“You have to see it from their side. How many squirrels are in central park? They can definitely do something with what they have. And even if so, how many squirrels reproduce this year?” Gladys said.
Bagel didn’t want to think about how many squirrels he was going to have to fight. He was unfamiliar with how fast they reproduced, but....
That was going to be an issue, wasn't it? They were only two months into the apocalypse, and already he was thinking long term. Long term in this case meant that squirrels would be A far larger problem. Or perhaps it was the pigeons?
“Janet which group reproduces faster…. Squirrels or pigeons?”
“Pigeons can fly by five weeks old and leave the nest after roughly a month. Eggs take two to four weeks to hatch. Squirrels are pregnant for up to six weeks but then take a year to become sexually mature. The pigeons are the larger threat long term, if they have the cards.”
Gladys chugged her drink. “They have the cards. They have the time. God are we just ceding Staten Island to them?”
“I’m actually okay with that,” Bagel said. “Better than us having to deal with it.”
Gladys blinked several times. “You know what? If our plans for world domination don’t involve Staten Island, then we can focus on other places.”
There were so many better places for Bagel. He’s heard the talk of an exotic land called Hoboken that sounded like a great place for an up-and-coming mafia boss. Maybe he could retire there.
“So long as they aren’t in our way, we have no problems with them, then. We can extend an olive branch on our cat tree to them.”
Gladys looked contemplative. "An olive branch on our cat tree... I guess that both species could take advantage of that."
Bagel was overly proud of his word play. After all, he had one cat tree in the Bodega and one above, in the apartment he shared with Khaleesi and Raul. It wouldn't be difficult to find another one.
He could have one made and send it over to the other factions. There was also the small chance that whoever was buying up the land wasn't a squirrel.
" How sure are we that? Is it going to be who we think it is? Do we have to investigate this?" Gladys said.
Janet floated, bobbing up and down several times. "Calculating. It is most likely that this is a squirrel, although there is a strong chance greater than fifty percent that there was a human that did this. The fact that three of them popped up in a row on the same day right after Bagel did his east to west by up. It looks suspicious to me."
"This looks like a trend. I don't like trends that I'm not trying to start. And I'm not saying I'm an influencer." Gladys smiled. "But I know somebody who's got a very public face and people are willing to follow him. So perhaps...?"
"If this is about you using me for propaganda posters, I already signed off in that idea. I just haven't seen them yet because there's nobody in their right mind who is owning a printing machine right now that actually works."
Gladys threw up her hands. "And that's exactly why I told you. We need to make hand bills and paint them all ourselves. If we can do that then we can pass these out and people will get it. They can also just go on our website even though they're not going to do that because everyone's social media is so fucked right now."
Bingling her the rumblings about people complaining about social media and tagging and things before. But he hadn't really wanted to ask because it sounded like such a hassle.
Humans would say these things that were meant to get you to ask questions like leading statements that you might want to figure out and he had learned to just not do that.
Bagel found that if he did engage in bullshit, then his store wouldn't smell like a litter box.
That was not an official policy. People came with their bullshit all the time but he was happy to sell them something to appease them in most cases.
I made him money and that made him happy. Now if he could just get a drone to figure out who just bought that place. Bail nearly smacked himself in the face with his tail. He realized that he had people for that and he wasn't even using them. He gave Gladys a manic written. Well. Even if they weren't his people. They were her people. And he was going to take advantage of them like they were a chew toy.
"I don't know why you're looked at me like that boss but I guess you've got a decision now. So what am I doing? Am I just sending some of the guys out there to check it out?"
Bagel nodded. "Make it so."
---
It didn't take them long to drive all the way up there. Kill some mobs along the safe corridor that Bagel Head so generously given. The messages flowed in once they got to the location and they couldn't find anything else out. Whoever had brought up the land hadn't stuck around or they were hiding someplace that wasn't obvious.
There was a feeling that humans got when they stepped into a place that was a safe zone.
"All right boss. Here's what they found out. Basically nothing. So we can either have them do a steakout or try to set up some cameras or something."
Bagel twisted his head to look at her. "Cameras or something?"
"I keep my guys outfitted with the best year. And since one of them used to be private investigator he has a suite of things we can use. So long the technology is not bothering the mobs that spawn we can put a camera someplace and hook it up and then have a live feedback here. Do I think that's going to show us who's there? Yes, but also like there's a small chance that they are a pigeon, a human or a squirrel and they might be able to find out a way to tell."
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
There was no normal way to tell who owned the plot of land. It was clear that Bagel had owned his area He held shareholder meetings. He sent out newsletters even though it was through the offices of one of his lack. He was doing it for him. Somebody was receiving data about him through official government sponsored channels. Because he ran a separate and distinct entity within the state. Bagel took State money for private interests for the public good.
What would be better for the public than him clearing the streets of Manhattan of monsters as well as the buildings until the entirety of the city was once again safe? Perhaps some more baklava?
"So what you're saying is we're going to send them over there and they're going to come back because they've already wasted enough time?"
"We've got more important things for them to be doing than to be doing a stakeout. Especially when we have drones and they're going to set up a camera to check whoever is going into and out of the building. There are three buildings and each one needs to be checked. With how long it takes them to set up the cameras? Chances are that one of the three owners are going to check in."
The fact is that he was thinking about it in several ways. His biggest thought was that somebody was messing with him. Like obviously they were. Once you bought something you could see who else had bought stuff around you. Those purchases had been in an order even though he couldn't draw up the timelines. He could imagine it. He could see one of the squirrels buying up one of those buildings and then figuring out that it had to buy a building on the other side of the line so that they wouldn't get boxed in. If bagel had the money, he could just box in those blocks causing them to not be able to expand their domains.
That wouldn't be so great but at least he would stop their expansion. They're non-aggression was going to be something interesting. Until they started open hostilities, he would need to figure out a way to stop them from expanding.
More than anything else, the amount of cards that were flowing into a shop being bought and sold was astonishing him. He'd made over a thousand credits that day from the difference between what he charged for cards and what he sold them at.
The humans called it arbitrage. He called it a profit.
He was going to make a lot more based on the numbers he was getting.
"Gladys do you think we need to start expanding the empire somewhere? Get more people coming into the shop?"
"You can charge a bit more rent I guess, but basically everyday we expand the fence of what's possible here and more people spend as much time as you can. Inside of here. You're giving people a real chance."
Bagel purred. "Really, it's the NYPD arranging stuff outside. I'm just restocking the shelves."
If people wanted to call him a hero that was on them. He did not feel like a hero. He felt like he was making an okay profit in a place we could make be making a killing. And if he began to make a killing then he might have enough money to make himself safe. He really wanted to be safe.
And if it took him tearing apart the city just to get that safety, he would. He just needed the people that work for him to understand where his priorities lie and how they would get their credits. Because mobs weren't going to kill themselves.
Dungeons were definitely not going to delve themselves. He would need to keep setting people to delve dungeons and clear them so long as they popped up. And if he ever got his wish about expanding Manhattan another several dozen blocks or so? He would connect to governor's Island to buy that land too.
He just needed more investors and more people to come in and sell him cards because he didn't want to run out of the money. He used to sell buying up as many cards he could but if he had to, he would. Perhaps what do you need to do would be to expand another card. Shop out someplace further away. He can make a place safe and then expand out another card. Shop there. Or we could consider putting a car job in the Chelsea Piers and having meatball around that. That had the added benefit of letting her use the money that she got on the same thing that they were doing. To reestablishment of or several other local businesses would finally get him what he wanted. The satisfaction of being able to own another piece of Manhattan real estate and as well as operate it for profit.
Without having a resolution to the most pressing issue of his day, Bagel turned in for the night. When Gladys found out who owned those buildings? He would be there. And if we required him to show up in person again then he probably wouldn't actually show up. He had enough silly s*** going on and he could definitely count himself out on the next. Ridiculous ness.
He stretched out in his cat tree looking for meatball to signal up next to him. She wasn't around and that irked him. He was fine with sleeping a shirt but He drew the line at not knowing where she was. He was pretty sure that she was down at Chelsea because she'd been more intertwined with her operations as of late. But just physically not knowing where she was...that was rough.
