Hours later, the bus had pulled into the crater. I had to pave the route from the road to the factory for the bus to make the way forward, but with the most healthy and well-fed people helping to cut down trees, the going went very smoothly, and we had the additional boon of a good quantity of lumber to work with in the factory. Jen and Artemis were able to keep a watch out for any incoming monsters, but it seemed that the large group managed to keep them at bay.

From there, Jen and Artemis brought the still unconscious Hank up to a room on the third floor, all of which were now unlocked, and I configured a wall segment to keep the door from opening, trapping him inside for now. A group of three young mothers, who seemed to be part of a poly triad with four children between them. claimed one of the larger rooms to rest in with their kids, all of whom were younger than ten years old. Jen and Artemis set out into the surrounding woods to make sure that there were no other pursuers from Chad.

The remainder of us piled into the library, the only space currently available that was set up for these sort of large scale discussions. It had readily fallen into a meeting room function, much to the amusement of the librarian. He watched quietly from the center of the room, keeping silent despite the occasional worried murmur coming from the crowd of gathered refugees, concerned about the presence of some kind of system ghost in their midst.

There were twenty-five of them all in all, not including myself, the librarian, or the people that weren’t in the room. Twenty-five new people, looking at me expectantly, as if though I had all the answers to all of the questions that they had. Maybe I did, but I certainly didn’t feel any confidence in that idea. I had no particular desire to take charge here, but I was the factory manager, I was the one with the most knowledge and the most expertise about the operations of this place.

Still, all of those faces, filled with concerns large and small, personal and political, I withered beneath them. Expectations piled upon expectations, spreading exponentially through me, like a kudzu consuming my flesh, dragging me down. In their gaunt features and haunted eyes, I saw my own failures both in the past and yet to come, I became aware in that piercing moment of everything I had failed to do, of every possible slip up. My breath quickened, my pulse grew rapidly, the room seemed to spin but I gripped the edge of a table to stay standing.

Voices echoed in my ears, the organized sound dissolving into entropic noise as it flashed through my oversaturated nervous system. My vision narrowed down to points, staring at the front of the desk I was holding onto, and my hands shook. I don’t know how much time passed while I was in this state, but when my senses resolved, I found the medic -whose name I had learned was Marlene- standing at my side, her hand on my upper arm.

I felt the erg that she had sent cycling wandering through my body, bringing my biological response to this sudden stress back to homeostasis. The panic still bounced around in the back of my head, but I was able to find the strength to at least ignore it temporarily. I gave Marlene a nod of thanks and then turned to the gathered twenty-five. Briefly, that panic flared again, but I pushed it down as far as it could go. Not healthy, I know, but necessary.

“Okay,” I said. My voice was surprisingly steady, and the acoustics of the room helped me to reach everyone from my position at its center. “First of all, welcome to the Factory. Things here will be a lot different from how they were under Chad, I can assure you of that.” That brought out some more pleased murmurs and I leaned into my pre-rehearsed lines.

“This meeting is to help establish what we’re going to be working on here together. I want you all to have the freedom to do as you please. This includes the freedom to change your paths to whatever you’d like them to be.” Those murmurs increased in volume, and I allowed them to. I spotted a person with shaved head and large, pretty eyes pull out a notebook and pen and start jotting down information. I made a note to speak to them once this meeting was over.

“But before you make any decisions, I want to go over our resources and our needs. While I fully expect you all to be able to make intelligent decisions, I also want them to be fully educated decisions.” I took in a deep, steadying breath as the group silenced and turned their attention to me. “We can save questions for the end, because I’m sure you all would like to keep this as short as possible so you can get some proper rest.”

“Alright, speaking of rest, we don’t have enough rooms for everyone to have their own, and not enough beds for everyone to have one. First priority will go towards the young, the elderly, and the disabled.” I waited for a moment to see if there were any disagreements, and besides a scoff from a man who looked to be in his eighties, no one voiced anything resembling disagreement. “We have a decent amount of space here, though, and I can always expand the walls with ease, so long as there are sufficient defenses.” I lifted a hand briefly then at some voices rising. “Defenses will be talked about further below.

“We can expand and we can build more places to rest. I don’t have any skills for making things like beds, though, so if someone here has more appropriate abilities for that, it would probably be best if they applied them for this function.” I noted the bald person increasing the rate of their note taking. “That should cover for shelter. For water, we have erg powered taps in every bedroom here, and we should be able to replicate them for other spaces.

“Which brings us to food.” I took in a deep breath, finding the pace of the speech going a little too fast, but at least people were paying attention. It seemed almost like they had some degree in my confidence to cover these topics. “So far I’ve been living off of power bars and the occasional bit of monster meat. This is not tenable for me, let alone everyone living here. I’m planning to open up the cafeteria as soon as possible, but I think we’ll still need raw materials to actually make food.

“So, I’m proposing that we dedicate at least fifty percent of our space to farmland. With some seeds, I can make farm plots, and I suspect we can find at least some useful seeds via scavenging in the surroundings, and I can also make seeds from vegetables which might be easier to find. In the meanwhile, we can continue to supplement our food with hunting. Fighting monsters will also help with anyone who decides to take on a combat path. Beyond that, I’m a bit out of ideas.” I took a moment to scan over the newcomers. “How about we have a meeting tomorrow, around 10am, with everyone who is interested in taking part in food production. I’m not in charge, for sure, but I can act as a facilitator and coordinator until you all feel comfortable taking charge yourself.” There were a few scattered nods at that, enough that I felt comfortable moving to the next subject.

“Next, manufacturing! This I do know a whole lot about, and I would like to take an active role in mentoring and guiding those who pursue manufacturing-related paths. We have a wide array of facilities available, which will help increase the rate of production, and I can build more facilities as needed to match demand, up to the allowance of my ergon condensers, which are mostly limited by the size of the area that we have under control. So, anyone interested in manufacturing, talk to me tomorrow at, let’s say, 2pm?” I noted some more nods from that, and I also noted the note-taker taking notes on who was agreeing. All the more reason to talk with them after this meeting.

“Which brings us to defenses.” I sat down on the edge of a desk, still facing the group. “Defenses can largely be divided into three categories. The first two, I can theoretically handle, but the manufacturing team is more than free to help me.

“First, we have passive defenses. These are things like walls, ditches, barricades, and so on. Pretty simple to build and maintain, effective at keeping us from being attacked by opportunity hunters. Not effective at doing anything besides slowing down the more determined sorts though.

“Second, we have automated defenses. This doesn’t just include things like automated turrets, but also things like traps. I don’t have any schema for any automated defenses yet, but I do have the requisite skills and perks, and one of the advantages of this factory is a research lab where I can turn those potentials into action. I fully intend to use my free time to help design and deploy as many of these as I can. They probably won’t be able to stop a truly top-tier enemy, but if we get attacked by a group, should be enough to keep the less powerful at bay.

“Third, we have manned defenses. These, I can’t really do anything about except making sure that our combat path types are fully armed and armored. The power of combat paths…” I trailed off for a moment, looking to my injured arm, which was still bandaged at the moment. “The power of combat paths would make mounted weaponry likely unnecessary except for paths that use that kind of equipment. We’re better off making personalized equipment for them. But, that also means that we will need people choosing to take on combat paths. I won’t be making that decision for anyone, but I highly recommend that you talk with your friends and family about what you want to do moving forward.”

I briefly thought through my remaining notes for the meeting, before nodding. “If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask now. If I have any future announcement I’d like to make, I’ll post them up in the lobby, so please check in there when you have any free time.” It seemed that everyone was a bit too fried still to have any questions, so people began slowly filtering out, in small groups and the occasional solo, probably jockeying for a bed. For the time being, I’d trust that they could sort that out, and check in on things in the morning.

The older man who had scoffed earlier approached me and offered me a hand to shake, which I did. His grip was firmer than I had expected. “My name’s Francis, I’m a [Carpenter] which I suspect means that I’ll be working on manufacturing.”

I brightened into a smile, a genuine one, if a bit on the tired side. “Oh, a wood-worker will be very nice, especially since there’s so much lumber available.”

“Just want to say,” Francis said, “that you don’t need to worry about me being too frail. I may be old, ain’t no denying that, but this system shit has me feeling forty again.” He smiled wryly before slapping me on my shoulder, on the side of my uninjured arm thankfully. “I’m going to go take a look at what you got going, so I’ll have plenty of ideas for our meeting tomorrow.”

I waved as he departed, but then was startled as the bald note-taker poked me in the side. With a wink, they said, “I couldn’t help but notice you staring at me during the meeting.”

I, at least, had the good graces to blush before I started stammering.