Chapter 339: A Message From Council

The next morning started with a message to the city from the new City Council.

[ Good morning, people of Marimgar. This message comes to with the greatest of pleasure on such a fine morning.

We would like to officially greet you as the city council of Marimgar City, and inform you that there will be no policy changes at this time. Not because we don’t want to make any, but because the thing that Marimgar needs most right now is stability.

The Police force is being founded as I write this message, after an influx of requests from capable and qualified members of the city. However, reviewing them all will take time, and the interview process will begin today, with the first officers being in uniform tomorrow morning.

In recognition of the abundant crops that Marimgar’s hard work has produced, and the increase in worker productivity, base rations have been awarded one extra day this month.

Minimum rations will be guaranteed, and in the future, worker wages will be increased, should productivity hold.

There is no waste in Marimgar.

As such, we would like to remind you that those not completing work assignments, and not reporting to the medical facilities for treatment may require mental health intervention. Depression and anxiety are silent killers, don’t let it happen to those around you.

If you are too shy to do a wellness check yourself, please ask either a member of the police, the staff of the Arks, or a member of the community to assist.

Don’t let us lose anyone to themselves.

Thank you all for what you have done for Marimgar, and we look forward to many more great days.

Yara Rossi, Health and Wellness Chairman, Marimgar City Council]

The message made many of the heroes laugh when they got to the end. Yara, the most powerful healer in the city, was the health and wellness chairman? Yes, that made absolute sense.

It was so logical that they weren’t sure how to process it.

What was next, would they find out that Sergeant Sanchez was the Minister of Defence?

He was.

Not because he had requested the role, but because none of the Ark Commanders wanted the job, so when it was brought up they all decided to throw him under the bus.

There was a full and official list of members on the app, but none of the names surprised anyone. Yara, Sanchez, Vinnie, Niall, Alexei, Esmeralda, Beth the tinker, Bert, Kruger and then Commander Kovalev the rest of the Ark Commanders as district representatives for the lower city.

That was a job they were already doing, so everyone knew where to go, and it was logically organized by what Ark was parked closest to the district, so there was no confusion.

That gave everyone a clear list of who they could go to for problems, though the lower city would still be going to the Arks for most things, other than policing issues. However, many of their new police were already quite familiar with the Ark staff, as they had been working together for some time.

But the real genius of the message was toward the end.

The wellness checks for those not going out and working would not only make people notice who was slacking, and who was trying to mooch off others, but it would also help foster a sense of community.

At least, that was the goal.

In the short term, what it did was to start fights in families that had been demanding an ever-increasing share of what their system using members had been taking home. The moment that it came up in conversation that their demands might be based in depression due to their lack of powers, they immediately got defensive.

But in getting defensive, they only proved that there was no good reason for them to demand that much, other than "Filial Piety", which they were obviously overstepping.

To those with solid family relations, it was a night of pure, unfiltered tea spilling. All the dark and dirty secrets of the neighbours came out, shouted in living rooms and on balconies all around the city.

The walls of the apartments were concrete, but even then, you would still hear that sort of heated argument, especially as everyone in the lower city kept windows open for ventilation.

By the next day, there was no doubt who were the greedy ones, who treated their family like money machines, and which families had actually managed to obtain some sort of reasonable balance.

Sure, there were still some pushovers. But quiet encouragement from the gossip mill was leading most of them to confront their relatives.

That was good enough for Kalli.

She needed a city full of survivors. People who could take care of themselves, and who would work to make sure that they got what they needed. Calling out those who didn’t pull their weight was better than letting the issue fester and having to throw them out later.

Not that living outside the city was all that bad these days.

Her morning was spent building farmhouses similar to the one by the dungeon, but rearranged for a family, instead of as a bunk house. They had all the tech and magical luxuries, a single laser turret atop the roof, and a mass of solar panels, so that they didn’t have to put much mana into keeping the place running.

They could save all that energy for working the fields.

She had managed to find a good spot for fifty houses outside the city, well spaced for the families to work the land, along with all the labourers who came from the lower city during harvest.

And that was a frequent thing, with the rate that the tuber plants and the modified corn they had planted were growing.

If Kalli’s guess was right, they would be harvesting corn once a month from the fields, and twice as often from the greenhouses, as the greenhouse corn was eaten fresh, instead of waiting for the seeds to ripen and harden to grind them to flour or coarse meal for making grits.

Ironically, farming was becoming more labour-intensive as the mana level grew, simply because the crops were growing faster.