Chapter Seventy-Four – Thoughts and Prayers

“The generation born between 2000 and 2010 are often called the ‘lost generation’ by some modern historians. Born at a time where the unchecked growth of corporate entities began to spiral out of control, and hit by three massive recessions and two global pandemics–not to mention the first Antithesis incursions–by 2025, the entire generation can be said to have lost the opportunities that those who came before had.

How strange it is, then, that they slipped so easily into the shoes of their predecessors.”

–Excerpt from “The Lost Generation: the 2000s to now.” by an anonymous writer, 2047

***

I found Gomorrah in an unexpected position. She was off to one side of the front line, sitting in the passenger seat of one of the PMC’s little humvee. She had her hands clasped together and her head turned down, lips moving silently to say something that I couldn’t hope to catch as I approached.

Religion had never been my thing, so I didn’t know if it was cool to just… barge in and interrupt or something. Usually I wouldn’t have given a damn, but Gomorrah was pretty chill and she also had flamethrowers which was always a good argument for leaving someone be.

A look around revealed a bunch of nothing. The Cleanze soldiers had set up a barricade of sorts with their carts, guns pointed out along the street, but as far as I could tell there weren’t any aliens on us yet. We probably had a few minutes before the bigger part of the hoard came around looking for something to snack on.

“I can hear you breathing,” Gomorrah said.

I reached up and touched my mask. Did the little exhaling tab on it make noise? “You done praying?” I asked.

She slowly lifted her head and lowered her hands. “Prayer is one of those things where you’re never quite done.”

“Ah,” I said. “Like taxes.”

“You do know that we don’t pay taxes, right?” she asked.

“Religious exemption?” I asked.

“No, I meant you and me. We’re Samurai. No taxes. Not even sales taxes. They’re removed automatically.” She grabbed onto a handle above the door and used it to swing herself out of the car. “One of the many little advantages to being Vanguards.”

“Neat,” I said. “I can live with the idea that I don’t need to pay those. Do we need to fill out income tax returns too?”

Gomorrah tilted her head a bit and I had the impression she was thinking. “You know, I have no idea.”

I shrugged. “Well, whatever. So, uh, prayer, huh?”

“What of it?” Gomorrah asked.

“Dunno, just, not really familiar with religious stuff is all. Don’t really see the point to it.”

Gomorrah paused in the act of straightening out her habit. “It’s… there’s a lot of pageantry, and some of that is useless. There are lots of things that I think are kind of dumb too, and sometimes the rules are a bit nonsensical, or don’t really apply anymore, but I always saw all that as, you know, the natural consequences of an organization being old.”

“So why do anything about it?” I asked. It wasn’t the most interesting line of questioning, but there wasn’t anything better to do, unless I wanted to get involved with pushing people into trucks and I figured my presence there would just slow things down.

Gomorrah leaned back against the car. “It’s about hope, really.”

“Hope?” I asked.

She nodded. “How did you think your future would play out? Before you became a saint. I mean, a Samurai.”

“Uh. I don’t know, really. I’m turning eighteen in a couple of days. Lucy, that’s my best friend, she’s a bit older than me. We were planning on leaving together, then we’d… figure it out, I guess.”

Gomorrah let out a long breath. “That doesn’t sound that concrete. Honestly, the chances we… normal people have? They’re kind of crap. You ever hear people from a hundred years ago talk about the future? They were optimistic. Now, you can’t decide if some natural disaster sparked by a corp will wipe you out, or if it’ll be some crippling debt that will get to you. God forbid you hurt yourself badly enough to need healing. And then there are the aliens. The future’s not bright, Cat.”

“Yeah,” I said. It was the kind of thing I didn’t dwell on much. I’d heard stories of the other kids who left the orphanage. They weren’t all that nice. Those who had better lives were the ones that swore their life and loyalty to a government or corporation.

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“So hope,” Gomorrah said, “Because I’d like to think that maybe there’s a chance that things will be nice in the future, but I don’t trust that it’ll come from human hands.”

I pulled my mask off. It was a bad habit, but I didn’t like having things on my face, the skin over my burns was always sensitive to rubbing. “I don’t know if I can think that way. I figure things have to work out, some of the time.”