When Arron entered the room he saw three black-suit Office of Reason agents sitting on three old hover chairs which were the only furniture in the room. Their private discussion stopped immediately as they turned to inspect him.
“You are quite young to own so many businesses,” said a skinny agent as he stood up and held out his left hand for Arron to take.
Arron had just barely regained control of his left arm and was already being forced to fight through the pain he still felt as he took the agent’s hand to shake it.
“I recently sold a factory for a decent amount of money. That’s…ah!”
Without warning the agent’s loose grip squeezed like a metal vice as he shook Arron’s hand roughly up and down making him grimace as pain shot up through his entire arm and chest.
“You have quite a weak grasp. Is there something wrong with your arm?” asked the agent as his mouth turned into a grin.
Arron was unable to see the agent’s eyes due to the visor that covered them but he was sure they were similarly shining in enjoyment at his pain.
“Just a…” Arron stopped his explanation as he realized that saying something careless like an accident could lead the agents to ask more questions and dig deeper or get a wrong idea in their heads, which was not what he wanted. “Just some cramps. I slept on my arm the wrong way and now it has been causing me pain for a few days.”
“As you are probably aware by now, the Party of Mother and Father has passed new regulations and we are here to make sure that all your businesses are following them. You have kept us waiting long enough so let’s get this finished as we have other places to be,” said a female agent as she stood up.
“Of course. Do you need me to provide transportation for you?” said Arron politely.
“We already have our own transportation and you will be riding with us so that we can make sure you don’t try any funny business by trying to cover up any unsavory things before we get to the businesses,” said the second male agent who was at least 6’5” and had a body built with nothing but muscles.
Arron was surrounded by the three agents and escorted out of the building towards a waiting armored black flying limo.
The muscled agent squeezed in first then motioned for Arron to sit next to him, followed by the skinny man who sat on his right and the female agent who sat on the front seat that was facing Arron allowing her to stare at Arron as much as she wanted. Which she did…
Luckily Arron had already pulled up the information on the new business he was now in charge of, and was now using his right eye’s connection to his NerViz to access the files and secretly skim over the data.
“We will be going to each of your businesses in no particular order so that you will not be able to send out last-minute orders to them,” said the skinny black-suit agent.
“I wonder what ‘Surprises’ we will find today,” said the female agent as she smiled at Arron.
‘Your guess is as good as mine. I have no clue!’ thought Arron. He had only been to some of these places once, others on this list were entirely new to him as they had been looked after by someone else.
An unsettling silence wrapped around them as they flew to their first destination. Each of the agents were staring at him making sure that he did not access his wrist data-pad or pick up any calls.
Arron tried to ignore their gazes by continuing his crash course on all the important information he needed in order to not look like a fool in front of the Agents.
One thing that was in the back of his mind was the question ‘Why have they not scanned or tried to identify who I really am?’.
He could only think that it really was like what Ox had said. If he didn’t do something stupid, they would leave him alone. This was too out of the norm for Arron, as he had plenty of experiences with the Office of Reason getting bent out of shape over the littlest thing where they would be normalizing people left and right.
As the Armored limo slowed down and began its descent to a private parking spot near a large building, Arron looked out the window to see a large holographic blue sign [Relaxation Palace].
This was one of the places he had not been to before. So he had to quickly scroll through the business information until he found it and skimmed over it.
The business was a massage and ear-cleaning parlor. He let out a soft sigh in his heart after reading over the finer details and was relieved it was not one of ‘those’ types of places that were very popular with some people. No funny business was allowed here.
“Let’s see what we have going on here,” said the female agent as she hopped out of the armored limo first and began walking to the front entrance.
Arron and the other two agents followed behind her and entered the building. He had to silence his gasp of amazement when he saw the front lobbies’ four walls were all made out of large see-through fish tanks that had hundreds of exotic fish and other aquatic life inside them. This was not a cheap holographic painting but the real deal and probably costs a fortune to keep up.
“Ah! Boss you’re here! Are these the guests you mentioned earlier?” asked a short 5ft or so young female with thick glasses.
‘Cough!’ “Ah… yes. These three are agents from the Office of Reason,” said Arron trying to hide the awkward vibes he was getting from the overly cute way she was talking. Plus this was his first time even meeting her. Her acting was a little too good and might give the agents a few wrong ideas!
“Amazing I have not met any Office of Reason agents before!” said the young female.
The three agents looked at each other for a moment and nodded, some of their doubts about him being the owner of this business were cleared up after seeing this interaction.
“Are you the manager of this place?” asked the female agent, her lips pursed tightly into a frown.
“I am, my name is Rose. If you need anything I can provide it to you at a discount,” said Rose with a small bow.
“We’re not here for pleasure. We will begin our inspection now. You two will follow behind us and only speak when we talk to you,” said the female agent ignoring Rose.
Arron and Rose did not exchange any greetings or speak to each other as they followed behind the agents who began a very detailed inspection of the business.
Despite what Ox had said they were not here just to check that they were following the new regulations. It was a full-blown inspection.
A few minutes into the inspection one of the agents pointed to a bottle on one of the counters of the massage room.
“Why are you using this chemical? The purchase of this chemical was banned last year.”
“Ah… I’m sorry. This is leftover supplies from before the ban. We did not buy it after the ban so I thought we were allowed to use the rest of it. Do we need to get rid of it?” asked Arron with a blank face, but on the inside, he was trying to think as quickly as he could about how to minimize this violation.
“No need, we will just add this to the tax fine that you will have to pay for the next year,” said the muscular agent. “Minus 2 points from the company’s business score.”
“If your C.B.S. is reduced under the minimum allowed score, there will be problems,” said the skinny agent.
This was somewhat puzzling to Arron but he only shrugged and followed them throughout the building. The agents did not care that there were customers in private rooms and barged in to inspect them.
Each time the agents found something wrong they would mention it but did not require him to fix it as they said they would just add it to the fine tax and subtract points from their C.B.S.
Arron made a mental note to definitely fix everything after this visit as he did not want to be grilled by the family head on why they were losing so much money.
‘Wait a second. Get a hold of yourself Arron! This is not your real job! So why am I getting so into this…?’ thought Arron as he realized his thoughts were more and more in tune with how the family and its members acted.
By the end of the inspection, Arron’s face was a shade paler. The amount of yearly tax fines that had been added to the business costs was not small!
“Thank you for your visit! Please come again!” said Rose in a cute voice as she bowed and waved them off at the front entrance.
The three agents only grunted, not bothering to say anything as they entered the armored limo.
Arron was only able to silently mouth a ‘Sorry’ to Rose for causing such a disruption to the day’s daily business. She only shrugged to him as he was shoved into the armored limo which lifted off the ground and once again began flying to the next destination.
When they reached the next business Arron frowned when he saw the name [Pleasure Palace] and read its details. He groaned inside, this was exactly the opposite of the previous business.
It was a brothel, which offered all types of degenerates the chance to have different exotic experiences that they never tried before. From the short details he read, all types of debauchery could be found here for people with all types of tastes…
“So you’re the owner of such a place,” said the skinny man as he exited the armored limo.
“As expected of a young man,” said the muscular man as he slapped Arron on the upper left shoulder on his back sending a wave of pain through his body. He could clearly feel it even with the numbing power of the pill he took.
The female agent had a frown as she stared daggers at Arron.
‘Hey, I didn’t ask for these businesses! Why did Ox give me all these!’ Arron silently screamed inside. He had finished looking at the rest of the businesses under his wing and the majority of them were all similar places like this! The [Relaxation Palace] was the odd one out of all of them.
He knew why. Ox specialized in the gambling scene, with a few other side businesses and restaurants.
Arron just felt lucky that he was given all the legal businesses that had nothing to do with illegal activities or with anything to do with drugs. This way it was far easier to handle the Office of Reasons questions.
Despite the agents’ claim that they had to do other things after this inspection they spent the whole day dragging Arron around happily pointing out violations.
The same process happened at each business. Arron managed to rack up several fines for each place on his very first day on the job. Which must have been a record. It was not something he wanted to be remembered for.
During entire later portions of the escort, the pills numbing effect wore off and his arm started to hurt more and more.
When the agents were finished with him they left him at the last [Pleasure Palace] branch not bothering to give him a ride back to where they had first met.
Arron opened his contact list and tapped on Ox’s name to start a call.
“Have you finished your inspection tours? How did it go? I’m guessing it was fine since you are still in one piece,” said Ox immediately as his holographic head popped up.
Arron hesitated for a few seconds before saying, “Each place received multiple violations and a hefty fine tax.”
Ox only nodded at this. Which was not what Arron had expected. He had been waiting for him to blow his top at Arron’s lack of ability to stop the companies from losing a large portion of their revenue.
“Why are you so surprised? This is only natural, the party of Mother and Father does this every so often as a way to extort more money out of the families without them being able to do much about it. These above-board businesses may suffer a bit this year but our other businesses can make up the difference.”
“Umm… can someone come and pick me up? I was just left here by the Office of Reason agents.”
“Can’t do that right now. Everyone is busy. You can either pay for a ride or you can sleep in your new office at any of the [Pleasure Palaces]. Just make sure that you don’t mess around. You are the boss, not a customer.”
