Chapter Thirty-Six – Nun Your Business

Chapter Thirty-Six – Nun Your Business

“The word Computer comes from the Latin word… computer, which means ‘machine that computes.’ It’s one of many modern words that means things today that they also meant before.”

–Me, a memoire, 2039

***

Delilah stared at me. Really stared at me. “Why do you want to talk to Franny, Catherine?” she asked. “Is this some sort of prank?”

“I don’t play pranks,” I said. “Look, we’ve got a situation brewing, and I wanted to talk to someone who knows how the gangs work.”

Delilah shifted to the side, her shoulder resting against the doorframe. “And the first person that came to mind was my… was Franny?”

I shrugged. “Her or maybe Rac? But I don’t want to get the kid too involved in all of this, on account of her being a kid and all.”

Delilah eyed me for a moment more, then she sighed and stepped back. “Come on in, both of you. I’m liable to leave you wallowing on the doorstep, Cat, but Nya at least deserves to be treated as a guest.”

“Hehe, Nya gets special treatment, because she’s so cute.”

“I don’t think that’s what she said,” I replied. “C’mon. Maybe we can bum some food off of her while she’s feeling generous.”

Delilah snorted from just inside. She tried not to smile, but I could tell that she was actually in a pretty decent mood. I’d kinda learned to pick up some cues from her body language alone after spending so much time around her, and being able to see her face just made it all the easier.

She escorted us over to her kitchen, then got busy behind the big island thing in the middle while Nya and I took some stools to sit on. “Do you like coffee, Nya?”

“Mhm!” Nya replied. “With lots of sugar and milk.”

“I can manage that,” Delilah said. “I’ve sent a text to Franny. She’s on her way. Should be here in a few minutes at most. She was already on her way back from the abbey. But in the meantime, what are you looking into, exactly?”

“Right, so the gangs are acting up, I guess? They got a little boost with the incursion pulling a lot of people into the PMCs and out of security, and there’s a lot of places that have closed down. Maybe it’s temporary, but a big drop in jobs means lots of folks with nothing to do who still need to eat.”

“I see the logic,” Delilah said. “And now they’ve become a problem?”

“Maybe? Maybe not yet. I just feel like it’s one of those things… if you’re not on top of it, it’ll fester and then you will have a problem. It’s like… what do you call that stuff when your bits go green?”

“Gangrene?” Delilah asked. “You’ve seen that before?”

“Once or twice,” I said with a shrug. “It’s not pretty. I think, back in the day, they used to burn that off, right? I think today we have medicine for it. So that’s where I’m at now. We either head it off now, burn it up later, or find a cure. Personally, I’d rather stamp this out before it becomes too big of a problem.”

“Very… ah, proactive, nya,” Nya said with a nod.

Delilah hummed to herself as she finished preparing four small mugs of coffee. She placed them on a tray, then brought it over before fetching a small metal thing for milk from the fridge and a glass jar filled with sugar cubes. “It’s not the worst idea I’ve heard from you,” she said. “But I don’t think taking on the gangs will be all that easy. And having a samurai… multiple samurai, galavanting around New Montreal attacking random gangs might cause more trouble in the long term.”

“I don’t know about galavanting,” I said, testing the word a little. “But I think we can probably solve this without resorting to nukes and shit that’ll have us in the evening’s media feeds.” I took a sip of the coffee, made a face, then took the milk from Nya when she was finished with it. I poured some in until the coffee was almost more white than brown.

Delilah took a sip of her own. Black, because she was weird that way. “I suppose. And you think Franny can help?”