This Game Is Too Realistic-Chapter 532.3: My Debt Is The Scythe Hanging Over Your Neck
Aaron shook his head. "No... They’re looking to produce animal feed. Corn prices have dropped sharply in the New Alliance, and a lot of factories are pivoting in that direction. Honestly, I think there’s little profit left in nutrient paste. Maybe we should switch too."
Vega sighed, "It’s not that simple."
As long as he continued doing business in Boulder Town and traded in silver coin priced markets, there was no avoiding the scythe hanging over his head.
The first blade was tariffs, the second was exchange rates. Importing raw materials was one cut, and exporting finished goods was another.
It had nothing to do with what they produced, unless they made something the New Alliance absolutely couldn’t, there was no escaping the trap.
At least not for the owner of a mere trading company. Unless the entire structure of Boulder Town united to pressure the New Alliance, they would never solve his problem.
For a moment, Vega had an eerie illusion. It wasn’t an invisible hand stealing his profits. Rather, it was that everyone in the city had already been thrown into the same trap.
The terrifying thought flashed through his mind, followed by a chill that sank deep into his bones. The icy feeling down his neck made Vega shiver involuntarily. He took two hard drags of his cigarette and angrily flicked the unfinished butt out the window.
“Fuck! This is really shit luck...”
Aaron watched him silently. “If we don’t sell the equipment, the only option left is to borrow more from Boulder Town Bank.”
“Sell it! Why not? What’s the point of producing junk no one’s buying?”
Vega pulled out another cigarette, took a deep drag, and suddenly had an idea. He turned to Aaron and said quickly, “Wait, I’ve got it! The New Alliance is issuing bonds... We’ll issue them too!”
Aaron froze for a second and asked hesitantly, “But we... Who would buy them?”
Who would buy bonds issued by a single factory?
They couldn’t very well ask Mr. Sid to buy them, that would be suicide.
“Isn’t it payday soon?” Vega chuckled, proud of his own cleverness. “Go find the finance department. Tell them to prepare the debt slips, no, call them ‘bonds’, and distribute them to those poor bastards. Once times improve, I’ll pay them back with principal and interest!”
Aaron stared at his boss. “But... Will that really work?”
Vega’s company had over 4,000 employees, with an average daily wage of 4 chips. Even if each of them gave up 120 chips in wages and bonuses, that would only amount to 480,000 chips. It was barely worth calculating.
They were still short by at least three zeroes.
“I’ve got no choice,” Vega said slowly. “Every chip counts, we at least have to cover our procurement costs. External suppliers only want cash, and we’ve got to pay them first.”
He paused, then added, “As for Mr. Sid’s 500 million... That’s a separate account. We’ll get another loan from the bank.”
Using the 500 million chips’ worth of bonds he borrowed from Sid as collateral, Vega planned to secure a 500 million chip loan from Boulder Town Bank to fund production. In reality, he would use 490 million to pay Sid. That left him with a net surplus of 10 million on paper.
Unlike the paper gains from before, that was real cash in hand. And the interest from the bonds would be just enough to cover the bank loan interest.
It sounded like a tangled mess, but Vega believed President Malvern would understand the bigger picture. There was no way the bank would refuse him the loan.
Boulder Town Bank was distributing the bonds themselves, surely, they wouldn’t turn around and disown them?
Really, it was simple.
No money? Just borrow it.
You borrow, and I borrow... Everyone borrows money! If you’re a piece of shit, I’ll be one too!
Having figured everything out, Vega suddenly felt light as air, his whole body relaxed and elated. He even let out a laugh.
Of course the equipment would be sold. It was his, after all. He could do whatever he wanted with it.
With so many ways to get rich immediately, why bother with the most thankless, backbreaking labor?
Sell the factory and become a market maker, wasn’t that much better? The lighter their assets, the faster they moved.
The only reason Sid couldn’t control Liszt was that the cunning bastard refused to relocate his factory into the city.
But Vega was no fool. As he watched Aaron walking out the door, a thought filled his mind, and he quickly called out. “Wait!”
Aaron stopped. “Do you have another instruction, sir?”
Vega tossed his cigarette butt out the window, smiled, and walked over to pat him on the shoulder.
“I almost forgot to mention, your salary is still being paid. That goes for your colleagues too, and the security team. Don’t worry, as long as you follow me, I won’t let capable people suffer.”
Aaron nodded.
He hadn’t even asked about it. After all, wasn’t that how it was supposed to be?
...
The shift-change bell finally rang.
After handing off their work to the younger kids, the day shift workers lined up to collect last month’s wages from Security Chief Alec.
At first, Spielberg was confused. Why had the moon risen in the west today? The squad captain himself had shown up to distribute pay, and brought a gang of shady-looking thugs with him.
Only after receiving a slip of paper from Alec did Spielberg realize what was happening.
Damn, these merchants are slick!
Everyone looked exhausted. Some wanted to complain, but no one dared speak up. A few accepted the bonds without protest, perhaps out of trust in the boss.
Spielberg also quietly took his ‘bond’ and comforted himself. Their company was big, surely they wouldn’t default and run off.
Still... life was getting weirder by the day. If their pay that day came in IOUs, what would next month bring? IOUs for IOUs?
A ragged group of workers shuffled out of the factory.
Not far away, Kent suddenly crouched down. Spielberg thought he had found money, but instead, Kent triumphantly raised a cigarette butt in the air and stuffed it in his pocket.
“Lucky! Two cigarette butts today!”
The short guy beside him glanced enviously at the stub and smacked his lips. “Bet it dropped from Mr. Vega’s office. Only a big shot like him would waste that.”
They were indeed not far from that very office.
Spielberg sighed and muttered, “Lucky? The weather’s getting colder. It might even snow soon.”
Kent gave him a sideways look. “So?”
“So... We need to wear warmer clothes.”
“Then go wear them! You need instructions to dress yourself now?” Kent’s glare, with the cigarette butt hanging from his mouth, made him look just like Security Chief Alec when he hadn’t eaten for days.
“Yeah...” Spielberg shrank away, not wanting to ruin the man’s good mood, but his face was still filled with gloom. Half of it was the approaching cold, half, the coldness of their situation.
The boss paid them, but in debt slips. He didn’t know if he could use it to buy dinner. He didn’t know if Vega would honor it if he quit.
Just two days ago, the esteemed Mr. House had broadcast another ‘victory’ for Boulder Town. The brilliant President Malvern had forced the New Alliance’s northern scrapheads to concede and allow Boulder Town to purchase their bonds.
This time, Mr. House went on at length explaining the meaning of it all, generously enlightening poor, uneducated fools like them.
But Spielberg didn’t feel enlightened at all.
After all, even if the bonds were amazing, he couldn’t afford them. Meanwhile, his boss was forcing him to buy something else, the Good Taste Food Processing Factory Worker Bond With a name that long, it had to be bad.
And really, were New Alliance bonds even that good?
Spielberg couldn’t understand, especially not why his already-rich bosses needed to borrow from poor men like him.
Back in his room which walls wasn’t even filled in, filled with a hint of resentment, Spielberg sat at the table, struck a broken match to light the candle his coworkers had pooled money for, and picked up the pen they had lent him.
He began scribbling across a torn piece of old newspaper.
[... The day Bore got his black card, he drank too much. He beat the hell out of his old boss, the rat-faced Stephan, who used to bully him. Then he looked at Stephan’s beautiful wife and daughter, and unbuckled his belt...]
[Of course, that was just to whip Stephan in front of them and humiliate him. Bore was like a beast from the jungle. He was an awakener and he was strong and unstoppable. No one could stop him.]
There wasn’t much logic to it. But nobody cared about that kind of thing.
Yet, halfway through, Spielberg frowned and crossed out the second half, rewriting it more thoughtfully.
[... But Bore knew deep down that beating Stephan wouldn’t fix anything. Not even pissing on him would. Killing one rat only added another corpse to the street, attracting more flies. Boulder Town would remain the same. Nothing would change. Only Bore would be the one cast out of the walls, forced to find a new place to unleash his rage.]
[So he sought out the unemployed editor Bill, the child laborer Rudy who had been humiliated by Stephan, and the female worker Cassie, who had been bullied by both the security chief and the shareholders...]
[He told them, “One person alone can’t beat a Deathclaw. But if we’re united, not even the Queen of Deathclaws can stand against us! We can learn from the New Alliance, we can unite!]
[One person is weak. But if we stand together... what’s there to fear from Stephan? Or any Stephans?!]
[To hell with the merchants and nobles!]
[Bore the Awakener: A Slum Boy Who Found a Vial of Awakening Elixir and Took Down an Exoframe in the Final Battle.]
The title was long. It could’ve been longer, but he had run out of space at the top.
Spielberg only had enough money to handwrite two copies. One he sent to the Survivor’s Daily in the New Alliance, along with a humble note asking if the original author could review it, if they were still around. If they were willing to publish it, maybe they could pay him a little...
He didn’t need much. All he needed was enough to buy some basic supplies.
The second copy he kept for himself.
He would read it out loud to the readers of Worker’s Times, his fellow union workers.
As he thought about the wild, absurd story he had just written and the looks his comrades would give him the next day, Spielberg felt his cheeks burn.
But in his heart... A warm feeling bloomed.
