The orders for equipment and seeds were in place, so there wasn’t much else to steal my attention. I had a lot of time to wait before anything interesting happened. That meant I focused on quests and planned for the future.

  While I did not know how much experience I would get from the crops, I knew I wouldn’t be getting any from quests—or nearly none. I simply wouldn’t have the time. In a way, the whole farming idea was a gamble. I knew it could do well from the tests I’d done with Grandpa Milton, but I’d need to execute on those ideas to get the rewards I needed.

  Because quests would not be the focus this time, it meant that I would not purchase any features permanently until I was ready to restart. And speaking of the restarting, Restart II cost 500,000 exp. Thankfully, the ability to retain experience when restarting remained in effect. I was glad I wouldn’t need to repurchase that.

  With the last moments of free time for the foreseeable future, I put another of my plans into motion. Last time, I tried to spread the coming apocalypse through writing. It had been mildly successful—knocking a few years off the introduction to the public’s consciousness. This time around, I had the ultimate superpower: money. Where before I was just one person, I now could get tens of writers doing what I had done.

  I went to the same places I’d been in selling my services to instead get as many people as I could to be on board. It took a few months, but I ended up paying around thirty authors to write for me. Importantly, I directed their stories towards the kind of system I was creating. I didn’t think it would matter too much, but this was the best was for me to affect the end-of-life vision.

  I assumed—hoped, really—that I’d have another one after I restarted. Expecting the rules I was working within to be consistent was the only way I could reliably plan. If things turned out to be arbitrary, I—and the rest of humanity—was totally fucked. That was the kind of thought I had to banish. It was simply incompatible with any vision of the future where anyone survived.

  In late May, the house was reconstructed enough to live in. While the rest of the improvements wouldn’t be done for another couple months, I needed to be on site if I had any chance of planting for the year. And since I couldn’t be there alone, someone had to go with me. Dad volunteered, and Mom didn’t make a fuss. He was handy and the sort of person I needed to support me.

  Moving was a lot less painful than I remembered. Maybe that was because we hired people to move us instead of doing it ourselves. Or maybe it was because most of the furniture I purchased was shipped directly there with no need for it to be moved in the first place.

  The house looked like I remembered it from the outside. The lawn was overgrown and the trees had leaves, but otherwise it was the same. The inside was still a construction site. One of the three bedrooms was finished—which is where we would stay until another opened up for me or Dad to move into. One bathroom was usable, and the kitchen was workable—if still incomplete.

  A worker helped Dad get our stuff into the bedroom. It was a tight fit with two small beds. I claimed the one farthest from the door because it was next to a window I could open for fresh air. The dust from construction couldn’t have been good for my lungs!

  “I still think it’s too early to be here,” Dad said.

  “I don’t have a choice,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t lose out on any more time on the farm.”

  “It’s not safe or healthy,” he sighed. “But I understand.”

  After settling in, Dad took me to the equipment shed. It was made from sheet metal and covered a considerable area. I approached it and unlocked the doors. Inside the large sliding barn doors were the farming tools Gloria had ordered on my behalf. The centerpiece was—of course—the tractor. It was enormous. Next to it was a smaller one—to pull wagons during harvest. The wagons and processing equipment were in the back. Dumped haphazardly on one side were the bags of seed.

  “Wow,” Dad said.

  I couldn’t help but agree with him. It was overwhelming now that I saw it in person.

  “Yeah.”

  “So, what now?”

  “Learn how all of this stuff works,” I said.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  The main reason I’d wanted to come out was so I could learn how to operate everything and be comfortable doing so. I couldn’t drive on the roads, which meant Dad needed to know how to drive the tractors, too.

  The first order of business was to read the manuals. They were terribly dry. After getting through half of the first one, I gave up and decided to figure things out as I went. I had a little over a month before I would need to plant the seeds if I was going to have a fall harvest. That—I felt—was enough time to learn the ropes the hard way. The manual would be a good reference, but it wasn’t the best way to learn. No, the best way to learn was by doing.

  Simply turning it on was a pain in the ass. There was an entire checklist to go through first. But we soldiered on. Together, Dad and I were able to figure out how to get it started. That’s when I hit my next hurdle: driving. It had been around sixteen years since I last drove. I was incredibly rusty. Thankfully, the tractor was a slow beast. That gave me a lot of time and room for error before it would be catastrophic.

  Dad sat with me in the tractor’s cab. I was on a booster seat and used the secondary controls to make it move. There were the usual pedals, but there was a way to set it up to be used by hand—intended for farmers with disabilities. Well, my short stature prevented me from reaching the pedals. I figured that was close enough to a disability that I’d eventually grow out of.

  The alternate controls had me freaked out while driving the tractor. It was overwhelming to keep all the different functions, levers, and buttons straight in my head while also trying to keep the tractor going in the direction I wanted. I was glad no one was watching from the outside. If they were, it would have looked like a drunk trying to walk home from the pub!

  “Whoa there!” Dad called out while I was fumbling for one of the control levers.

  I looked up and pulled the wheel hard to the right to avoid a large rock in front of me. My heart raced, and I began sweating.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Keep your eyes in front of you.”

  For the rest of the day, I took the tractor up and down the field. I wasn’t doing any work towards preparing the fields, but I was getting more sure of myself with the machine. Dad hopped off around lunch to try out the smaller one while I kept practicing. By the end of the day, I wasn’t an expert. I also wasn’t flailing about, either.

  I parked the tractor in the equipment shed and replenished the fuel. Then Dad and I returned to the house for dinner. It was nothing special—soup from a can—but it was filling.

  “You’re getting better with the machine,” he commented. “At least no more close calls with rocks or trees!”

  He laughed.

  “Ugh,” I complained. “Don’t remind me. That was embarrassing!”

  “We all go through that,” he said, slapping me on the back.

  “Well, hopefully not anything as crazy as that next time. I don’t think I can handle any more excitement like that!”

  That made him laugh even harder.

  “Kid, that’s just how things are sometimes. Not much you can do about it.”

  “Doh. Won’t stop me from complaining about it, though.”

  “That’s the spirit!”

  I snorted and rolled my eyes.

  “So, more practice tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Nah,” I shook my head. “I’ve got to get something done. I feel like I have enough of an understanding of how to drive the tractor now. It’s time to be a farmer.”

  “Sure.”

  We chatted before retiring to the bedroom.

  Sleep came slowly. It was a new place I didn’t feel fully comfortable in yet. The dust and smells in the air didn’t help much—though cracking the window next to my bed worked some. I was thankful Dad wasn’t a snorer. Still, it was awkward sleeping in the same room after so many lifetimes.

  The next morning, I awoke to the sounds of the construction crew getting an early start to the day. We had breakfast, then drove out to the equipment shed. He helped me attach the tiller to the back of the tractor. It had several long blades to cut deep into the ground and turn it over. I read that I would have to let the soil dry some before I planted, so mixing it up and getting it into clean rows was my priority.

  Dad stood by the doors so I wouldn’t bump into them on the way out. There wasn’t much clearance with the tiller attached, so I appreciated it. Once out, I turned the tractor around and drove to the end of the nearest field. That was partly so that if I had any issues, Dad would be on hand to help, and partly because I didn’t want to travel too far.

  I turned the tractor so that it aligned with the edge of the field. I looked around at the controls before finding the one to lower the tiller into the ground. Then I dragged it along the edge of the field. When I reached the other side, I pulled the tiller from the ground and turned the tractor around. Then it was back towards the start.

  I went up and down that field for what felt like an eternity—but it was closer to two hours. I parked it by the building and hopped out for a quick break.

  “I watched you out there,” Dad told me. “You were pretty wonky in the beginning, but it looks like you figured it out in the end.”

  “Thanks,” I said, before taking a long drink of water from a bottle.

  “So what’s next?”

  “The next field?”

  “I see. Do you need me to watch you, or do you think you have it now?”

  “I’ve got it. I have my phone charged and with me. I’ll call you if I need anything, ok?”

  “Sure. I’ll leave lunch for you inside. Call me when you’re done for the day?”

  I nodded.

  I waved goodbye to Dad. Then it was time for the rest of the fields. Well, as many as I had time for during the day. I hopped in the tractor’s cab and trundled towards the next field.

  Tilling the second field went more smoothly than the first. Up and down, back and forth. Even if I was getting better at it, the entire process was boring. I mean, just sitting in one place while trying to keep the machine going in the same direction wasn’t a hard task. It took some focus—which was becoming less and less now that I had the hang of it—but just sitting was the worst. I promised myself to at least put some music or books on in the background while I did the work next time.

  After stopping for lunch—a sandwich with iced tea—I went back out and did two more fields. The four for the day was barely a dent in the total number I owned. Tilling was going to take a few weeks before I could move on to planting. And to plant, I would need to decide which field would get which crop. That meant more reading and research—and possibly some soil testing as well!