Chapter 1386 (2/2)

So the companies watched the way that Tatiana and Naffur, as the leaders of the Order Ducis and the Kharon government, spent their money and tried to extrapolate what that meant for the future of the Wandering City. Needless to say, it was not an efficient exercise and left most of the companies frustrated. Especially due to the sudden need for Kharon to head toward the borderlands recently. The unpredictability was finally beginning to wear on the people who had taken up residence in Kharon.

The people of Kharon knew the reason Randidly had brought them to the new areas. They understood their duty. But they also wished it didn’t feel like they were being ignored.

Essentially, the companies wanted more control over their own fates. Which was a tricky issue. In the end, Randidly sat crosslegged outside of his hut for almost two hours and considered what to do. Because he didn’t want to give up the freedom of Kharon’s movements. Yet he definitely could understand how the non-Order Ducis people wanted some additional predictability.

Randidly pressed his eyes closed. There isn’t an ideal solution… but perhaps adding some perceived control will help. Just feeling like there is a Path forward… even if the Path is long, seeing the steps they need to take has meaning.

So, despite being very aware that he had basically no training to be doing this, Randidly Ghosthound began designing a government. But as he did so, he worried less about the functional problems of how this government will function and more about how it would fit into the image of Kharon.

That image Randidly had been so careful to cultivate was the source of his city’s strength. Not any pretty words or designations as the home of the Order Ducis, the Order that policed the other Orders. Not being the home of the most powerful man in the world. But the spirit of the people that lived there. The government that Randidly began to create wouldn’t be successful because it was a perfect system, but because the people using it wanted to work.

So Randidly envisioned a council with five seats. Two would go to the leader of the Kharon city government and the Order Ducis respectively, but the other three would be determined semi-randomly. Three random pairs of names would be drawn from the list of every tax-paying adult who was registered with the Kharon government as a citizen. One person from each of those pairs would be chosen to be on the council.

Each individual selected to be in the pairs could nominate another to take their place on the council, but only before the decision between the two people was made. Such a nomination would have to be accepted; it could be rejected if someone wasn’t interested. For the first group, Randidly would choose one person from each of the pairs, but after that, the choice between the pairs would be made by the non-chosen individuals from the prior term’s pairings.

Randidly knew there had to be protections for the careers and livelihoods of the randomly chosen representatives, but he wasn’t sure where to begin. In this case, Randidly hoped Tatiana would be willing to take care of the details. What he wanted was not for established parties to emerge, but for organizations to satisfy themselves with letting the randomly chosen representatives from their midst being selected.

Probably a foolish dream, but Randidly hoped that the people who made Kharon’s decisions in the future would be those acting out of a sense of public duty, not due to a hunger for personal power or control.

Terms would be two months long. And each term would focus on three things. So that the businesses would be able to relax somewhat, two of those things would be visits to designated locations on Earth. Although Kharon would be free to wander most of the time, it would return at least once a month to trade with various settlements determined by the new governing body. The council would choose where those visits would occur.

The other task before the council was the grand mandate to engage in a singular ‘betterment project’ to improve the situation of Kharon itself. It was a general ask, but he hoped that was all he would need to ask. Randidly thought about expanding the new council’s responsibilities, but he figured those three things were enough for a two month period.

Of course, in addition to the government, what Kharon needed was space. So Randidly planned on making two other giant floating islands along with Kharon Academy. One would be middle-income housing and the other would be fertile fields, to try and alleviate some of the upward pressure on the land values inside the actual city limits of Kharon.

Making a housing sector would take some of the allure of becoming an instructor for Kharon Academy, but Randidly figured that the difference in quality would still make the Academy more of a draw. For the housing sector, he imagined mostly condos and apartment buildings. Perhaps also some specialty housing for the larger Ogres...

Relatively satisfied by his attempts to address the problems Tatiana brought to his attention, Randidly allowed himself to turn his attention back to the Kharon Academy project. Specifically, to the various images present in the labyrinth.

Not that Randidly planned to soak the whole area in his images, but it did occur to him that he could have others participate in the building of the labyrinth’s levels to create their own spin on what he had planned. Plus, Randidly was already running dry on ideas as he started designing the fourth floor of the labyrinth, which Randidly planned on being the largest of the nine. It would be the springboard to further exploration and the place where most children could cease their explorations.

Beyond that fourth however…

Humming to himself, Randidly didn’t even realize that someone had approached his hut until he heard a tentative knock on the door. His Grim Intuition belatedly spread outward and identified Mareen standing outside of his wooden shack.

After finishing the Aether diagram Randidly was currently working on, he went to the door. He tilted his head to the side when she immediately bowed. Randidly could sense her nervousness. He didn’t even need to sense her image; she was as stiff and ungainly as a puppet. “Are you here to talk about my house…?”

“What? Oh no.” Mareen blinked. Then she looked behind Randidly through the open door to the shack. Her eyes went across the papers hanging from the wall. She even blinked rapidly as the veritable sea of paper came within her purview. “Oh! Have you been working on the plans for your house?”

Randidly winced and stepped to the side. Again, he had lost track of time while working. A break might be a good change of pace, even if the work had been relatively fulfilling. Too much of even a good thing would kill you. “No, I honestly have not. This is… for something else. But come on in. If not for plans to build the house, what are you doing here?”

After walking into the shack, Mareen spun around. Then she pressed her lips together. “I… I know it’s unusual, but I thought…. Well, I’d like to ask for your blessing. I plan to ask Naffur to marry me.”

Randidly rubbed his chin. Then his brain registered what Mareen had said. “...Huh?”