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Stories from the Verse
Re Verse All
Chapter 66: Beam 77
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 34
Beam sat on the bed. Sophia sat next to him, but he immediately stood and started pacing.
“What are we going to do with these people, Soph?”
“What do you mean?”
“I can see which way their thoughts are moving, and the Empire of Beam is about to pick up a hundred subjects, people who expect us to lead them, make sure they have everything they need, and probably settle their squabbles. Does that sound like something I want?”
Sophia nodded incongruously. “I can see what you mean,” she said. “So why did you agree to take the job?”
Beam shrugged. “It seemed the easiest way to deal with them at the time.”
Sophia sat for a moment, and then replied.
“It doesn’t sound like that tough a job. You know how to order food, you just have to order large quantities of it and have it delivered to the common area for the people to help themselves. We can set up one of the other apartments to be a school, and teach them how to use the computers to do their own ordering, and how to use the kitchen things to store and make their food. Clothes will be a bit tougher, but if they can learn to use the computers they can learn to get their own clothes. None of this costs us anything but the time it takes to teach them--”
Beam snorted.
“And,” she continued, “one thing we have is time.”
He had to admit she was right there.
“The other thing they want is protection, and from what we’ve seen there isn’t anything here Dawn can’t handle. Probably there isn’t anything Bron can’t handle. It sounds like you’ve been offered an easy job.”
It did sound like that. Somehow, though, Beam was betting there was something to it that he wasn’t seeing.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with five other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #376: Characters Arrive. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
