this is crazy

[from_scratch]

Cam is watching a new recording of Atriama, tail swishing in the gap in his couch, and doesn't stop to pause the show when he feels a summons go by.

Comments

[from_scratch]

"Crossed my mind."

[wormcan]

"In that case I don't care who you are. You can leave or you can not leave. Your choice."

[from_scratch]

"I'm gonna not leave."

[wormcan]

"OK, so we're doing this." An dark orb starts condensing around Cam's interlocutor. Underlings get out of the line of fire and, in the case of powered underlings, prepare an offense and look for a signal.

[from_scratch]

Cam's opening move is an application of knockout drugs to his opponent and powered underlings.

[wormcan]

Well that's just disappointing, isn't it.

The interrupted attack detonates, demolishing the throne and very little else. The power user is unharmed, and everyone else knew not to get too close.

[from_scratch]

"Oh. I was thinking that at least one of them might have a counter for that," says Cam to no one in particular, replacing a bit of his shirt from the detonation.

He goes looking for an unpowered underling.

[wormcan]

No one really knows what comes next, and hopefully it doesn't involve retaliation against people loyal to the old guy, but it's not as if literally everyone is cowering.

"Did you kill them?" a civilian asks.

[from_scratch]

"No, they're just sleeping. I'd like a summary of their personalities so I have an idea of when and under what circumstances I should wake them."

[wormcan]

"Personalities? Mostly they're just all jockeying for the number two spot, we keep our heads down and the powered people don't bother us much."

[from_scratch]

"Do any of them seem like they might be able to jockey in a nonviolent and productive fashion?"

[wormcan]

"They've got powers. Violence is what they do. Maybe you could force them, I don't know."

[from_scratch]

"Mm. Thank you. Do the other people in the area need anything? Have I landed mid-famine or -plague or -drought or anything?"

[wormcan]

"Not unusually so. But if that's the kind of thing you're handing out, people will take you up on it with or without any special emergency."

[from_scratch]

"Cool. Want a job?"

[wormcan]

"Sure. You're better than my last boss." Who is currently slumped on the floor.

[from_scratch]

"Awesome. Can you read?"

[wormcan]

"Yes."

[from_scratch]

"Great." Cam hands him a tablet. "Type up requests for things in there, it'll send them to me and I'll come by and fill them in batches between doing other things. You can talk to me about other things like when I'm expecting to do that here -" Messaging app. "Consolidate it as much as you can, if fifty people want sacks of wheat I just need to know that it's fifty sacks of wheat. There is absolutely no shortage of things like 'sacks of wheat', so your job is also to make sure everyone knows that so nobody fights over the sacks of wheat. Any guesses on initial requests I can conjure up now to be distributed while I square these fellows away?"

[wormcan]

"Better start with food. No shortage of anything at all?"

[from_scratch]

"I could make a planet if I wanted, I will not have a problem feeding the region formerly known as Angola as long as I have the requests neatly organized. Medical stuff is a little tricky - malaria should be a thing of the past in a few seasons anyway, I started the process of driving all the mosquitoes that carry it extinct, but if someone actually has it then someone who knows what they're doing has to administer the treatment and there's only one of me - but food is trivial. Is wheat popular here? Should I just make a granary full of flour for a starter?"

[wormcan]

"Cassava flour is more of a staple than wheat. But, yes. That sounds fantastic."

[from_scratch]

"If people know more about what to do with cassava I can do cassava." Cam finds a suitably empty space. He appears a granary. "Cassava's in red bags, wheat's in blue, two to one ratio, keep an eye on what the demand looks like for when I come to refill that."

[wormcan]

Cam's new employee or minion or accomplice or whatever nods and starts spreading the word. (The parts of the word that aren't self-spreading. Spontaneous granaries are traditionally hard to miss.)

[from_scratch]

Cam hover-drags the sleeping warlord-and-friends elsewhere and sets them up with long-term coma equipment and leaves them all little leaflets about what happened in case by some mechanism or other they should happen to wake.

And he starts flying village to village in their territory radius, looking for comparable employees and leaving similar granaries. He checks his grocery list messages routinely.