The machine clicked, rolling over to the next message. “Hi, it’s Barabas. Please call me as soon as you get this.”

I dialed the number. Just what I needed, another emergency.

The phone rang once and Barabas picked it up. “Hey. I think I found a loophole.”

Cancel the freak-out about another emergency.

“Talk to me about the Guild stopgap measure.”

Good morning to you, too. “The stopgap is a hiring freeze. The Guild’s mercs are contractors, but they still have to formally be hired by the Guild. If the Guild judges that there are too few jobs per merc, the stopgap kicks in until there are more jobs or fewer mercs.”

I started drawing a cliff on a piece of paper.

“They’re on stopgap right now,” Barabas said.

“It doesn’t surprise me. The place is falling down around them.” I added a bunch of stick figures to the cliff and drew a falling dollar bill under it.

“From my review and the information I received from Jim, it appears that administration staff is central to the Guild being able to turn a profit.”

“Yes. The Clerk is the grease that makes the gears go around.”

“Correct me if I am wrong. Bob Carver and his Horsemen wanted to access the pension fund. They tied up the Guild’s budget, so the admin staff stopped getting their pay. They walked off. Without the Clerk and his staff, there is no effective distribution of jobs. Nobody is taking, assigning, or tracking the jobs, so customers become angry when nobody shows up. The Guild’s business dries up, which results in a financial shortage. It’s a Catch-22.”

“Exactly.” I added a stick figure diving after the dollar bill and wrote Bob above its head. “The Guild needs money to rehire the admins, but they need admins to make the money in the first place.”

“We need to break this vicious circle.”

“How?”

“There is a provision in the manual that permits each individual merc to contribute money to the Guild and earmark where it goes.”

I rubbed my face, but rubbing failed to produce any great insights. “Are you suggesting we give the Guild our money?”

“Yes.”

“Barabas, it’s a sinking ship already. You want to throw good money after bad?”

“Hear me out.”

Famous last words. “Okay.”

“We inject cash into the Guild under the condition that it will be spent specifically to rehire the admin crew. The Clerk comes back, the jobs—”

“Gigs.” If he insisted on this foolishness, he might as well start using correct terms.

“The gigs are once again properly assigned. Mercs once again make money. It gives us instant goodwill.”

“What will happen when that money runs out?”