Chapter Fifty-Six - A Great Idea


    Chapter Fifty-Six - A Great Idea


    There''s charity, and then theres Samurai charity. And the latter''s always interesting to see at work.


    You can never tell if theyre doing it out of empathy for others, or if theyre just tired of society being trash and decided to fix things on their own.


    It sometimes even works out!


    -- Simon Battleax Critical, head of e-magazine The Critical Skeptic, 69th issue January 2045


    ***


    This is a stupid fucking idea, I said.


    Lucy grinned, then reached up and pinched my cheek. Itll be fine, she said. Well handle most of it. You go out there and talk to your cooks, and Ill get everything ready and set up, yeah?


    I wanted to grumble and complain more, but time was wasting. It was approaching ten in the morning, and I didnt want to put things off any more than I needed to, so I left the Kittens HQ and headed to the escalators leading to the malls ground floor.


    The protests were being stalled out at the moment. The truth was--as far as I could tell--that people who wanted to protest needed a serious push to get moving, and my actions so far had deflated some of the reasons why they were going to make a mess of things.


    That meant that for things to take off, theyd need an even bigger push, and I was doing what I could to basically chop their legs out from under them by placating the masses.


    If it worked, then the few hours Id spent on it would be worth it.


    The ground floor of the mall had a crowd gathering on it, some eighty or so people, and squeezed into one side by a few kitten volunteers. Not the sort in the suits with the cool guns, but normal volunteers in normal clothes. The only thing marking them as kittens were the cat-ears they wore on their heads and their Augs IFF pinging them as such.


    Id spent a chunk of points (only a couple thousand, but it still stung) and bought two organic reprocessing machines. They were down here too, being guarded by both the kittens and some militia folk.


    Right now, they were constantly generating the same crap. Some sort of bread, a sort of faux-meat patty, and some sort of vegetable... disk thing. Basically, we were making burgers.


    I walked into one of the bigger restaurants in the malls kitchen, chosen because it had some space. It didnt have space for seventy-plus nosey cooks, but there was nothing but a half wall separating the kitchen from the outside, so they could still see well enough, even if there was some elbowing to be near the front.


    With an eye roll, I turned on the camera in my augmented eye and then sent everyone in the vicinity the code to be able to piggyback with their own augs.


    Simple enough thing to do, but extremely stupid. It was pissing all over every cybersecurity standard ever to let people into your augs like that, but Id be impressed if they got anything past Myalis.


    Now that they could all see, I focused on the stuff wed made already. There were a few cardboard boxes full of ingredients. Lucy had some younger volunteers loading up the fabricators already.


    This is bread, I said as I pulled out a round, flat bun and placed it on a stainless steel counter. This is some sort of fake-meat patty. And this is a veggie patty. I slapped the other two onto the table.


    Not exactly fine dining, Cook said. He was near the front and didnt look impressed.


    I shrugged. Its food. Hell, its even somewhat healthy, even if it tastes like cardboard. Just... add some fucking ketchup. Hell... lets sell the condiments while making the burgers free. Well use the money to pay you guys.


    Man, this business shit was easy.


    How many of these Stray Cat Burgers do you think youll be selling? Cook asked.


    However many people there are in Burlington, times three meals a day, uh, a lot? I said. Im working on something else to help calm the needy down, and we do have proper food coming in. This is a stopgap, to make it so that no one ends up starving while we set things up. I dont want hungry kids on the streets. No point in beating back the aliens while people die behind the front lines because they cant get bread.


    That seemed to make sense to everyone involved. The cooks didnt seem overly happy that they werent making anything special, but hey, they had work while most people had nothing to do but sit on their thumbs.


    Jessica will be down in a minute or two to give everyone their assignments, I said. If youre interested, stick around. And, uh, tell Jessica what you want engraved on your spatulas. Youre doing the city a service, or something. I nodded, then exited out the back without another word, because I didnt owe anyone any amount of small talk.


    Now, for the second part.


    I was dreading it already.


    ***