Andesite) lenses—Jeb made a boulder out of one by accident—a bunch of Cedar lenses that grew saplings to trees depending on the Myst injected into them, a few flake-sized gold ore lenses, some pebble-sized iron ore lenses, copper ore lenses, and a single pinky-sized Wolfram lens.

There were several animal lenses. A Hare lens, a couple different kinds of birds and squirrels, along with a single Buck lens about the size of a child’s fist. It looked like it was carved from lumpy antler, sloughing off coarse deer fur that disappeared as it fell away.

First, the obvious question: Why on God’s green earth was a system built around gold as currency able to continue with magical lenses that could literally spit out a nearly limitless supply of gold?

When Jeb asked around, the answer was basically: It wasn’t limitless.

A single lens about the size of a golf ball could spit out thousands of tons of material before it eventually degraded. So, rather than search the hills for a gold mine, it was far easier for prospectors to find a gold lens, which could pump out gold until it busted.

In essence, a lens and a mine were the same thing. They occurred at similar rarities, and produced a similar amount of product before being exhausted.

A mine required a huge amount of infrastructure and labor, which meant time, materials, labor and workers. Workers that had to be paid.

A lens just needed a Myst engine and a way to process the output. The only people who knew how to do that were aristocrats. The ease with which Myst produced raw materials drove the profit margin of an honest-to-God actual mine through the ground.

This forced most value to be placed in the amount of labor that went into making and shipping goods and services. Trading bulk material back and forth was almost unheard-of unless it was in the form of lenses.

The whole conversation gave Jeb a headache as he tried to unwind the strange dynamics of the empire’s economics.

Finally, he decided he didn’t care. Jeb was now the proud owner of several mines/logging camps/hunting grounds he could carry around with him wherever he went, and he had the skills to take full advantage of them.

That was good enough for him.

Jeb earmarked fifty bulbs for the smear campaign against Garland Grenore, another fifty for starting his own business, and the rest for enjoying his week.

Approximately eighty thousand dollars, American monies, to blow between now and the weekend after next.

Oh my, whatever will I spend the money on?

The time between Thursday and the Saturday after next passed by in a manic blur of enthusiastically supporting the local community.

The leisure time wasn’t all good, as it gave Jeb plenty of time to think in between. Plenty of time to stare at the ceiling and wonder if all this craziness was actually real or not. Plenty of time to crawl inside his own head.

Jeb was just starting to feel The Spike making it hard for him to sleep indoors again by the time the next Saturday rolled around.

Which was why Jeb was so happy when he opened the door to Garland’s office, and found himself face-to-face with the imperial enforcer, arms crossed, one hand brushing her weapon.

It was the same melas woman he’d seen executing that reaper a couple weeks ago. She was about six and a half feet tall, big shiny horns, black hair, with the typical muscle mass of a melas. Her dark lips were full and downturned in a faint scowl as she eyed him in return.

Her gaze lingered on Jeb’s pegleg for a moment.

Below her face… Jeb found his gaze wandering, so he tore his eyes away and directed them at the others. Zlesk flanked the enforcer, the lawman looking a little concerned and a little angry.

At his desk, the keegan steepled his fingers, seemingly pleased with his ambush. By his side, his daughter was sitting, her expression one of concern, glancing between Jeb and her father.

“Pay attention, Seraine. This is how you deal with these kinds of