Stray Cat Sidestory: Canta Clause

One Year Ago​

I slammed my open palm against the entrance a dozen times in a row, each hit making the heavy metal door rattle and clang.

My breath was leaving a trail of thin white fog in the air and I couldn’t help but shiver under the buzzing neon light above.

The street the orphanage was on wasn’t actually much of a street. More an alleyway on the third floor of a pair of mega buildings. A fucking great name for what was basically two dozen tennaments all linked together and added onto by architects and engineers that were high off their asses.

Some of the kids had videos on their media feeds of buildings just like this one collapsing under their own weight. They tended to have a hard time sleeping, but they couldn’t help watching them over and over again. Weird little shits. I usually got past my problems by pretending they didn’t exist.

“Open up, for fuck’s sake!” I called out as I banged a fist against the door again.

My shoulder was killing me from the sack hanging off it, and my stump was all itchy from the coarse simu-wool sweater I had on.

I couldn’t complain though. Lucy had forced me to wear it before leaving, and I didn’t regret it. The weather had turned cold. Colder than my media feeds had said it would go. But then, those were always calibrated for the people living near the top of all the nicer buildings around. Closer to the ground, shit got a lot colder.

I shifted, trying to find a way to get the bag hanging off my side to be more comfortable. “Come on,” I muttered before stepping back.

My shoes–a set of runners we stole from a bin in front of a used clothing store before they set up some cameras in front of the place. I was pretty proud of them–slid a bit across something wet and oily and I scrunched my nose against the smell.

I looked at the panel next to the door and blinked a few times to get my augs to connect to it. The interface sputtered to life in the middle of my vision, then froze up.

I force quit, then tried again. Then again. The third time I was actually able to connect.

WELCOME TO THE FUCKING SHITTIEST PLCE EVR!!

Our hours of operation a

The rest of the screen was entirely empty, but I knew better. I twitched my eye to activate my cursor and aimed it down a ways to where the button used to be to accept. A few hundred bored kids with nothing to do, half of them with five generation old-gear, wasn’t great for the local software infrastructure. I blinked over where the button used to be.

The screen shifted.

Please enter your login information:
NAME:
PASS:

Complete the following puzzle:

I sighed and hugged my arm across my chest and started rubbing my hand up and down over my jacket for warmth as I manually entered everything. The damned puzzle was some damned Voight Kampff rip-off with intuitive questions based on poorly rendered images. It hadn’t worked to stop any decent bot in a decade, but it did work at slowing me down.

The moment everything was done the screen flashed green. And then it crashed.

“Fuck!”

I kicked the door.

Someone moved behind it, the little hole in its middle darkening as someone looked out. Then the door opened at last and I found myself face-to-face with one of the older matrons. “What are you doing out at this hour?” she asked.

“Freezing my tits off,” I said. “Let me in.”

She crossed her arms. One of those gig-workers that came in to replace what little real staff was left, getting paid half of minimum wage for a shit job. They only really did their job when it allowed them to look tough while treating the kids they were meant to care for like shit.

I could hardly blame them, it was the only time they probably felt alive.

“What were you out doing? Whoring yourself out?” she asked.

I rolled my eye. “Like you? How much are you making an hour again?”

“That’s not of your business,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah. Look, it’s cold. Let me in.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

She huffed, then nodded to my bag. “What’s in that?”

“That’s none of your business,” I said.