The first potential new hire didn't take long to show up.

She wore the standard adventurers kit, but looked like she was very uncomfortable wearing it. She had salt and pepper with black hair and she really liked cats. Or at least she smelled like she did. Bagel wasn't going to get investigate her too much until he knew more about her.

"Hello Mister Bagel, I'm Gladys. Ashley sent me over here. She was talking about working for you but not necessarily for the Bodega?'

Bagel flicked his tail. "Correct. I need someone to manage my assets. I'm not sure exactly looking for, but Janet thinks that an accountant might be the right kind of person for this job."

Gladys blue eyes perked up. " I was an accountant for a big four firm before all this business happened. If you need some sort of help in that regard, I would be more than suited for that task. What do you need me to do?"

"The city has seen fit to appoint me as the president of a public trust. I'm going to be honest with you. I am not sure what they're doing. I thought that they were going to be more supportive of their Interests but it seems like we are low on their priorities."

Gladys placed a hand over her mouth. "You don't say. If you were able to give me some more information I could definitely help you with this. It seems like it's just a matter of adhering to the regulatory requirements of reporting and I can definitely take care of that on your behalf."

She went on to detail what she could do for him.

She would be able to handle payroll for him which meant that he could hire more people.

He described the setup of his budget and accounts and she blanched.

Khaleesi was not getting paid. Gladys insisted that she would be paid for actually doing things. Bagel jokingly offered to pay her with exposure, eliciting a chuckle. It warmed his heart that they were able to build up such a good rapport so quickly.

"You know what, I think that you have this job. It's not like having anybody else lined up."

"Really?" She perked up.

It was true, of course. With her being the only one being interviewed, he want to get that over with so that she could do the interviews next. He could already picture her telling him not to interview anybody else and that made him smile.

It was important to him that he got somebody that could run his operations. It was also important for him to get somebody that could do it and actually understand how humans worked. He was having difficulty understanding why they wanted Staten Island but he wasn't going to worry about that. That was for the humans to justify to themselves. He got paid either way.

"Alright, where do I start?" She said. "And where am I going to set up?"

"First thing, you're going to take charge of 816 second avenue. That's going to have a bunch of people trying to rent. I assume you're going to want help?"

She nodded.

"To manage a building? Yeah I'll probably need one or two men. Maintenance and administration. I assume that we're going to be working around the block?"

"I own this entire block but so far I haven't been telling any of the tenants that they're about to pay rent."

Hey, gone unsaid thus far that he was eventually going to ask people to pay rent. It was probably going to be the only way that they could retain the city and some semblance of what human Society had been before. But that was before and he was rapidly growing to understand that he needed to create the world that he wanted to live in.

"So you need me to manage the physical buildings and hiring and firing of your new employees? Do you prefer adventurers guild people?"

"Correct on both counts," he said. " They've already proved that they're interested in helping out their fellow men and women. I think they should be rewarded for that. I don't think that they should be working more than four hours a day though."

"So you basically want us to automate security is what you're saying? Because it's not going to be cost effective to just have people doing work all day. Plus security's kind of taken care of by The avengers guild anyway so..." Gladys brought out a notebook. "Let's say you pay somebody two credits for a shift and the shift. It's four hours. They can make a lot more money working with adventurers guild but this is guaranteed pay to sit on their asses. Let's make it... Five credits a shift?"

"Are you going to cost the same amount?"

"Absolutely not. You're going to get me for twenty credits a day."

Bagel smiled. There was nothing he respected more than a woman who knew her worth.

He wanted to pay her that much. That just meant that he was going to have to make that much. Bagel had that and more to spare.

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"Twenty credits every day whether I'm working or not. I know that the rent at 816 is going to be thirty credits per unit. I did my research. Janet is a friend, and I have my own AI that's part of my mantle."

Bagel looked around but he didn't see any floating spheres.

"She is checking out the building. I assume that over time we're going to be working through each of the buildings? She's checking the row next to it. How do you want to advertise vacancies?"

"I think that you can handle that."

Gladys scribbled something down. " Now let me ask you another question because of where we are. Do the system give you knowledge of any other languages besides English?"

Bagel had to pause and really think about that for a minute. What was she asking. He could understand English that was... A language? Yes it was. And that was the predominant and language where he was meaning that everything they did ever heard. Hey, they've been in English or some other languages that had been spoken around him.

"Spanish? That's a language? I know some words. *Pendeha* comes to mind."

Gladys eyebrows raised independently of the rest of her face.

"You understand that a lot of people around here are not going to be able to speak English and some of them are going to need translators. That might not be so much a problem. I'll handle that."

She examined her notes for a long minute. Bagel waited for her to come out with something. She looked like she was trying to solve a logic puzzle with her tongue and forefinger.

"I'm going to need a staff. Which means I'm going to need a budget. An operating budget."

Bagel looked up to see Janet circling around him.

"Janet, what are your thoughts? How much can we dedicate to this operating budget that Gladys is speaking about?"

"Boss, if we can keep it under 1,000 credits a week. Then we should be good," Janet beeped.

"That is absolutely doable. A good creative accountant can do a lot with that. Although I'm assuming that we can be as creative as we want in this brand new world that we're living in."

The term creator counted tickled Bagels has abilities. If this woman became a second in command then he would absolutely love that kind of title. Of course if everyone was going to call him boss and that was also a great title. He was just awash with ideas and hearing the words creative accountant made him snicker.

"All right, so that means that I'm going to have to do interviews of my own. I'll be setting up those... Can I establish our offices on the third floor of the adventurers guild?"

Bagel nodded. "It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but it makes sense that it's up there. It'll be really good to have easy access to more people to work for us. And plus the whole thing is five levels. What were they using the third floor for again?"

"The first floor is regular guild business. The second floor is drones and scones and the computer lab. The third through fifth floors are just sitting unused."

"I don't have any issue with that. If you want to take that up, I'll support it. Ashley usually listens to me on these matters. Officially, I'm not going to be messing with the guilt because they do so much good for me."

Gladys narrowed her eyes. " Unofficially?"

"Unofficially, without them we'd all be screwed. Also, I would not make nearly as much money. And we need money to make this place safe which attracts more people to the guild. So that's part of your job. I can only make us so safe. Someone has to handle the administrative back end."

"That's very reasonable. Pay me a lot of credits and I got you."

Bagel wouldn't dream of stiffing anybody.

"My reputation is important to me. You will get paid. Janet can handle that. If your AI and Janet can link together then. This will be a lot easier."

"When we're done here we can take care of that. Then I've got all the answers I sought out so far so... Unless you have any further questions of me I will get started. I'll report back with any acquisitions. Presumably Janet will be able to fire it while any legal paperwork needed to create a business entity on your behalf?"

Janet beeped affirmatively.

"Very good. Now I already have some ideas of who I should hire for this because I've lived here for a while. But if you have anything else you can leave me a note or you can tell Janet to contact my AI and right now I'm going to link ours."

It took Janet less than a minute to link with gladys's AI. And all the sudden, he could instantly contact newest employee whenever he wanted to, within the realm of her working for him. At least. Now that you could do that, he had to think about how often he would even be talking to her. Could he just speak to Janet and having Janet really the messages?

That just felt like work with extra steps. He was not down for making things extra stepish.

If you could have him do than he would. But his holdings were getting to be beyond his control now and he knew that somebody would need to take care of it. His insistence on doing things by himself for so long had ultimately led to him to this decision that he had to give other people the responsibility that he could not execute.

"And that was a good choice boss," Janet said. "Her AI seems to know what she's doing."

"You got a sense of that from her AI? Did it reveal anything else?"

"Just the negative feelings of the people around it. Not feeling like they could do anything about everything that's going on. There's not a lot of hope to go around."

Bagel hadn't considered the amount of Hope. He honestly hadn't said much except for him needing help and being able to pay for it. He could pay for it so why wouldn't he? Now he would be able to have the benefit of her wanting to buy stuff at his store or at least it will be a good way to use his money to put it towards projects that would generate more money.

"You have a good insight into how the adventurers guild runs, don't you-How many of those people that have joined the guild are unable to actually go out and do some of the missions either because it got hurt or because whatever reason..."

"There was a few of those. Not everybody wants to work the streets. Lot of people are talking about working from home or working remote as if it's an option."

Bagel shifted on the counter.

"Remote work?"

"It was a big thing right before the... All of this," Janet said. "Guild members that fight each other over who they could get for these jobs. And all his workers were especially prized as they could fix company problems. But that's not even an option right now. They can work from just about down the street but that's about it. Except for people that do the admin arranging, basically every single member of the adventurers guild has to show up and do things. This is different than what Raul does and what we do."

Once again, Bagel had to think about it for a minute.

It was going to be tough enough for him to just give away power but that's what he had to do in order to get more. And now all he needed to do was figure out a way to pick the right ones who would not just take the money and then then run around doing much else except for leveling up.

Not everybody was suited to be a hero but the ones that would definitely take their time being a hero.

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