Chapter Thirty-Seven - Heading For Greener Pastures

“The standard 9AM to 5PM workday (with weekends off) proved entirely inefficient as travel time increased and working from home became standard across many industries. Now workers can look forward to daytime work hours that better reflect the needs of modern corporations, such as 8AM to 6PM shifts that occasionally include one day off per week!”

[...]

Your employees are going to kill themselves anyway; might as well make the best of it while they’re still work-capable!”

—Excerpt from “A New Standard for a Brighter Future!: How to Make the Best of Workplace Suicides!” a Business Outsider article, 2031

***

“I’m going to be real honest here,” I said as I stared out across the crowd. As it turned out, the Sewer Dragons at the Oasis when we’d showed up were just those that made it there in time to hear my speech. There was supposed to be something like twenty thousand of them, and I was starting to believe that number.

“I’m listening,” Gomorrah said. She was eyeing the crowd. The crowd that didn’t stop growing. There had to be five hundred of them by then.

“I don’t want to be here.” I gestured to all of the people before us—a sea of humanity, despite all of the modifications and prosthetics and the shit. Actually, the shit was pretty human too. “I want to go home.”

“We still have a lot of work ahead of us,” Gomorrah said.

I sighed. “Yeah, I know. Just complaining.”

“You have the right.”

I chuckled. “I hope so. You know, I’ve been a samurai for... has it been four days now? It’s been pretty non-stop.”

“Need a break?”

I pressed my hands into the small of my back—it was a bit awkward with the armour there—then I pushed and stretched as best I could. “I think I do,” I said.

Gomorrah shifted her shoulders. “I could take care of the rest here.”

“What are you even going to do with this many people?” I asked. “We promised to help them, and I intend to, but... there’s a lot of them.”

“We have the church,” Franny piped in. She was still in the Fury with Rac. Things didn’t seem dangerous, but still, I didn’t exactly trust the people I’d spent the morning shooting at and being shot by.

“The church?” Gomorrah repeated. “They’d never accept this many. One or two, certainly.”

“There’s room for this many. We have that entire shelter thing set up to take in refugees. It filled up after the incursion, but I think it’s nearly empty now. It was temporary housing.”

Gomorrah tilted her head. Bit creepy, with her mask and suit giving the impression she had a longer neck. “That could work,” she said. “I think we have enough shuttle busses that it won’t take too many trips.”

“They’ll stink,” I warned.

“We can set up a decontamination system,” Gomorrah said.

“Huh,” I replied. “That won’t exactly un-fuckerupify these people though.”

“No, but it’s a better step than leaving them here.”

That was a fair point. “Well, while you do that... urgh, what else do we need to do?”

“Inform the city about the impending disaster.”

I considered it. “Would a strongly worded email do?”

“I very much doubt it,” Gomorrah said.

“Fuck me. Okay, you stay here. I’ll go... tell the mayor or whatever that he might be shitting in a bucket for the next couple of weeks.”

Gomorrah chuckled darkly. “I kind of wish I was there for that. It’s amusing to see people’s expressions as they come to grips with a new situation. Perhaps not a healthy sort of amusement, but still.”

“Right, I’ll call a cab. Rac, you want to come with?”

“Fuck yeah!” was the immediate response. Gomorrah glanced my way, but I shrugged. The girl wouldn’t be any safer at her church or whatever. All I was going to do was threaten some politicians.

I moved over to the Fury and called up a cab, then leaned against the car to wait. It didn’t seem as if anyone came down here all that often for pick-ups, but this wasn’t the undercity where Rac lived. It wasn’t safe, but it was an industrial area. I imagined most pick-ups around the area were just folk heading to and from work.

Gomorrah fielded questions from some Sewer Dragons while I looked on. She had things well in hand. Her nun-ness making her perfectly intimidating to anyone with particularly dumb ideas. Or maybe it was the armour and flamethrower and the deployed cannons on the hood of her car.

Our ride arrived half an hour later. A shitty little car with a sticker on the door for the cab company. The guy behind the wheel looked like some college-aged dude who needed whatever cash he was making. A gig job, then?

I opened the Fury’s door to let Rac out, and we both walked over to the cab. When I opened the passenger-side door, a few soft drink cups and some burger boxes fell to the ground. Didn’t even make it dirtier. “Hey,” I said as I squeezed in.

“What the fuck,” he said.

“It stinks better in here than out there,” Rac said.

The driver looked to me, then to Rac, then at the crowd of Sewer Dragons outside. “The fuck is going on here?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just drive and everything will be fine.”

“Uh, right,” he said as he reached for the controls and pulled us up and away from the ground. The car listed to my side, my weight likely throwing it off a tad. He compensated without complaint. “So, where are we going?”

“I set the address on the app, didn’t I?” I asked.

“Well, yeah, but that’s all auto-pilot stuff. I don’t actually know where it’s taking us.”

“We’re going to the city hall,” I said. “Going to go say hi to the mayor.”

“Uh, okay,” he said, he reached for the console and flicked on the AC. “Sorry, but it, ah...”

“Smells like we just ripped a fat one?” Rac asked.

“Basically that,” he admitted.

I chuckled. “I don’t think the Sewer Dragons back there do showers all that often. For that matter, I don’t think they leave their tunnels all that often either. Today’s a special day.”

“Alright,” he said. We paused next to a road while his car’s auto-pilot loaded, then he let go of the wheel and the car moved up, merging into traffic and tailgating a larger van. We got to see a constant stream of ads from the rear of the truck, but I supposed the slipstream saved on power or whatever.

I tugged my Trench Maker out and removed the magazine. “Myalis,” I said. “Something with a bang. Some ammo for the Claw too.”

A box thumped into place on the dash ahead of me and I started to reload. Myalis sent me a text, just the number 10,705. Was she napping or something?

“Oh, shit,” the driver said.

“Not going to shoot you. Or steal from you or your awesome car,” I said.

“No no, I mean... you’re a, ah.”

“She’s a samurai,” Rac said, obviously relishing being the one to spill the beans.

Our driver nodded and pulled out some wireless earbuds from a pocket. “I’m going to listen to some audiobooks and shut up now,” he said.

“Clever guy,” I said. I could respect someone who didn’t stick their neck into trouble. I cocked my Trench Maker and shoved it away, then reloaded my Claw. My railguns still had eighty percent of their ammo, and my Icarus was in Gomorrah’s car. Didn’t think I’d need a grenade launcher to talk to some snobby politician sorts... then again.

We moved out of the lower parts of the city and merged into morning traffic. It was approaching seven in the morning, which meant the roads were congested with idiots heading to work.

“Just fly under them,” I said. “I don’t want this to take all day.”

“Uh, that’s... illegal?”

“Yes, and?” I asked. “Myalis, can you tell any cops or whatever to leave us alone on the way over?”

That should be easy enough to do.

The driver grinned as he flicked off his auto-pilot and darted under the thick columns of air traffic. “Always wanted to do this. Fly past all the chumps with an eight-to-six.”

“One of the perks of the job,” I said. “Then again, that job meant I was fighting monsters in the sewers all night, so eh.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he agreed. He was staring ahead, and we weren’t moving all that fast. I guessed he didn’t have Gomorrah’s confidence in his own driving, which was probably for the best, actually. I don’t think his rust bucket could do what the Fury did with casual ease.

We were in the older part of the city, where there were fewer skyscrapers. The buildings were all the fancy expensive sort that law firms and banks used for their headquarters. City hall stood out against those. Old and made of big bricks, with pillars by the entrance.

“Drop us off at the front,” I said.

“That’s not a parking spot.” he said. There were, in fact, large pillars to prevent cars from ramming into the front of the building. A smaller building next to city hall had the entrance to a parking garage in its front.

“Don’t really care,” I said. “I want to get this over with.”

“Alright then,” he said.

We shifted down and slid to a lurching stop. “Thanks, bud,” I said. I transferred the money we owed him, then a generous tip on top of that while opening the door.

Rac scrambled out and stood next to me.

“Come on, Rac, let’s do some politics!”

***