Jena ignored her uncle’s finger that was pointing at the medicine and closed the door behind her.
“Uncle, you need to fire these people.”
With a flick of her hand, she sent the data from her wrist data-pad towards her uncle’s desk. The data appeared over the desk and started scrolling up revealing the faces and listing all that they had done.
“Jena, we can’t just fire them. They’ve had a hard upbringing so…”
“They’re stealing from the company! They’re also taking home pay for at least 14 hours a week that they did not work for. I read the sob stories they told you. Even if they are true you can not overlook the nearly 1 million credits lost due to their stealing!”
“I can put them on temporary hold for work, and ask them to pay back what they stole.”
“Uncle you know as well as I do what happens to those who do not take the proper measures and try to be kind-hearted. We need to report this to the [Office of Reason]. When… not if, but when they find out about the theft of such a large amount of credits they will view you as an accomplice if you do not report this. It will not only be you that is affected but also the shop, me, and the only two good workers in the shop.”
Uncle let out a sigh as he looked at all the data in front of him.
Each of them was an orphaned kid of one of his long-dead friends who had died due to the wounds or injuries they had received during the troubled years. Because of their parents’ relationship with him in the past he had been turning a blind eye to the kids who were now young adults, coming in late and leaving early.
But his niece was right. Now that the theft was discovered and if he did nothing, he would be held accountable along with them.
With a heavy heart he signed off on the termination of all but two of the shop’s employees. His hand whizzed around the holo-keypad as he typed up a short formal message. He attached the data gathered by Jena and sent it to the local Level one Office of Reason.
He didn’t know what exactly would happen to them but he could guess just by thinking of a similar past event.
“I guess we will need to hire some new people?” asked Uncle.
“We can’t. With the economic situation and the shop losing money every month we can not afford it. We’ll just have to have Will and Julia work full time now and you will be working on the big projects. Show me the list of waiting contracts,” said Jena as she sat down in a hover char next to her uncle.
He swiped his hand clearing the holoscreen showing a menu. He tapped onto the blinking icon that had the number 9999+ above it.
A large list of several thousands of work requests appeared with some of them dating over a year old.
Jena quickly scanned the contents of the request and flicked her hand, permanently deleting it.
“Why did you delete that? … Well I don’t really care since it was from that guy. He tried to bribe me with such a small amount of credits to fix it for him. He didn’t even offer to pay the full cost. I was just keeping it to let him think I would do it later.”
Jena continued to skim the contents of the request and was on a deletion spree.
“Hey! That one… well I don’t care about that one either way too hard you can delete it.”
“Wait! Why are you deleting that one? It’s an easy one!”
Jena continued to delete all the requests that were too hard and paid too little for what they asked the request that they would lose money on, and even the thousands of easy jobs where they would neither lose nor gain any money.
Uncle looked over the list that was now far smaller and had only a few hundred requests left, several with dates from more than a year ago.
“Wait, isn’t this just a list of the hardest jobs? Why did you delete all the easy ones!”
“We can’t get out of the hole we are in if we keep working on the small requests. Although all these may be hard, they all pay extremely well. I’ll make sure to put out some feelers to see if we can get more jobs like this. From now on we have to be careful with our spending making every credit count.”
“What about my collection?” asked uncle with a sad expression.
“You should be able to buy one rare part using a portion of the reward from this request. I’ll give you the money after you finish the task and they have paid us.”
The request she pointed to was the hardest one on the list, but would also allow them to pay off all of their most important bills. It would also allow them to set aside enough credits to pay for several months of full-time work for Will and Julia.
Her uncle left the office both sad and unhappy at all that had happened this morning. Everything was getting turned upside down.
Jena continued to sort the request from most to least important. She then typed up several messages to the requesters making sure they had not forgotten about it, while also asking if they still wanted the task to be completed.
Almost all of the replies she received were messages pleading for her to take up the requests as they had been waiting a long time and wanted the task to be completed.
A few truly had forgotten about it and decided to cancel the request as they no longer needed or wanted whatever it was they asked for.
After an hour of work, the list was completely pruned and sorted. Jena swiped her hand clearing the screen bringing her back to the main menu where she tapped on the icon for the Holo-net.
[Please input your Government-issued ID: —]
With quick fingers, Jena tapped in her Citizen ID and smacked the enter key.
A loading screen appeared for only a few seconds as it processed the ID to make sure she was allowed to access the Holo-net.
With a ding, the browser appeared and was fully connected to the level 1 Holo-net.
She connected to Scamozon the largest holo-net store which had many of its large warehouses on the first level. Although it had a suspicious name it followed all laws and regulations of the Party of Mother and Father.
She found the section she was looking for and after a while of reading reviews and inspecting the holographic images of the item she wanted, she was somewhat satisfied with it. She tapped on the buy option and added several sets to her cart before finalizing the purchases.
[Checking SCS… Checking bank account…Purchase complete!]
Soon Jena’s NerViz notified her of the successful purchase.
[Your items will be delivered within the hour by drone delivery!]
“Good, now that is taken care of, I can focus on the next task,” said Jena.
She logged off of the Holo-net and walked back out into the maze of junk and made her way to the storage room that housed the aging square work bots that were resting on rusty A1 parasteel shelves.
She found the 3 work bots that worked 90% of the time and checked to make sure that their fuel cells were fully charged.
“We have to work with what we have,” grumbled Jena.
She turned the three work bots who floated up to eye level waiting for orders.
“Follow me!”
Jena and the work bots made Their way to the right side of the garage and looked around making sure her uncle was not nearby before giving the worker bots another command.
The three worker bots immediately started to clear the large pile of junk next to the wall and piled it up farther away.
A short distance away in one of the offshoot branching paths Uncle was lost in thought while grumbling to himself. He was currently searching for parts in the pile of junk so he could start the job that had been given to him.
As he was reaching for one of the parts several worker bots swooped down and started to move all the items away.
“What? What’s going on…? Stop!” He tried to force them to stop but received an error.
He turned around and found that the entire right wall was empty except for two large dumpsters with the words recycle.
Standing nearby was Jena, who was sorting through various parts from her uncle’s junk piles.
“What have you done!?”
“I’m cleaning up the shop,” said Jena as she tossed a piece of metal into the dumpster.
“Stop messing with my piles! It’s fine how it is right now since I know where everything is! How am I supposed to find anything with you doing this… Why do you have my Blue unicorn chip in your hands?”
“This piece of junk? It’s cut in half so it’s worthless.”
“That’s a mega chip from the per-troubled era. They are super rare and even if it’s cut in half it is still priceless! Don’t throw it away!”
“I’m not throwing it away, I’m salvaging it to earn money for the shop.”
Ding! The shop’s doorbell rang.
Jena walked past her fretting uncle who had snatched away the Blue unicorn chip pieces and was holding onto them like they were newborn babies.
The shop’s door was unlocked and groaned as it opened allowing several large hulking drones to enter. They flew over to the empty right wall and dropped off the large containers that held the items she had purchased. As soon as the delivery drones dropped the containers they zipped out of the garage doors leaving the shop.
Jena opened the container and viewed the large structures and parts with her own eyes.
When she was satisfied that everything she had ordered was there, she turned to the three waiting work bots.
“Start constructing these next to the wall,” Ordered Jena.
The three work bots compiled and emptied one of the containers before starting assembling the large shelve which would cover the entire wall and reach the ceiling when finished.
Each of the containers had a large shelving system along with a ‘cheap’ lift to get to each level of structure.
“What’s this? Didn’t you say we have to cut back on spending?” asked Uncle.
“I bought it with my own money. We can’t keep working in a pigsty like this,” said Jena, pointing to the maze of parts behind her.
“Pigsty? How rude. Also Jena you shouldn’t waste your money like that. You need to save it and use it when you get married and have a kid! In these trying times every credit counts,” said her Uncle.
Jena threw a junk part at her Uncle who caught it and quickly inspected it for any damage.
“Would you stop throwing parts from my collection? This is a v3 harpy sister processor. Although not super rare it is still hard to find them in good shape due to their personality.”
Jena was now ignoring him as she continued sorting out stuff that they could salvage and gain some credits.
Uncle walked off grumbling,“…the 4th level really has changed my cute little niece into a demon who now bent on stealing all the rare parts in my collection.”
A hover cart floated behind him carrying all the parts he needed for the current project as he headed through the maze to find his workstation.
Jena watched as the first large shelving system was set up. When it was done she walked to the back corner of the shop looking for Will and Julia.
“…Will…?”
“Yeah?”
It seemed they were still caught in the awkward stage of what they considered a conversation.
“Nothing…Oh there’s someone here,” said Julia, as she noticed Jena walking over to them through the pile of parts.
“Who?” asked Will as he popped his head out from under the hovercar to get a better look.
“WOW! IT’S JENA THE MOVIE STAR!” shouted Julia.
She ran over to Jena and held out her hand that was shaking with excitement.
“I am your number one fan! I know everything about you! You grew up on the first floor like me, but you were able to break out after playing a small role in a movie that was shot on the first level. Then you managed to land a role in a major movie shot by the producer Kappaer on the 4th level and shot to stardom.”
“Oh…so this is the boss’s niece he won’t stop talking about,” said Will. He inspected Jena for a split second before sliding back under the hovercar.
“Ah! Don’t let the boss know that Will told you, but he always talked about how he was happy that you made it big… but he was always worried about you. It’s sad that you were… uh… Retired…”
Cough. Jena covered her face from embarrassment.
“Well, I came here to give you both an update on the current changes happening to the shop. For now, there are only 4 employees at this shop. You two will be working here full time and I will be handing out any of the tasks that you will need to complete.”
“You will be taking care of the smaller jobs while Uncle takes care of the large projects. But if he needs help you will have to give him a hand. Right now I need you to drop what you are doing and try to fix the rest of the work bots. We need them to be fully functioning as they are going to be getting far more use than before.”
“This is so cool! I actually get to work with Jena!” said Julia happily.
Will pulled himself out from under the hovercar and Julia hurried over to help him up. She quickly used a towel to wipe off his face and hands, cleaning the grease and rust off of them.
“Thanks,” said Will before he started to gather the tools he needed to work on the bots.
“No, problem…” said Julia with her cheeks lighting up.
Jena led the two to the storage room and unlocked the door.
Will immediately got to work dissembling the work bots one by one, cleaning, tightening, tuned up parts as well as finding new parts for the worn-out parts. If there was not a proper part he made do with a makeshift fix.
Soon the shop was busy with half of the worker bots cataloging and sorting the parts before placing them on the newly erected shelves. The most useful cheap parts were placed on the bottom while the more expensive parts and those of her uncle’s collection were put at the top.
The rest of the bots not cataloging the parts were in charge of clearing space and setting up the new shelves.
“With this, we can be even more efficient and get everything done faster. Maybe even bigger projects will come to us,” said Jena happily as she looked at the activity all around her.
