“Chief Quanah is contacting the PsyMovers. I’ll call Tiko or Libby to warn them.”
“Great, thanks Sheriff Helki. So, if there’s nothing more, reminder that we’ll have our PPD debrief call this Thursday morning. Otherwise, this call is concluded, and we can return to our busy days. Thanks, everyone.”
Echo and I take a break outside, then we return for our nine o’clock.
“Morning, Gray. How are things going?”
“Hey, Annabeth. Kind of a crazy week. How are you doing?”
“Pretty great, actually. We came up with a name, ‘Shindig of Community Supporters’. The marketing materials have been updated and sent for final approval.”
“Goodness, shindig was left in, huh? Alright. Let’s do a rundown.”
We have the vendors in place, this includes crafts, food, beverages, and entertainment services. We have the rooms bookmarked and divided up for the programs being offered. As soon as marketing is approved, advertising will begin. Everything is on schedule and we’ll finalize the programs with our respective domains by the end of next week. The call concludes, on to other projects like messaging Dio.
Kyle wants some advice about council meeting stuff. I invited him and Soon Yee to speak with us about our process, but don’t want to go over any upcoming applicant stuff with them. I want Kyle’s perspective to be untainted by me and vice versa. Are you okay with having a process call on Friday morning? I need be at police headquarters Friday afternoon.
Sounds good. I’ll send out the invite. Vid conference so we can share our screen content with them. Also, though you and I can meet in your office, I think Soon Yee should stay at her desk. It’ll reinforce the council meetings as separate from other stuff she meets in-person with you about.
Agreed. Thanks for setting it up, Dio!
Echo and I spend lunch outside, I at the patio table and Echo in the dog run. Noah, our newest virtual assistant, joins me halfway through lunch. It’s a mild winter day in ABQ, there is a slight chill in the air, but the sun is shining. I eat food without wearing gloves but am finished and recovered by the time Noah comes outside. He’s a tall Black man, recently graduated from university with a bachelor’s degree obtained after serving six years in the military. His mother is a PsyWitch and he moved to SWACon with her as a teenager about a dozen years ago.
“How are things, Noah? Settling in okay?”
“So far, so good. I enjoy the work and the atmosphere’s fun. You can tell everyone is invested and there isn’t a lazy person in the bunch, which I appreciate.”
“We’re happy to have you, but your experience in the military probably makes the assistant thing kinda boring.”
“I worked in the intelligence division, so the assistant work is very familiar to me. I’m quite comfortable with having to gather and collate info and present it to decision makers, strategize and predict responses, plan meetings, and arrange logistics.”
“Good to hear. And I remember that part of hiring you was making sure you’re comfortable with travel, at least for a little while. Tommie, my sister, recently moved to Council Bluffs and is interested in opening an office there. Her specialty is financial advising and planning, but she wants to be under my agency’s umbrella. So, I guess my business practice will be expanding and opening a new location. You, Dio, Rhea, and Dani will travel to SoPlains to help her establish the office and hire some assistants to work from there. I may travel too, but as a Psycept, it can be an involved process to travel to another conservatorships for vasmaj business.”
“Looking forward to it. I’ve never been to the SoPlains, most of my travel was either to Cochise, Lla-Esta, or GB,” the three conservatorships surrounding SWACon. South is Cochise with El Paso as the major community. Llano Estacado is to our east and buffers us from Texas and the rest of the US. Great Basin, or GB, borders our Mesa Verde region in the north. GB is home to Auraria, the first Psycept community established over sixteen years ago. I was originally slated to go to Auraria, but they filled the community ahead of schedule. Instead I and a small group of Psycepts were rerouted to ABQ. Our small group, which included the MacGillivrays, was the first Psycepts in SWACon and it was a bit of a learning curve for all parties.
Speaking of learning curves, figuring out how to establish a business for my sister proved a bit tricky. Tommie’s a PreCog but her area of expertise is financial predictions. As I mentioned at the PsyCouncil meeting, you can offer general products for sale if you use your abilities, but our contracts preclude us tailoring our services to specific clients. I don’t use my abilities in my virtual assistant service thus it falls outside the scope of my residency contract. But Tommie will be using her abilities at the sister agency. We eventually solved this by having any clients Tommie personally sees to counted as her petitions. Tommie cannot have any corporate clients, not even individuals who serve as a director or above on a corporation.
But for her to be a business, she needs paying clients. We worked out a municipal contract with Council Bluffs where she will advise them on limited investment funds. If she provides satisfactory service in the first six months, the contract has the option to expand to the entire Southern Plains Conservatorship and maybe down her to ABQ and SWACon. Plus, she’ll have a couple of junior financial advisors that will use traditional predictive analytics and will pay a small fee to work under Tommie. Tommie’s an expert at foreign market investment so the junior advisors gain an experienced mentor and she gets the goodwill of fostering vasmaj in a select skillset. And having an office in Council Bluffs allows me room to hire a few more assistants if needed and not exceed my current office space
