“Appears to be,” I say, marveling at the black slash through the literal name of the town on the main sign. It’s a large wooden frame above the street leading into the square. The place has been renamed Shamrock Falls for the foreseeable future. “That’s a bit desperate.”
“Aren’tthey?” He asks me.
I slide my eyes to meet his in the rear-view and squint, “Yes, I suppose they are.”
Thanks to you,his big bushy unibrow says.
I’m saving the whole damn place,I try to yell back with my raised, well-tended eyebrows.
He snorts. I ignore him.
We’ve reworked many a dying town over the years. Must be getting too chummy with my staff if they’ve the need to snort and sigh this way. They can get right on over it.
Sure, this is the first holiday-themed town.
All the more reason it needs to get a thorough update.
“Coffee?” Renaldo asks with a smirk as we pass the bakery.
“Hilarious,” I huff. He overheard the exchange last time. Then murmured something about my being the first Vanderwell to ever be kicked out of an establishment under his breath. “Just show me the damage.”
We wind around past the Main Street shops and their precious gazebo, to the mountain road. We don’t have to travel up very far.
“Fantastic,” I mutter when I see it. Thousands of dollars worth of irrigation work and erosion control fencing, demolished. “How do these punks even know to do this?”
“ChatGPT,” Renaldo answers.
I grunt in disgust. He’s likely right. I’ve had angry townsfolk vandalize my projects before, of course. But a few teens armed with spray paint does nothing to my timelines. Removing the slit fencing triggers an irrigation code violation and actually screws the whole project to hell. Legally, we cannot proceed until it’s fixed. Which I’m sure some chatbot explained to the mayor’s son and his buddies.
Just more proof that AI will be the end of us all.
“We’ll have to set up a remote office here, yeah?” I say to my longtime bodyguard, and current driver, after he parks the town car and opens my door for me. He’s seen it all over the years.
“Looks like it,” he agrees.
I walk part of the property and get out my cell phone to make the necessary calls. My shoes crunch on frozen mud while icy wind bites at my face. I’m not used to brutal cold in March. I turn away from the dormant construction equipment—wankers also asked the bots how to cut the hydraulic lines on heavy machinery, apparently—and look down into the valley.
Juniper Falls truly looks like a postcard.
A postcard from a past era.
Reminds me of a family holiday we took toBonneval-sur-Arcin the Alps when I was a boy. Well, a holiday. Who knows if any other Vanderwells were actually there. I don’t remember granddad or my parents. But there was a snowy town, a nanny who tried to teach me to ski, and a shit-ton of French pastries. Good trip, overall.
But that was almost thirty years ago. And this is not France. These mountain towns don’t exist anymore unless someone comes in to develop them.
Which is exactly what I intend to do. A snowmobile brigade of pimply boys with wire cutters will not stop me. But they did slow me down a bit. I walk the grounds and touch base with my contacts in New York to get added security up here. We’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again.
As the sun begins to set, the town starts to shine in a blaze of green. It’s so still in the snow I can even hear faint music down there. Celtic, of course. It appears they’re making a valiant effort. Valiant but futile.
“Right. I want to go down and assess their first offensive,” I say as I stomp back to the car. Renaldo rolls his eyes, but he’slong since stopped saying his thoughts out loud.Not every endeavor is a war. Not all business is a battlefield. It’s not you versus the world.
He’s categorically wrong on all counts.
I do have local adversaries, as thousands of dollars worth of vandalism has just proven. Not to mention the bane of my family’s existence abroad, always chasing at my heels. I am indeed fighting alone, an army of one, as I prefer it. This Juniper Falls project will be yet another battle.
Good thing that I never, ever lose.
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