Chapter 579: Ripples
The Oracles weren’t wrong about the lack of sudden disasters. All the disasters that followed were entirely predictable and yet impossible to fully avoid all the same.
Workharder and Things-Things did their best to keep trains working and to repair the power distribution through the Empire.
Both of them worked as hard as any of their subordinates, and following Things-Things’ schedule, four days later, the power was cautiously put online again.
The bees cheered as they saw beams of projectors light their path, and factories could return to work again! But... Many machines in the Central Region were still offline because of the ash.
And on the same day when I got to enjoy electrical lights in my office, Amby came with news about more problems.
Or, more precisely, pointed my attention to them. She was already near at the time, lounging next to me on a couch to deal with paperwork in comfort. Same as I was.
"Necty, this is something you should look at," she said, reaching out to pass me a stack of reports. "Although the trains were working more slowly lately, and we even had some food spoil because the train that carried it was delayed, there are still trains that can’t start a journey to their destination because they don’t have the items they were supposed to carry."
"Hm?"
I set aside the report I was reading on a small table and took the one offered to me. My gaze breezed over the crooked letters... Yeah, that was Workharder’s handwriting.
"We should invent the printing press soon. And a typewriter," I muttered. As I read farther and farther, all my earlier relaxation left me. I had to sit straighter and grip the paper tighter.
Hive Supremo and the Central Region were an industrial centre of the Bee Empire. Although some productions—like steel smelting—were moved away from the region by now, many others remained.
There were thousands of forges, workshops and factories in the region, producing all sorts of goods for hundreds of sub-hives around the Bee Empire.
However, all this production had suffered a massive hit recently thanks to the combination of a power outage, breakage of the industrial equipment caused by the quake, supply train delays and moving workers to other, more high-priority tasks.
Until now, the Central Region relied on its existing stores of goods to supply the demand from other regions, but those were running alarmingly dry.
Worse, the production capabilities in other regions were affected, too! Even if the areas weren’t affected by the quake, they were still probably affected by a power outage.
This meant that the situation was even less stable.
"Damn, I see what you mean, Amby. After all these years, I can’t believe that we are going to run out of paper! We were producing more of it than any paper wasp, even with our antiquated methods!"
There were massive areas of land left just for the sake of drying paper under the hot tropical sun. But ironically, they were now all in a permanent shade of the ash clouds.
The paper-makers went to their reserve option—drying the paper on warm coals. But it was slower, and as things showed, not sustainable long-term.
I could understand why Workharder didn’t come to me in panic about it, though. This wasn’t the end of the world—bees could reuse old paper or use wax tablets. There were much more important problems.
But the paper shortage was indicative of other shortages that were going to happen soon. Workharder didn’t think about it, judging by what was written in her reports, but I could see it from the data she dutifully put on the deficit paper.
"It would be dangerous for us to run out of bullets. No matter how many enemies our soldiers kill, more of them always come from somewhere, and our patrols use rifles a lot," Amby pointed out. "Especially since their supplies are still needed in the Ashida continent, alongside details they don’t yet have factories to produce..."
Ah, yes. The continent that felt blissfully far away from the Central Region’s problems—except it wasn’t.
Under Malevolence’s rule, bees were building runways for planes, hoping to get more supplies from the Bee Empire so they could build their own power plants and conquer the rest of the continent. I couldn’t just abandon them, even if they were tough and would undoubtedly survive anyway.
"We might also run short on medical supplies like needles," I pointed out. "Medicines, bullets, even clothing! ESPECIALLY clothing. We fixed half of the problems that caused shortages in the first place, but all these things won’t reappear in our warehouses immediately, anyway..."
The power outages were fixed, and a part of the workers will be able to return to their factories. But a delay was a delay, and machinery was still breaking too often because of the weather, and the trains weren’t going on time yet.
All of these problems would go away with time, but I knew that goods shortages would cause more problems down the road. It was a never-ending chain. If we didn’t try to at least mitigate the shortages now, they would grow worse later.
"That’s right," Amby replied. "And although there are sub-hives that have extras in their warehouses, it would take a long time to deliver items from there to here and then to the sub-hives that need them. Not to mention finding which places have the excesses in the first place."
"So can we do anything at all, Amby?" I wondered, feeling like the answer was...
"I... I hoped you would come up with something," she admitted, lowering her face. "Otherwise, we would just have to face the consequences."
I reached out and took Amby’s hand.
"Sadly, I think that this is really our only option. With some luck, the shortages will be brief and the chain effect won’t cause too many new shortages or disasters. Maybe even this damned ash cloud will go away within my fucking lifetime."
A man could hope, right?