Stay Cat Strut - Volume Eight - Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen -

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Eric seemed to know where he was going, so I continued to follow him. The all-white corridor we were in shifted as he took a turn into a large room with walls lined with floor-to-ceiling posters in glass-fronted frames. Posters of different Samurai, most of them in cool, heroic poses. This was obviously some sort of central hub space, with a dozen corridors meeting in this one room. There was seating room in the middle and not one person sitting there. Instead, the people here were moving around with some speed, though a few stopped to gawk at me.

“The Family really is busy,” I said. There had to be a hundred people slipping through this room. Corpo sorts that looked like they wanted nothing more than to be behind a desk. There were enough credits spent on suits here to fund a small war in a third-world country.

“We are,” he said. “But don’t worry, your projects are still flagged as top-priority, even with everything else happening. In fact, they’re more important now.”

I wanted to believe him, because that would be convenient and nice, but I didn’t grow up with convenient, nice things happening to me most of the time. “Why’s that?” I asked.

Eric looked to me, then glanced around the room. “Might I ask you a favour?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“There’s passive listening throughout the building. For security, obviously, but there’s a certain amount of... listening-in that happens as well. Would it be possible for you to... grant us some privacy? Nothing I have to say reflects poorly on the Family, of course, but, you know.”

“I think I can manage something like that. Or Myalis can, at any rate.”

I can. Though to avoid suspicion, I’ll merely muddle any currently active recordings. Consider yourself somewhat private.

I gestured to Eric. “Go on,” I said.

The man stared with slightly widened eyes, then nodded. “Thank you. And share my appreciation with your AI as well. Um... yes, well, onto the meat of things, right?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“So, the Family have poured ressources into the repair, refurbishment, and replacement of the city’s sewer system, as well as its overall maintenance. We basically strong-armed a government contract to take care of the work in exchange for a fair reimbursement later. Honestly, we’re losing a bit of money on the surface, but I think the good PR and any technology we gain from it will make this worthwhile in the long run. And it’s leading to amicable communications with several corporations throughout the city. A short and long-term gain project like this is just good business.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. But the way you’re being all cagey tells me that it’s not all good news.”

Eric rubbed at his chin. “You’re right. The Family... is kind of afraid of you.”

“What?” I asked, surprised. I mean, on one level, I got it. I had nukes on demand and didn’t shy away from shooting politicians on live TV. That left a mark, I bet. But on the other, the Family dealt with a lot of samurai. Probably hundreds of them across North America alone. Some of those were big names.

“You’ve become exceptionally popular, at least locally, and your appearances have encouraged... a certain rise in the amount of vigilantism in the area.”

I was... just me. Sure, I’d probably made waves, but nothing that big, right?

Blinking, I opened a browser on my Augs, then shifted through the massive collection of tabs I had open. Past memes, past lewds, past cute videos I was saving to send to Lucy the next time she was cranky... and finally to the Official Unofficial Samurai Ranking Site. It was a long-ass list of samurai names that you could scroll down for a while, listed by order of current popularity with green and red numbers to the side showing how far up and down someone had moved on the rankings in the last week.

The site, as far as I could tell, worked by collating polls and checking for the number of times a Samurai’s name showed up on various media sites. There was more too it, of course. Weekly popularity contests, merch sale figures, appearances on the news. 

I bet that there were ways to game the list, but I also bet that most samurai didn’t give a solitary shit. 

Some... yeah, I also bet that Emoscythe Mordeath Noir had this list fed directly into her brain with by-the-second updates. She seemed the sort.

Speaking of which, as I scrolled down, I saw her in the top three hundred or so. 

That was damned impressive, considering that the list had something like thirty thousand samurai on it.

There were more than that, world-wide, but a lot of samurai kept out of the limelight. Some probably had their AI scrub their media presence too so that they’d remain ghosts, and some probably lived pretty normal lives outside of the occasional outing to fuck up a hive or something.

Stray Cat ^ 1278 places

I blinked. That was a pretty spectacular jump. It still only placed me a bit about the five thousand mark, but like... fuck, that was huge, wasn’t it? Did this mean that I was a local celebrity now? 

I was pretty sure that most people south of New Montreal wouldn’t know who I was, but still.

“So, being popular suddenly made the Family kick shit into gear?” I asked.

“To some extent? To be honest, it’s more like a confluence of factors. Your rising popularity is one, but there’s been a noted rise in tensions in the city. Gang warfare is up seven hundred percent from last month, polls are showing a marked increase in displeasure. Shows and entertainment with violent vigilantism as a main plot point have had a strong increase in viewership.”

“Oh,” I said. So it wasn’t the Family deciding to do good so much as they decided that when shit went down, they wouldn’t be the target of said shit. Which, ironically, involved handling the shit situation. “So how are the sewers coming along?” I asked.

“One point five percent of the city-wide sewer network has been restored to full functionality,” he said. “Keep in mind that at the start of operations, once we finished inspecting the system, sixty-two percent was deemed operational at full capacity, and some twenty-three percent was deemed... technically capable of functioning.”

“One percent doesn’t sound like much,” I said.

“It’s a fair amount, considering the time that has passed,” Eric defended. “But we also have to admit that a large part of that increase comes from some simple but necessary repairs that we’ve been able to do relatively rapidly.”

“Right,” I said. “So it’s only going to slow down?”

He nodded, even if he looked reluctant to do so. “Basically, yes. The best predictions we have account for a one to two percent per week repair rate.”

I worked my jaw, then opened the calculator app on my augs. Sixty-two plus twenty-three was... eighty-five and then that minus one hundred... “So we have fifteen percent of the sewer system super messed up, and we’re fixing it at one percent a week?”

“More or less. We’re aiming for three percent monthly.”

“That’s... five months to get the sewers fixed. Hell, five months for just the fucked parts.”

Eric didn’t seem to know what to say as an excuse, so he just shrugged. “That’s the best estimate we have with current resources. The damage is extensive.”

“So, more realistically, we’re talking half a year to nine months?”

Eric’s lips twitched into the start of a smile that he quickly aborted. “Essentially, yes.”

“And in that time, a lot of people will be without working plumbing?”

That wiped the smile away for real. “Unfortunately. But this really is the best we can do.”

I kinda believed him. Sure, he might have been bullshitting, but it all sounded plausible enough. I’d have to look and see if progress was actually being made, though. “Well, at least we’re helping some people,” I said.

“That’s the goal. The Family is working hard on outreach at the moment, to cool down any... unrest in the general populace. We’re working on food distribution, water, and entertainment.”

“Entertainment?” I asked.

“Circus, to go with the bread,” he said. “I think that the higher-ups believe that New Montreal can’t afford any major unrest, not at the moment.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I said. “So, what’s all this about me being the cause for unrest anyway? I don’t recall encouraging people to get into a brick-slinging mood?”

***