Chapter Eight - Checking Out the Stink
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After coming back home and telling Lucy about my little adventure with Rac and the mercs, I spent the rest of the day... doing very little of import.
I felt a bit bad about not spending time with the Kittens, so I bullied Nose for a while, put Bargain in a headlock when he tried to sell me a cola from my own fridge, and basically annoyed Junior and Katallina as much as I could without pissing them off too much.
We played games, with Daniel kicking everyone’s ass until I let Myalis join in and the AI found herself incapable of doing anything but playing perfectly. Unleashing an AI on a cart-racing game was just unfair for everyone involved.
Before I knew it, it was deep into the night and the sugar and caffeine was wearing off. I took a languid, wasteful shower, then bought some PJs from Myalis, then I bought a second pair for Lucy when I discovered that when the Protectors decided to make something soft, it was disgustingly soft.
We just cuddled, warm and soft and tangled up together in a way that was comforting and familiar until at some point I drifted off while Lucy was murmuring a story about some puppies she’d seen online.
I awoke when Lucy crawled out of my arms. “Need to pee,” she mumbled sleepily, and I’m sure whatever I said in reply was articulate and sensible before I rolled over and tried to sleep some more.
But I couldn’t sleep, especially not after checking the time on my augs, then checking my messages, then checking on some news. I had a tab open on news from Burlington, and it seemed like things weren’t entirely dire over there yet.
Lucy came back, and I snuggled into her, now fully awake but still just scrolling through news and memes and memes of news. Eventually I had to piss too, so I rolled out of bed and started to take care of my morning... almost-afternoon, ablutions.
“So, we’re checking on the sewers today, right?” I asked.
That was the plan, yes. I’ve done some cursory research, and I think there are two points of interest that you should visit.
“Two?” I asked.
Indeed. First, the City of New Montreal Sewage and Maintenance Headquarters. The main bureau. While they are more of an administrative branch, they do have connections to the entire sewer network.
That seemed perfectly reasonable and logical. “What’s the second?” I asked. I discovered some toothbrushes in the bathroom in a little mug, then shrugged and picked the less-used one to brush my teeth with. Teeth care was not much of a priority at the orphanage. I wondered if my nano treatments had taken care of my cavities.
The second location is the Family’s New Montreal Headquarters. The organisation has become the centre of the local Antithesis-combat infrastructure, at least as far as logistics and administration goes. They have expressed concerns over the water and sewage issues in the city and might be able to assist you.
Right, we both wanted to take care of the same issue, so it made sense to pair up with them and get things done. “Is there a samurai on the case?”
All of the local Vanguard are either working on the city’s defences and clearing the surrounding area of remaining pockets of resistance, or they have been relocated to areas in more dire need of Vanguard support. With the exception of yourself, there are only five unoccupied Vanguard in New Montreal.
Shit, things were a little more dire than I’d expected, then. The unoccupied samurai might not even be active ones. Some of them just... retired or whatever. Laid low and minded their own business.
So it was more or less all on me. “What’s Gomorrah up to?”
Social media feeds suggest she’s assisting in light cleanup duty along the walls.
“That sounds like work,” I said.
She’s testing new firebombs on suspected nest sites from a relatively safe distance.
“Ah,” I said. Nevermind then, that wasn’t work, it was pleasure.
I stretched my back out, then started getting dressed. I found Lucy yawning awake and trying in vain to get her hair into some semblance of order. “Morning,” she said.
“Heya,” I replied. “Sleep well?”
“Mhm. I’m never removing these pjs, Cat. Never.” She hugged herself, hands trailing over the fluffy material. “You’re going to have to learn to live with celibacy.”
“I’m sure I can think of a way to work around that,” I said with a grin. “But maybe later? I need to get going. Need to see some people about some pipes.”
Lucy frowned, looking rather confused for a bit before she shrugged. “Okay? Well, be careful, and don’t come back home too late. Or if you do, let me know? I don’t want to worry.”
“Yeah, of course,” I said. I gave her a quick kiss before I started searching for my boots. It only took a minute to find the first one, but the second was hiding well enough that it was a while before I found it.
Since I didn’t know what to expect when heading out, I decided that more was better than less. I tossed on my coat over my skin-tight armour and grabbed both my Trenchmaker and a compact laser pointer... was it a submachine gun or an auto shotgun? I wasn’t sure what the gun was, but it was relatively small and easy to carry on a sling.
I grabbed a chocolate bar from the pantry on the way out, noted that it was probably the healthiest thing there and that we should do something about that, and promptly left without doing anything about it.
My bike was sitting out front, next to my mech. I promised myself that I’d get back to fixing that later on, whenever it was that I came back.
But first... I was burning daylight.
The skies over New Montreal were uncharacteristically clear, with large holes in the cloud cover above bathing parts of the city in bright sunlight. The rest of the cloudy ceiling was, of course, pouring a deluge of water onto the city.
I tugged up the lapels of my coat and pulled on my helmet, making sure that my ears were properly tucked into their slots so that it wouldn’t pull. Then I was off.
“Maintenance HQ first?” I asked as I circled our building.
Certainly. I think it might be best to get a good look at the condition of things before requesting assistance.
“Requesting? I don’t feel like begging,” I said.
Purchase a larger gun and demand it, then.
I snorted. “Ah, yeah, demanding assistance. Help me or I’ll shoot you is always super convincing, I’ll bet.”
It has been demonstrated to work before. It’s almost a universal rule among intelligent beings evolved from predators that might makes right.
I nodded along. My augs had the destination locked in, and fortunately, while the headquarters were basically on ground level, they weren’t in the undercity. “Do you know a lot of species that are... uh, is it sapient or sentient?” I asked. “Well, whatever. I mean smart and also non-predator-based.”
There are several thousand on record, many of them still live and thrive within the greater sphere of the Protectorate. Many find the idea of violence abhorrent. Often this is a great detriment when the Antithesis inevitably appear at their metaphorical doorstep.
“Damn, yeah, I can imagine,” I said.
It’s not always bad. Some species, especially those well-versed in agriculture and who have a solid technological and industrial base are able to hold out on their own for prolonged periods. I can get you a few documentaries on the subject.
“Heh, file that in for later. Maybe if we want to do movie night or something.” I wasn’t super interested in the going-ons of some unknown species halfway across the galaxy from me, but not being interested didn’t mean I wasn’t a little curious.
I refocused on my flying. I didn’t need to crash into some car speeding by while distracted. I suspected that the training whatsit that I’d taken to allow me to pilot my mech was also helping me with my bike, because even without turning on autopiloting I had a much better... feel for how to manoeuvre through the city.
Which was why I punched the throttle to the limit and pressed myself against the seat, breaking every law in the books as I headed out on a quest to find some trouble and fix it to death.
I headed out on a quest to find some trouble and fix it to death.
Her brain really is broken in some delightful ways. And now she's got zoomies!
Welcome back, RD!
I find it rather unrealistic that non-predator based sapient creatures would find violence abhorent. If a predator finds you threatening, it'll leave you alone in fear of getting injured because an injury means it can no longer hunt for food. If a herbivore finds you threatening, it will fight you to the f*cking death. Herbivores are a lot more violent than predators when it comes to protecting their territory and their flock.
You're assuming that this world has predators to begin with. Imagine one without, and suddenly the idea of violence as a means to an end is suddenly very alien.
You bring up an interesting point, but it doesn't actually address the fundamental problem with a species that finds the concept of violence foreign. Let's first review why predators exist in the first place.
Predators exist to keep herbivores in check. If predators didn't exist, herbivores would eat and grow and eat some more, they'd continue growing and eating exponentially until there was nothing left to eat, until they reach the point where they all starve to death and go extinct.
Predators serve to keep herbivore populations in check, which in turn prevents the above situation from occuring. But what's to stop predators from facing the same situation? Wherein predator populations grow exponentially and hunt all herbivores to extinction, and promtly starving to extinction themselves? The answer: Other predators.
Differing predator species serve to keep each other in check. The first example I can think of is the dynamic between lions, cheetas, and hyenas. A cheetah will go out to hunt, exhaust itself to get a kill, and then a group of lions or hyenas will come over and bully it away and steal its food. A group of lions go out to hunt, and a group of hyenas sneak into their den and kill their young. There's a bunch of other examples for this kind of thing, but this post is already dragging on long enough so I'll just get to the point.
So, could an ecosystem without predators exist? It's theoretically possible, but it certainly wouldn't happen without violence and conflict. Just as predators keep each other in check so they don't over-hunt the local herbivore pops, so too would herbivores have to keep each other in check so they don't over-eat the local flora. I imagine this would manifest in violent territory disputes due to the abundance of herbivores constantly fighting over the same food sources, causing enough of a loss in population to give the flora time to recover while the herbivores grow their populations again before the next territorial dispute.
The only situation I can imagine where a species can evolve without conflict is an ecosystem where flora is so obscenely ubiquitous to the point where it can support an ever growing population of herbivores. This poses another issue though because in such a plentiful enviroment intelligence wouldn't really give any meaningful evolutionary advantage, so it would be rather unlikely for a civilization to sprout in such an ecosystem. How many such civilizations could exist? Certainly not thousands, in my opinion.
I'd like to finish this off by saying that I'm a big fan of your work. My first introduction to you was through Dead Tired, I find the scientific approach to magic to be a very interesting concept, and I think you did it really well. I'm also a huge fan of Agartha Loop, I f*cking love time loop stories, and I love what you've done with it so far, and I absolutely can't wait to see what comes next. I don't read many cyberpunk style stories, but I'm really loving Stray Cat Strut. I love the concept of the Antithesis, the Protectors, and the dynamic between Cat and Myalis and Lucy.
I find it honestly amazing that you can churn out so many great stories in such a short time frame, and I hope you continue to love writing these stories as much as I love reading them. Great to have you back, Raven. Hope to see a lot more from you in the future.
@____mex You assume that these non-violent 'garden worlds' are natural?
You know out there somewhere the 'protectorate' have already built Planet Bob (New Earth) to be a human zoo/back up.
I wonder what percentage of samurai due to traffic accidents.
Awesome chapter welcome back!
Predators exist to keep herbivores in check.
Nope, they exist because they evolved to exploit herbivores as an energy source.
Likewise both herbivores and carnivores can and often do evolve to breed more slowly to avoid ecological swings that harm the population and species. This is common in places where the environment has otherwise remained stable over long periods like the Amazon.
Most species also evolve to take the lethality out of competition for mates and territory, and it's easy to imagine this continuing until such competitions are entirely ritualistic.
So while I agree that herbivores can be quite violent and territorial, they aren't violent by definition the way carnivores are, and Raven didn't say ALL herbivores abhorred violence, just "many".
Unleashing an AI on a cart-racing game was just unfair for everyone involved.
anything less than chaining noseboost and i'm disapointed on the AI
Thanks for the chapter!