Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Twenty-Two - Welcoming

“Arthur R Martin was the first person to ever be jailed for AI-related crimes. He used an open-source learning AI to create a model of the stock market, then let it run predictions until he was able to finally create a model that had a 68% accuracy rate for short-term stock changes.

By giving this model the ability to reinvest in itself and letting it run, Arthur gained what was essentially an exponential amount of money, all the while his system improved itself and was soon leading the market.

His initial investment was $10,000USD (190,000 credits today). Within a month he had $1,645,782,257USD. He was, of course, arrested, tried, and sentence to prison where he committed suicide by self-strangulation.”

--It’s Just Math, first edition, 2026

***

The nanomachines are in position to be delivered.

I glanced up as Myalis delivered the message. I was heading out of the mall, except I realized when I was nearing the exit that I was a bit peckish, so I got into line at a spicy chicken place that was still operating despite the apocalypse.

“They are?” I muttered.

“None that I can think of. Give them the green light,” I said.

Then I had to step up and make my order. Mild spices, some rice, a random selection of toppings that I didn’t care much about, all cooked by a greasy-faced twenty-something instead of the usual machine because that machine was shoved off to the side and was clearly inoperable.

Probably couldn’t get a good signal to the franchise headquarters so they just hired this guy to do all the work manually, like they used to in the past.

And they’re deploying. It will take some time to have all of the nanomachine slurry travel across the root system.

“Hmm, how long, more or less?”

Between two and six hours. As more tunnels and branches are discovered, the time scale increases.

“Did we send nearly enough of those nanomachines to cover a system that extensive?” I asked.

Given infinite time--and presuming that the antithesis stops growing--a single nanomachine would be enough. As it is, yes, the amount dropped should be enough to cover what has been uncovered so far. Though the harm they’ll cause with so few acting at once will be light.

I nodded along. “Then we should dump more into the system. Maybe we can start by finding ways to access the bits of the hive under Downtown. If we poison those first then at least we won’t have aliens crawling out behind our frontlines.”

A sensible idea. I’ll set the cat drones to find exit points that are nearer to the surface.

I got my order, paid by connecting my augs to the store’s tapless payment chip, and then headed off while undoing the front of my helmet so that I could stuff myself while walking. “How are we doing with everything else?” I asked.

Your untrained army of civilian conscripts are being mobilised to the front lines. Another group of civilians containing a number of civil engineers are building a second line of defences. Sprout has planted new plants along a full third of the outer perimeter. Manic and Arm-a-Geddon are taking care of a number of scouting antithesis and Gomorrah is installing remote-operated turrets along the first defensive line.

“Which direction are the antithesis that Manic and Arm-a-Geddon dealing with coming from?” I asked.

The west, same as Lake Champlain.

“Hey, can you snoop around and see which direction most of the attacks and probes came from over the last few days?”

Over seventy percent of all antithesis sightings and approaches have been from the west, with an additional twenty percent from the north and the remainder coming from the south and south-east.

River Heights was taking those from the north, then, and the rest... All from the same direction as the lake? I didn’t know if antithesis could swim, but I guess there was no reason they couldn’t. They were plants, did they even need to breathe the way mammals did? Some models could certainly live underwater without any difficulty.

I sense that you’re thinking in the right direction.

“How many aliens are in that lake?” I asked.

Likely a number that’s much greater than you’re ready to deal with. If you want, I can send a report to the Family. There are some vanguards who specialise in underwater combat and hive extermination.

I nodded along, finished up the last bite of my chicken--mild was too spicy--and chucked it onto a pile of trash flowing out of the top of a trash bin. “That’s a good idea. Send it in, and if you can, mark it as important. I think my job here is to keep the civilians safe, not so much destroy underwater hives. It would be nice to get some support on that end.”

Understood. Message sent. Also, Lucy and Franny are on approach.

That perked me up. “Where are they landing?”

Instead of a straight answer, Myalis opened up a map of Downtown on one of my aug’s screens and pointed to one of the buildings near the centre of the city with an upper-floor landing zone.

“Ping the General’s staff, have him send a few techs over to grab the turrets. Ah, suggest that they place them on rooftops. Those turrets have decent range, right?”

Relatively. They are lethal to most single-digit antithesis within three hundred metres, but the damage starts to fall off relatively quickly.

We’d turn the skies around Downtown into a no-fly-zone for aliens. It would give us all one less thing to worry about.

Instead of walking all the way over to the building Lucy was heading towards, I took a bus.

That was a little strange, but it made sense. The city had these automated trolleys that moved around on the ground level. Graffiti-covered things that smelled like piss and that creaked unnervingly as they moved. The people boarding these all wore armbands of different colours, and there was someone at the entrance scanning their bands to let them on.

So, someone had turned the public transport into a sort of public logistics system for getting the civilians helping the defence of the city around. It made sense, which is why I was surprised to see it.

The guy at the entrance didn’t ask me for an armband or anything, he just stepped aside, wide-eyed, and let me in so that I could hang off one of those ceiling-mounted bars as we moved.

The trolley didn’t stop in front of the place I needed, but it was close enough. I moved to the front, nodded to the guy by the door, and jumped out while we were still moving. I had to jog for a bit to stop myself from falling, but it wasn’t a big deal.

I slipped into what was clearly a habitation building. A thousand shoe-box apartments jammed in next to each other. The ground floor was pretty enough, but I knew that every floor above that would have a ceiling that was no more than seven feet tall so that they could cram in a few extra floors to get more homes in.

The place was filled, and I imagined it was only half because of the ongoing incursion. How many more people were stuck in Downtown, separated from their suburban homes?

I waited in a dingy elevator and ignored the ads playing on every wall as we shot up to the topmost floor. Myalis must have overridden something because we didn’t stop on any floors until we reached the top.

The door dinged open and I stepped out into a shitty little corridor with none of the nice lighting, ads, or decorations that they’d bothered to shove into the ground floor. Instead it was all corridors and low ceilings. It didn’t take much to find the door leading into the building’s top-most parking space.

The area was wide open, with berths for hovercars and a landing strip down the middle. Holographic signs with directions and instructions hung all over the place.

My timing, as it turned out, was pretty good, because just as I started looking around a van flew in and came to a stop by the entrance, kicking up dust and flinging wrappers aside.

I waited as the van settled, then sprang forwards as the passenger side door opened and Lucy jumped out.

“Cat!”

“Hey!” I called back.

Then she grabbed me for a hug and I couldn’t help but match her laughter before I gave her a proper squeeze. “I didn’t know you’d be waiting for me,” she said. “Don’t you have big important samurai things to do?”

“Fuck ‘em, as if I’d care more about some backwater city than I would about meeting you.”

She shook her head, then poked me in the chest. Or she tried to, at least. “Urgh, you’re all hard in that armour.”

“I’d kinda think that’s the point,” I said.

“Idiot,” she replied, and I could feel the love there.

I tugged the front of my helmet off so that I could kiss her properly. If she wanted me to be soft, then I’d give her all the soft she could ever want.

“We-- we have an audience you know,” she said.

I glanced up and saw Franny who was blushing and trying very hard not to look like she was blushing. “We do,” I agreed before stealing her lips again.

“Cat,” she whined, but it was almost a whisper, just for the two of us. “She’s still a little useless, so let’s not scar her too much, hmm?”

“Fine,” I said. “So, what made you come all the way out here despite me telling you not to?”

She blinked. “Since when are you my boss? I’ll jump into danger if and when I please, thank you very much.”

***

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