Evolutionary » Places

         Kaya held back a wince at the scraping sound the chair made. It was hell on her ears, but she had schooled herself to keep her reactions down. Normal people may dislike the noise, but they weren't typically pained by it. Kaya pulled up her own chair, making considerably less noise and sat herself across from him.

She held out her hand saying, "My name's Kaya. It's very nice to meet you Dr. Neurus, I've read your work, and I'm very interested in the advancing mutations to the human genome."

         The scraping of the chair made Emilien jump somewhat and her wings spread slightly out to the sides. The sound of anything with a sharp ring or something else like as bad of dog whistles often cause her pain, like the sound of this chair. She turned to see what was going on, being able to hear perfectly from where she was and was only really there was listen, not speak.

She noticed someone down in the front, someone who had noticed her. She looked to her left and then to her right, confused. 'she probably thinks I look still look human. I blow my cover in front of these people, the cops may come shooting.' she thought to herself as she waved back to her in a 'no thank you' manner and sank back down out of sight.

The bat could feel herself getting nervous, listening for the foot steps of the others when they would finish and start walking up. For the moment though, this hall was cooler on her fur and out of the sun. Something that, sleeping in New York parks and carrying a duffle bag large enough that it should be a camping haul with everything to make a mini-apartment outside with the expection of internet access, but even then she has had problems in the past with people. And they did seem nice. The shock of green hair on one of them made her think of someone who she had seen at conventions. Maybe some hair dye that never came out.

She looked around again, making sure that no one wasn't around. She soon crouched on all fours, pushing her duffle bag across the floor and around the corners of rows and trying to be as quiet as possible and as quick as possible. The curve of her wings could be seen over the seats and the flash of her tail could be seen behind her as she moved from row to row.

         The fresh air in the city was great, walking outside on the pavement of the busy streets, taking deep exhaust gasses free breaths of air, it's one of the benefits of a green city, no toxic and carcinogenic fumes being sprayed in your face as you walk the streets, no loud engines, just the humming of electrical engines as the accelerate away from a traffic light. It was something he just could not get used to, he was smack in the middle of a busy city yet no frantic honking drivers or roaring cars, he was sure if he had grown up on the countryside he'd be more used to the relative silence compared to an eternal traffic jams that are typical for normal cities.

It was still half an hour walking to the winery, an economist from the mind had a long conversation with one of his foreign colleagues. In which he mentioned Paradise wine and how rare and valuable it was, and while he was among the very few to have gotten a bottle. Rather he had the bottle stored in a winerack in his basement, to him that bottle was too valuable to drink much like a action figure collector wouldn't dare take a figure out of their packaging. The minds economist laughed and mentioned how the winery still had Paradise wine from it's first production year, and every other production year, in the cellar because the wine just didn't sell well within Paradise. They both knew the winery couldn't just sell all those bottles outside Paradise, because that would ruin the exclusive and elusive nature of the wine, but after some discussion they came with an idea for a wine action, featuring just a few bottles all from different years. It wasn't like there haven't been auctions of rare wines before, and if the amount of bottles auctioned was kept low it wouldn't hurt the image of the wine. All nice when it's two economists discussing it to eachother, but now Giacomo had to convince the winery's owner to play along with the idea.

Giacomo was only through the front gate of the winery before the owner came storming out of the winery's factory doors right at Giacomo. "Oh no, you are not going to to tell me the white wine grape harvest failed this cycle. I'm already running low on white grapes for sweet wines and I barely have any of left bottled." the owner said. It had happened before that Giacomo had to tell him that there wouldn't be any white grapes for a few months, and it was about the time for a new harvest to be ready. Giacomo smiled at the owner and said: "Don't worry Walter, I haven't gotten any bad news about the harvest. I'm actually here for your red wine." "Ah, the Paradise wine... Wait you aren't going to tell me that you want to skip the blue grapes cycle for this year are you? Or that the export price has plummeted? Or that there is something wrong with it?" Walter said in obvious distress, his face couldn't have become any paler than it was after hearing Giacomo mention the Paradise wine. It didn't sell many bottles, but those that were sold made as much profit as all of the sweet wines combined over the year, so it was quite understandable that he was so worried. "Like I said, don't worry Walter. I am not here with bad news. Seriously how have you managed this winery all these years without a heart attack from stressing so much. Now, what I am here for. One of the minds economists had a discussion last night, in which the state of the wines on the outside was briefly mentioned. It comes down to this, they want you to sell some of your stockpile in an auction."
Walter emidiatly reacted. "Sorry, I can't do that. If I sell my stockpile I can't fall back on it if a batch fails, and my customers in the city would kill me for that. And how would you send a bottle as a diplomatic gift if I don't have any left?" "I wasn't talking about the whole stockpile, just a few bottles from different years. I know you make three cases of the wine, simply because at any smaller batch you can't guarantee quality, and you sell one case per year to the outside. That means every year you are stuck with two cases of the wine. We both know between politics and the inhabitants there aren't enough buyers to sell those two cases to, even at the reduced price it's sold for in the city. "As I said, I need a stockpile in case I am unable to make a batch or if it fails. It would probably kill the winery if that happened and I have no bottles stockpiled. I think that more than justifies keeping two cases for the city each year."
"True, but do you really need to have 8 cases in reserve, just for that one case where you lose out on one year of production? I mean we are talking about three to six bottles out of that 48 bottle reserve you have, would that really hurt the winery so much in the long run you think? Just think about it, how many bottles of that first production year could there still be out there, probably not even three of the six you sold that year. Now what do you think they would pay for another bottle of that very first year in an auction. It would likely fetch quite the price, even compared to it's normal price. Three of those older bottles will probably be worth as much as the case you want to sell this year. You'd have a lot of extra money in the bank in case something does go wrong, maybe then you'll relax a bit more."
"Perhaps, you know what I'll do it. And I'll give some of the money above the regular price for each bottle to my employees and the vineyard as a bonus. But while you are here, could you get me an extra ration of white grapes and some honey for next year, I am working on a new recipe for a sweeter and smoother wine, as it seems that's what the locals prefer. I know farmland is limited and we need to be carefull with our foodstocks, but I don't need much." "How much is not much?" "Maybe one kilo of honey and five kilo of grapes. It's just a test to see if my recipe makes a good wine, after that we can always see what comes next." Giacomo sighed and then said: "I shouldn't be doing this with city resources, but given the past success of your winemaking, I'll make sure to squeeze in that extra production in somewhere next year. And we'll contact you later about when that auction will be, just don't think too long about which bottles and how many you'd want to auction. Don't look at the production dates, grab them out of the cases untill you feel it is enough and put them in a sepperate case for the auction and set that asside." "I'll do that." Walter said as he walked back to the doors he stormed out of, while Giacomo made his way off the winery's property.

         ((Double-Post))