Interlude Lucy – School Days Part Four

Interlude Lucy – School Days Part Four

Things could be worse.

That was usually the case, so it really wasn’t much as far as reassurances went, but it was still something to cling onto, and she was nothing if not talented at clinging onto small, vain hopes.

She had five people clamoring for her attention at the moment, but she raised a hand in a ‘one moment’ gesture, then closed her eyes.

First of all, this suit she was wearing was cute as heck, but damn if she wasn’t regretting it. The suit pants made her ass look fine, but the inseam was bothering her all day, and the less said about her shoes the better. She really wanted to sit down for twenty minutes and let her feet get a break, but there hadn’t been time for that.

Her eyes being closed probably suggested that she was looking at an aug-feed from someone, and she had done that a few times today, but in reality, her main concern at the moment was getting two minutes of peace.

She had been putting out fires for twelve hours. Her only breaks had been two or three minutes spent in a washroom here and there, and while talking to somewhere where a new fire had sprung up, and most of that walking was done while issuing orders.

The reality was, simply put, that her Kittens weren’t ready for an event of this magnitude.

There were three dozen plates spinning at the moment, and she could barely keep track of them all. Ideally, every plate would have someone dedicated to watching it, and then every group of two or three plates would have an overseer reporting to a few over-overseers with more authority. A chain of command, like they had in the army or something.

Instead, the buck stopped with her, but the buck was only ever one step away from her to begin with.

That had to change, but for that to change, she needed organization, and right now they didn’t quite have that.

Still, there was some progress in that direction. Not having any sort of system in place but still having to work things out meant that a system or two had formed kind of spontaneously. She was keeping track of the Kittens who had stepped up when things started to break down.

A few notables had taken charge of their sectors, had started issuing orders or had taken initiative.

It went counter to a lot of people’s instincts to do that. That was something she’d picked up at school. The modern person wasn’t meant to have initiative and drive. Finding someone who would step up was a big deal, and that person either had to be put down or promoted.

She was happy to find that the Kittens had a few people that would probably do well in a more managerial role, but mostly she was annoyed by how much work they had to do. To get the organization up to standard, they’d need… processes.

Too much improvisation wasn’t good; it led to new, unpredictable problems.

At least most of the issues they had so far were mostly in the back, and while some stuff was scuffed, she tried to make sure that the public-facing side of things at least looked passable.

If all went well, the Kittens would be remembered as a group that stepped up and did the best they could while dealing with a bunch of temperamental samurai, scrambling around to keep up, which was entirely fair and something that even bigger, better-organized group had a hard time doing.

Hopefully no one would know how everything out of sight was held together by duct-tape and wishful thinking.

Lucy opened her eyes and let out a long, low breath, not a sigh. “Okay,” she said as she scanned the… dammit, there were seven people now. She scanned over them anyway, then nodded. “Which one of you has the most pressing issue?” she asked.

One of them, a student called… Kaelen according to Lucy’s augs, stepped up. She was hugging a clip-board close. “Um, we’re running out of seating space,” she said.

“That’s not… we have enough seating for a hundred more people than were invited,” Lucy said.

“Seating wasn’t assigned,” one of the others said. “So some people are taking up two seats instead of one. A few gangs don’t want to be squeezed in.”

“God dammit,” Lucy muttered. “Okay, Kaelen, that’s your name, right? Cool, take five people from the front desk. Reception should have closed five minutes ago anyway. I know they need a break, but so do the rest of us. Grab five, get them to walk the alleys and tell people to squeeze in.”

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Kaelen nodded. “Um, one more issue?”

“Yeah?”

“The seating doesn’t divide equally with the number of people allowed in each gang,” she said. “So some people even in filled rows don’t fit.”