Chapter Twelve – The Taste of Boot

Chapter Twelve – The Taste of Boot

“Unlike any aesthetic of the past, transhumanism is a permanent one. You might outgrown your goth phase, you might decide one day that you don’t want to only wear pastels anymore, and maybe work will force you into an officecore look, but replacing your arms with tentacles is a far, far more permanent statement of aesthetic value, far more so than even something as semi-permanent as a tattoo.”

–Excerpt from Vagrant’s Future Fashion Blog

***

I hated this very much.

The moment Eric the bootlicker led me into the room, I knew I’d hate it, but I still respected the Family.

The organisation had been helpful in the past. They’d bankrolled PMCs to help, they had their own troops, and they were in contact with a multitude of samurai. A few of the samurai that I’d consider friends, or at least acquaintances were part of the group. Longbow, Deus Ex, a few others.

So I didn’t want to ruin the Family’s day by throwing a fit. They did good work.

But leading me into a boardroom, with one of those massive all-wood tables surrounded by expensive office chairs and with screens on the walls rotating through promotional crap? That was really, really pushing it.

The room was filled with half a dozen people wearing properly nice suits and nicer smiles. They asked me to sit down, buttered me up with compliments, and asked me if I wanted anything to drink.

When I cut through and started talking about my problem of the day, the sewers, they were all terribly attentive. I got a panoply of ‘hu-huhs’ and ‘go ons’ that rankled. It was like getting constantly splashed in the face with lukewarm water. Annoying, but not something that’d kill me. It just felt like I was wasting my time in a big way.

“So,” I said. “Can you help me?”

The yes-men and yes-women looked at each other, still smiling their empty smiles, then the next one whose turn it was to talk nodded. “Of course. The Family exists to help the samurai. If you deem this issue to be of vital importance in safeguarding humanity, then we’ll do everything we can to ensure that things get done in a timely manner.”

“Right,” I said. That’s what I wanted to hear. Which was why it bothered me so damned much. “So what’s the plan here?”

“Well, first, we should have some people check out the situation below,” Yes Woman One said.

“And then reconvene with their findings. It’s only reasonable to know what kind of work needs to be done before we set out,” Yes Man Four said.

“We should hire some professionals. Perhaps set up a council to direct the efforts,” Yes Woman Two added. “Can’t have people not know what to do and where our attention will be best spent. You suggested that you might be able to deploy some samurai-grade equipment to help?”

“Yeah, a bit,” I said. I looked over the group, eyeing them one at a time. “How long do you think this will take?”

They looked between each other again, then collectively shrugged. “It’s impossible to tell,” Yes Man One said. “From your report, it seems like the infrastructure had been left unmaintained for a long time. It might take months to bring everything back to standard. As for patching things up more temporarily, it’s impossible to tell with so little data to work from. We’ll be sure to put every effort into repairing things, however.”

“Right,” I said. Not what I wanted to hear, exactly, but a perfectly reasonable and realistic answer.

So why was it rubbing me the wrong way?

The meeting ended with a flurry of handshakes and thank-yous and lots of back patting. I was left with a long list of items that the Family would ‘enjoy’ in order to help them accomplish what I’d asked them to.

Was that the catch? But the list was literally what I was willing to offer to begin with. A few hundred suits capable of functioning in the sewers, some tools from plumbing, a number of repair drones and their blueprints. Myalis tallied it up, and it added to nearly ten-thousand points, but that felt… low?

“Myalis,” I muttered as I left the boardroom. Eric was, of course, waiting for me just outside, but at that point I’d stopped caring much.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Yes, Catherine?

“What was all that?”