Over the next two weeks, I completed the prep work on all the fields. Getting Dad to bring the tractor down the road for the smaller properties was a colossal pain. The tractor was slow—even with the higher road gear—and so finishing those fields took a lot longer than the bigger property had.

  During that time, I did my research into planting. I had the attachment for the tractor, but I wasn’t sure quite how to use it. That’s when I discovered the tractor’s GPS capabilities. It was a rabbit hole to be sure, but a necessary one. I messed around with the tractor to set it up—which took most of a day before I felt comfortable. It worked by bounding the field with GPS coordinates plugged into a map or by driving to where the edge of the field lay. Then I could designate the width of the rows and the tractor would do the math for me.

  The first day, I seeded three fields with carrots. The GPS guidance made my life even easier—if more boring. Dad and I found a portable radio at a thrift store, which I could use for tunes. Though I disliked country music with a passion, it was still better than silence. A more modern alternative with internet access was high on my list of things to get.

  The next morning, Dad and I returned to the field to continue seeding. As we turned off the main road, my heart sank. There was a mess of tire tracks all over the field, originating from the road that marked the property’s edge.

  “Dad,” I said. “Look at the field.”

  Dad slowed and turned his head.

  “Oh, no!”

  My heart raced and my mind churned. Why had someone done that? Was it stupid school kids racing or something more sinister? I hoped the cameras had caught something.

  “Let’s check the cameras,” I told him when the truck pulled to a stop.

  I ran out of the truck. The doors to the equipment shed looked the same as I had left them the previous night. I unlocked them. The room that held the monitors for the cameras and the files for the past month was in the rear. I raced back to it, being careful not to fall over the mess of stuff between me and my destination.

  I plopped down on a chair in the room and began going over the recordings. There were two cameras pointed toward the destruction. I put both up on the screen and watched for anything. Back and back I went until just before midnight the previous day. I saw a vehicle zooming around—the playback was on a fast speed. I rewound until just when the incident started.

  From off-screen, a truck came driving over the field. I couldn’t see much other than the headlights. The darkness sapped any chance I had to notice what color it was. I could tell the shape, but that was really it. The truck drove around for about fifteen minutes before it sped off the way it had come.

  “What do you think?” I asked Dad after he had seen the recordings.

  “I think you should report it to the police.”

  “You mean you should.”

  He looked at me quizzically.

  “Do you think they’ll take a statement from me and not just blow it off?” I clarified.

  “True. So, uh, what will you do while I talk to them?”

  “I’ve got more fields to plant. This one’s a writeoff, I guess.”

  Then I had an idea.

  “This is the second time this has happened, right?”

  Dad nodded.

  “Well, I’m thinking of calling the construction crew back out to put up a fence. One that looks like a normal fence but with absolutely fuck up a repeat offender. Might have to set it back from the road a bit so as not to be a hazard or whatever.”

  “That could work,” he laughed. “Well, I’ll go make the call. I’ll see you later?”

  “You know it.”

  I waved and hopped into the tractor. I backed the tractor out and drove it to the next field to plant. This time, I was planting beets. The process was the same as with the carrots. Only the parameters I had to punch into the tractor’s guidance system had changed. I finished two fields before returning to the shed for lunch.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Dad was gone, but he left me a note with my sandwich letting me know the police had come and taken copies of the footage for their report. I didn’t exactly trust the police to do their jobs. I mean, with all the stories of how they bungle even the simplest things, I had little hope that they’d apprehend a suspect—let alone the right person.

  My plan with the fence was a better option should whoever was doing this return. I emailed the crew before I went back to planting. At the end of the day, I checked my email and saw they were happy to help. I let them know what I wanted, and that it was going to be a bit of a rush job, but that I would pay extra for it. I would not play around!

  Planting the crops took about as long as preparing the fields had. A little less thanks to the GPS guidance and the wider attachment. In that time, the crew upgraded the fence to handle any errant trucks.

  Because of how long it took to plant, the first fields had already sprouted. The field that had been driven on wasn’t a complete loss. Most of the seeds in the driven-over-area had sprouted, but they were no longer in neat rows. There were large gaps and clusters everywhere. I hoped I could harvest them, even if I had to do those sections by hand.

  The rains were a blessing and a curse. It turned everything to mud, but it also ensured all the plants were watered. I had neglected to consider how I was going to water my crops—oops! While I sat inside, I attempted to source the equipment I needed. It was something I had to have in a short time, which meant talking to a bunch of suppliers who either had them—but it’d be awhile—or didn’t have any at all. I ordered what I could get that would arrive as soon as possible. I hoped I hadn’t messed up too badly and that the rains would continue to bail me out.

  My luck held. At least, the luck around keeping the crops watered. I got the pipes and other stuff in after a couple of weeks. It wasn’t too hard to install—though I needed Dad’s help with them. The problems I had were of the pest and weed variety. As with the watering, I had forgotten about dealing with weeds and pests. Queue yet another few hours on hold to get the amount of pesticides and herbicides I needed.

  Every field I sprayed was one where I had to remove the watering equipment first. Only then could I spray. The chemicals had to be given time to work before I could reinstall the sprinklers and keep the plants from dying in the summer heat.

  Juggling the watering, the weeds, and the pests was how I spent the next few months. By late September, it was finally time to harvest everything I’d been working on. Gloria had been wonderful. She got me contracts for the produce so I could focus on the harvest.

  On harvest day, the trucks for the processing plant came one after the other. Dad pulled the trailers next to me as I used the tractor to pull up the carrots, beets, and other vegetables. I sat in the tractor’s cab cackling like I was possessed. Experience dinged near continuously with each pass across a field. I lamented when I had to stop for Dad to get another trailer. The experience was that good!

  After a week of harvesting, the fields were finally empty. All told, I had gained a little more than a million experience. A million! Last time, I had been lucky to get over a tenth of that in a year—and that took a lot more work. This was easy money by comparison. Sure, I did some quests now and then still, but only if they wouldn’t get in my way while I worked.

  For as much as I felt elated, I also felt lonely. Sure, Dad was around to hang with after a hard day at work. But I didn’t feel the same connection as I once had. The fakeness of everything impeded me living in the moment. The experience was good, and that was the only thing keeping me going.

  Though the harvest was completed for the year, I still had some things to do. The first was to plant a winter crop. It wasn’t something I would harvest, but it would help return some of the nitrogen back to the soil for next year. It was a way to reduce the amount of fertilizer I would need, as well as to prevent the soil from blowing away in the wind. I chose a variety of winter wheat and spent two weeks sowing it.

  The second thing I needed to do was long overdue maintenance to the tractor and the rest of the equipment. The problem was, I did not know how to do that. I knew it needed to be done—as even though everything was new, that only gave a short grace period before maintenance was needed. That left me with a conundrum. How was I going to learn how to fix everything?

  “Hey Dad, know anything about how to fix the tractor?” I asked one evening.

  “I could probably do some,” he said. “Why?”

  “Well, it’s been a full season, so it’s time to do whatever yearly stuff I’ve got to do. I’m a bit lost, really.”

  “Hmm… maybe you could ask my brother—your Uncle Ben. He’s always had a knack for mechanical things. He could teach you.”

  “That sounds like a great idea! Well, a decent idea. There are no ladies here for him to proclaim as the one!”

  Dad doubled over in laughter.

  “That’s him alright!”

  “I’ll give him a call tomorrow and see if he’ll be up to it.” He said after calming down. “You may have to pay him, though.”

  “Not a problem. I was planning on it. I’ve got plenty of money, so that isn’t the issue.”

  “How well did the crops sell?” he wondered.

  “Not great, not terrible. I lost a little on the endeavor, but that was kind of to be expected. I’m not doing this for the money, after all.”

  He nodded.

  The next day, Dad let me know that Uncle Ben had agreed to it. That meant I needed another contract—just in case. I let Al know.

  While I waited for Uncle Ben to come, I worked on the smaller projects that had been put away while I had been busy. That meant checking in with the writers to see how their efforts were doing. A couple had dropped out—maybe because of a lack of interest or a lack of money, I couldn’t say. The rest had persevered. They gave me a good product that I could throw online for free to garner interest. Well, Gloria did the posting for me.

  The result of all that money spent was a noticeable uptick in the amount of stories—excluding the ones I’d funded—around the idea of a system apocalypse. That was good news, as far as I was concerned. It was exactly the reaction I had been hoping for. I funded a new round of stories with the same themes but unique twists. The genre needed to grow—and quickly.