"Good evening everyone. Please take your seats."Evo motioned for the people to sit down and they followed. There were three people taking each side of the table. He took the nearest empty side and sat down before placing a stack of paper on the table.
"Take one pile and let"s proceed with the meeting." After taking their copies of today"s topics Evo began the meeting. "There"s a lot of progress in town development this past week which affected the people"s way of living. Subdivisions were getting reclaimed and new survivors are coming in. The town security has become lacking and the area we could monitor could cover the whole town unless I can dedicate my whole time in modifying and installing numerous security cameras around the town. Everyone"s safety would be our priority for the coming week."
"On your printouts, you can see the feedback and suggestions the survivors sent us. They like the quality of service that we"re providing them and has several ingenious ideas that they want us to implement. I like the idea of Private Banking, Private Storage, and an Auction House. I could easily deal and create a Private Banking program but it would take some time to gather cost-efficient code for it. I could attach the function to the future Black Haven credit cards and they could access their Private Bank Accounts "online" in the server. Also, it is expected that the current servers wouldn"t be able to handle everything, so the Elite Scavenger Squad must be deployed to search for as many servers they could find."
"On the other hand, the Private Storage and Auction House need a lot of manpower and resources which we currently don"t have. We don"t really need to implement this but if we could, this would make the people rely further on Black Haven."
Evo repeatedly tapped his index finger on the table as he explained to the three people inside the room. Bernard, Gina, and Dyna nervously gulped when his gaze turned to them.
He continued, "I know that you"re already busy with your day jobs but I can"t think of any outsider that I can trust with the tasks I gave you. Please understand."
Bernard on the left raised his hand and Evo urged him to speak.
"Don"t beat yourself up, we can just a.s.sign our jobs to some reliable member and that should be enough, Besides, were already old and a break like this should be fine." he scratched the back of his head shyly, then continued with his report.
Bernard was "promoted" and became the Human Resources Manager. He was a.s.signed the task to search and recruit promising individuals that have unique skill sets according to the submitted doc.u.ments by various factions and individuals.
"After a week of recruitment, I was able to recruit seven survivors that have strange skill sets which prevented them from catching attention from the other factions. Most of the s.h.i.+ning gems were already picked up and we have to unearth the potentials of the leftovers if we want to recruit more."
"It"s fine. There are no useless skills, just unimaginative individuals. Get as many as you can and recruit them as Black Haven Agents."
Afterward, he turned to Gina who was looking down seemingly unconfident with the report she had in mind.
"Is there a problem?" Evo asked.
"Oh, nothing... My report, yeah. I"m sorry."
"Please don"t be nervous, everyone"s the same here. We work for Jun and we could be considered as one big family. We"re already familiar with each other and to be honest, it"s also a bit awkward for me. Maybe we could act more casually to relieve some pressure?" Evo suggested after noticing that everyone was acting like he was the almighty boss and any erroneous deed would be faced with a consequence.
Dyna who was sitting on the right side of Evo suddenly laughed. "Can we do that? It"s a bit weird talking like this after everything we"ve been through."
"Please do so," Evo replied with a smile.
Gina left her staff duties and became the Inventory Supervisor of Black Haven. Her duties were to make sure they have enough supplies on-hand matched with supplies being on demand.
At the same time, Dyna became the Princ.i.p.al of the newly founded Black Haven Academy due to her past tutoring experience. She debated that it was a long time ago and her skills weren"t even that good but Evo highlighted the word "trust" which forced her to accept the role.
In any case, being a teacher now does not mean you would be teaching all the knowledge pre-apocalypse to your students. There was no curriculum and it was being built by Dyna alone.
The meeting continued after Gina and Dyna"s inexperienced reporting. Evo did not scold them and it was a process to be learned. The training period was also a given benefit for any managers even in the past, and he didn"t expect much at the first meeting.
The topic changed to the current news in town. The first batch of curious survivors from Angono arrived earlier, around noon, in the town.
They mostly stayed on the outskirts of the town and observed whether the people in Binangonan were friendlies. It was only until they can"t take the searing rays of the sun that they decided to enter and crossed the bridge to meet with the police patrols.
The encounter was thrilling and filled with anxiousness but after the two groups warmed up to each other and Jun"s name was mentioned, everything became a breeze.
The police border patrols a.s.signed on the outskirts of the 1km radius were all volunteer workers from the police force. They were survivors who came from other parts of Binangonan and were late to the "faction divide" preventing them from becoming of any importance if they ever joined. At least in the police force, everyone has an equal chance due to the implementation of contribution points that its members could receive for actively doing tasks. It also does not have any conflict with trading with Black Haven.
Why not join Black Haven instead? These were people who do not know what the history of the town was. They don"t revere Black Haven as much as the earlier people. At most they think that Black Haven was powerful and rising in the ranks would be harder. Furthermore, there were strange rumors that the leader was an egotistical maniac who does as he pleases. He even had a rumor that he enslaves his subordinates and works them to death.
Bernard was the one who met with these people, and he reported his findings to Evo. A report which made Evo"s head hurt since if it was true that Angono has become their subordinate town, they have to send a management team to go over and check things out. He also had to produce more credit point cards and have it circulated.
Then he finally has the chance to worry over certain things: How are their food levels? Can they produce or just consume food? What resources they have? Those are one of the few reasons why he hurriedly called for this meeting, he wanted to ask guidance from the more experienced people.
This incident further highlighted the importance of people as resources. Evo urged Bernard to also search for people with talent in management or similar skills.
The meeting ended with no clear answer in hand, just more problems, and workload.
As Evo made his way back to his office, a voice spoke beside him.
"Too busy? You didn"t even notice me."
Evo turned and found Adrian looking at him.
"Oh, you"re back? How"s the search?"
"It"s bad. Rank 2 Evolved Carriers were literally everywhere. To be honest, if it weren"t for the few people we encountered we would have a.s.sumed the place as a ghost town."
"How"s the trip? What happened to Edward? Is he back?"
Evo worriedly looked around in search for the promising young man. Adrian made a team to escort Edward on his quest to journey home. Morong, Edward"s hometown was a semi-urban farming town, and it has a mixed modern-countryside feeling to it.
"We reached his house. The good news? It was empty. Really empty. There"s a high chance that they left alive or..." Adrian sighed and did not continue what he was about to say. "He"s currently patrolling the streets, probably to get some air."
Evo nodded softly, before taking something out from his dimensional storage. "Take this, its a smart.w.a.tch. If you see Sheila and Edward, tell them to come and find me. I only have limited stock, so I can"t provide for everyone."
—
Edward patrolled the streets and arrived back at the munic.i.p.al plaza. He inhaled the intoxicating alcohol fragrance in the air and pa.s.sed by a drunken old man. He noticed that it was Felipe, Black Haven"s vegetable farmer.
A scantily dressed woman wrapped herself on his bulky body.
Edward became surprised and temporarily forgot what he was thinking. He smiled sheepishly and made his presence small as he continued to walk away. Then he heard something weird, something he wished he did not hear.
"Did you really not drink the blue pill?" asked the lady.
"Of course not! Why would I need that when I have a watering-can." Old Felipe laughed as he repeatedly smacked his thigh. He then took a swig of the beer and exclaimed refres.h.i.+ngly.