My stomach was a bundle of nerves as I walked towards the tractor. I hoped it would still work. It would be insane for this System to have brought all of my extra equipment if it didn’t, but it would still be a good idea to go check it out before I made any more pns involving it.

  I could see Colin following me at a distance. It was clear he was curious about the tractor, but he didn’t want to intrude either. For now, I let him hang back. I thought about inviting him to look things over with me, but I needed a few minutes to center myself and digest what had just happened.

  I felt like I was dealing with this insanity pretty well so far, but looking over my tractor would put me back on familiar footing.

  First, I checked the potato pnter. Just like my tractor, it was top of the line and way too fancy. The Spudnik 8312 twelve-row pnter could pnt up to 150 acres of potatoes per normal working day, and it held enough potatoes in the hopper to pnt twenty-two and a half acres before it had to be refilled. That was an enormous step up from any potato pnter we’d had before. Even the eight row Spudnik that we’d always used before could only hold half the potatoes this one could thanks to the massive hopper that sat in the middle of the pnter. Of course, those previous pnters needed a much smaller tractor to run.

  I could see the mound of potatoes from the ground, but I climbed up the dder on the back of the hopper and stepped onto the walkway that ran along the back length to check them out more closely.

  I picked up one of the little chunks of Russet Burbank potatoes. It was squarish, and a couple of inches to a side. One side had a couple of little “eyes” that would eventually grow to become a new potato pnt. The parts that had been the inside of the potato had hardened to form a callus.

  Laborers had cut the potatoes a couple of days ago so the callus would form and help keep out rot while the pnt took root and formed. If you just cut up a potato and pnted it, you were asking for some sort of infection. Modern potatoes required a shocking amount of chemicals to ensure they don’t go bad in the field.

  When my dad told me he was going to buy my tractor and equipment for me, right after he’d told me he was giving most of the nd to my brothers, I’d told him I’d prefer the money to a tractor. It was massive overkill for two hundred acres that I’d probably sell right back to my brothers. You couldn’t make a living row cropping on two hundred acres.

  He had insisted that he’d give me something that would help me farm, and also could help me do any custom work others might want done to supplement that income.

  I’d told him where he could shove that offer, but he’d still bought it for me. He told me I would have to help do the tractor work for all four thousand acres this year, but after that, it was mine.

  Right now, it looked like I was mighty gd I had the equipment instead of a million dolrs.

  Since the potatoes looked good, I climbed off the pnter and walked around to the steps to my tractor. I climbed up, opened the door, and stepped into the spacious cab.

  I sat down in the incredibly comfortable main seat. There were about nine ways it could be adjusted, and it had air ride for comfort. The armrest on the right-hand side was much rger than the left and had most of my tractor controls. It had a joystick at the end that controlled my speed and my extra hydraulic switches.

  Below the joystick were five more hydraulic switches. Next to that was a throttle lever. To the right was a good-sized computer screen and all the buttons that controlled things like my PTO (Power Take Off), four-wheel drive, and differential lock. I had a secondary screen hanging from a mount on the right for my equipment that used computerized screens.

  Modern farming was truly high-tech. It looked downright intimidating. Gone were the days when you just got in a tractor, turned the key, and gave it gas. Hell, these days I didn’t even use a gas pedal, that was on the joystick.

  My dad couldn’t even figure out how to operate it. He thought tractor technology had gone too far sometime in the te 90s. These days, my brothers and I did all the actual tractor work.

  Honestly, my dad mostly just screwed around and drove around looking at things with my grandpa, who was still going strong in his te 80s.

  What the heck were they thinking right now? It’s not as if I were driving a pickup and they thought I decided to leave somewhere after all the recent events. I couldn’t just hide this massive tractor. There was no blending in with highway traffic as I took off into the sunset. It wouldn’t even sink under any canals or drainage ditches anywhere I should have been; it was simply too rge.

  I shook myself out of those thoughts and finally worked up the courage to look in the mirror. When I looked at myself in the two inside cab mirrors, I let out a sigh of relief.

  Staring back at me in the mirror was, blessedly, myself. Despite my northern European heritage, I had developed a deep tan in my youth spent outside on the farm that pretty much never went away, aside from the very pale skin around my eyes and in a line that ran to my hairline.

  I almost never went outside without sungsses on. If I wasn’t working, I preferred Ray-Bans, but when I was, I preferred a pair of sporty-style safety gsses. My dad had lost an eye as a child in an accident, and he was pretty serious about wearing the correct type of eye protection.

  He still let us have BB gun fights as kids, but we always wore face shields. Safety first!

  Without my sungsses, I saw my blue eyes with wrinkle lines just starting to form as I hit my mid-30s. My dad and all three of my brothers had been bald by the time they were my age, but I had been blessed with a full head of dark brown hair. There was more than a little grey making its way in there these past couple of years, but I liked to think it made me look a little more distinguished.

  My own mustache and goatee were much fuller than Colin’s, and as far as I was concerned, didn’t look ridiculous. I’d really need to get that kid a razor, right after I found one of my own, of course.

  I had almost always had my goatee as an adult. I had often been told I had a baby face any time I shaved it off. Since I was already the baby of the family, that wasn’t a positive.

  It definitely was only the baby face, not that I’d also gained a slight double chin as I got older and gained weight. A double chin that I certainly hadn’t noticed the st time I did a clean shave a few years ago…

  My smile revealed straight, white teeth. Unlike Colin and Emily’s straight teeth, which were probably a result of no processed foods, my straight teeth were the result of several years of braces as a teen.

  After confirming I still looked like myself, I took a deep breath, turned the key, and watched the computer initialize. Once it did, I started the tractor.

  It purred to life, surprisingly quiet for a machine with more than 550 horsepower. The computer showed I still had a full tank of diesel and DEF.

  Diesel Exhaust Fluid would make everything even more difficult. It was just made from a super concentrated synthetic urea and water, but it wasn't like I could just collect horse piss and make that more concentrated. DEF was supposed to bind to exhaust particles before they got into the air and caused air pollution.

  Even if I somehow made a special biodiesel, I didn’t know how I’d ever get the DEF right. My chemical engineering minor actually gave me the info to make them both from a chemical standpoint. But practically, I didn’t know what I’d do.

  Oh well, worries for another day. Judging by the size of my lot and the capabilities of my vehicle, I wouldn’t need to busy myself with chemistry for a good while.

  The radio and GPS weren’t working, but otherwise everything was good. I checked my phone. It turned on, but I'd bought a new phone only a few days ago. With getting ready for pnting, I hadn't downloaded any new audiobooks or games yet. I put it in one of the cubbies for now. It would work as a fshlight, but that was it. At least I had a charger in the tractor. I hid that cord as well.

  I didn’t want to actually put it in gear and drive it yet, but I rolled the thumbwheel up and down to make sure the computer said the speed setting was properly moving. I loved the modern CVT transmissions (Continuous Variable Transmission). It sounded super complicated, but to me, it just meant I could have my speed set exactly how I wanted it. If I wanted to drive .01 MPH, I could do it. The tractor would go .01 MPH all the way up to 25MPH.

  My dad hadn’t trusted them for a long time, but they had proved reliable over the st ten years. I thought it was a huge improvement over older transmissions because I could set my speed, give it all the throttle I wanted, and then push the joystick forward to get up to speed smoothly. No shifting through gears.

  Once I was sure everything was working, I shut the tractor back off and got out. Looking at Colin’s expression, I could tell he really wanted to get into it, but I wasn’t ready for the questions that would inevitably follow such a tour.

  “Well, kiddo, show me around the pce. I promise you’ll get to ride in the tractor when we start doing work.”

  He blushed, looking down so his long, unbound hair would cover his face, and then kicked at the ground again. I could tell this was his default way of deflecting attention.

  Once he’d looked down, he answered. “Okay, that’ll work.”

  I ughed and said, “Great! Now lead the way!”

  He just shook his head.

  As we were about to start walking, he stopped and excimed, “Oh! Did you take a look at your quests? You can get some even before you take your css. We could get your css taken care of first?”

  I hadn’t even known I could take quests.

  “No, I didn’t check on quests. Let’s do this tour first then I’ll take my css.”

  I clicked on the quest tab on my UI and only saw one avaible quest at the moment:

  Explore the perimeter of your property (0/1).

  I took it then let Colin know I was ready for the tour.