Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Twenty-Seven - Post-Traumatic Samurai Disorder

"Do you know how many artists there are out there? People putting their soul into things?

There are more creators--and I don't mean someone drawing a doodle in the margins, but actual, proper, dedicated creators--than you can imagine. One in every ten thousand. They make and have made. And what they make? There's a chance in a million that it'll have the eyes of the world skim past it.

That means that out there, right now, are wonders and deep, complex, meaningful works that because of their obscurity, will never have any meaning at all."

--The Smoking Bird, creator of Borboland, failed MMO project of the 2040s

***

"So..." I started as Nya continued to follow Lucy and I as if we'd just popped the tab on a can of wet food. "You going to stick with us all the way to our next class?"

"You have classes together?" Nya asked.

"Just this one," I said.

Lucy nodded. "It's a Pol-sci class. Of a sort. I think it's a lot of catch-up, and they're trying to squeeze in a couple of classes into one. I'm not sure how well that will work out. I heard from Noah that this class is being taught by an actual human teacher too."

"Is... that not usually the case?" I asked.

"Nope!" Luc said. "It's usually all AI-driven stuff. Which apparently sucks because the AI still makes shit up, but I heard that CIAL's are pretty okay."

I'd had an education with that sort of thing. For a certain definition of education. It had all been through these shitty donated tablets with a few programs that we were supposed to do every day. The teaching partition was done by these text-to-speech reading animated avatar.

The same avatars were buyable off some digital stores, and I was pretty sure there was at least one middlingly popular vtuber that used the same model, but I wasn't sure who used it first, the shitty sixth party teaching gear or the vtuber.

Calling what you have AI feels somewhat insulting. It's as though I pointed to a skin cell and waxed poetically about how human it is.

I snorted, then shook my head. I didn't want to have to explain that joke to the others.

"I suppose Nya ought to leave, then," Nya said. Rather than sounding sad about it, she looked kind of pleased with herself. She stood tall, arms folded behind her head. "Nya was told that if she was going to be in New Montreal, she might as well do some work, n'ya know?"

"Alright then," I said. "It was... kind of cool to meet you. And no, I'm not joining your band."

The woman smiled. "That's not a complete no."

"It really is," I said.

We still shook hands before Nya just turned around and sauntered off, leaving me and Lucy alone on some quiet side-street between two of the university's buildings.

"She's a weird one," I said before I started to walk again.

"I guess," Lucy replied.

I gave her the side-eye. "You guess?"

Lucy reached over and grabbed my arm, hugging it close to her chest as we walked. "Yeah. I think that... maybe Nya's been doing the samurai thing for a while, and it's doing things to her in turn."

"You mean, what, something like PTSD? Post-traumatic samurai disorder doesn't make you go 'nya nya,'" I said.

Lucy giggled. "It's stress disorder, and maybe it doesn't make you all cute and fuzzy, but it does do something to your head. I've always wondered if samurai were all bent before becoming samurai or if it's something that came up with time."

"Are you saying I'm bent?" I asked.

"Well, you sure weren't straight before," she shot back.

I bumped her hip with my own. "I don't think it's PTSD. I think it's probably that she was a weirdo before she became a samurai, and being one let her just... weird out without having to worry about what anyone thought about it. No one calls you weird to your face when getting shot up is on the line."

Lucy leaned closer, head landing on my shoulder. I tried to walk a little smoother, to make it less bumpy for her. "I'll always call you a weirdo," she said.

"Thanks," I replied.

It wasn't too long until we arrived at our next class. This one was held in a large auditorium-like building. Rows of seats, all laid out in neat, curving rows facing a small stage area with a podium in the centre and a desk to one side. A pair of teacher's assistants were moving around, placing textbooks and notepads on the tiny, uncomfortable looking desks at each seat.

There was a board at the back, right by the entrance. Each seat was tagged with a number on it, and each number corresponded to a name on a big legend at the bottom of the sheet. "Heh," Lucy said as she found her name. "They sorted by family names."

I frowned, then found my name. Catherine Leblanc... and right under that, Lucy Leblanc. I huffed. "You think you're so clever," I said.

Judging by how smug her smile was, she thought so too.

We found our way to our seats, which happened to be about in the middle-middle of the room. I didn't like that so much. Too many people behind us, no clear view of the exits, and we'd be easy to spot. I was vaguely aware that the drone following Lucy around was here, but I wasn't sure if that would be enough. There was school security too, but they looked like mall cops more than anything.

Still, we sat down, and soon enough the room was done filling. There was almost full attendance.

Someone turned up the lights over the stage, and the bit of talking in the room stilled as someone walked up to the podium. It was a woman, middle-aged and pinch-faced. She looked like a competitive lemon eater, with yellow cybernetic eyes that scanned the room at a glance and paused on Lucy and I.

She cleared her throat, the sound clear across the room. "My name is Doctor Roswell. I'm a professor of political science, political history, and I have a doctorate in both, a bachelors in education, and another in modern history. I am as qualified a teacher as you're liable to find in this institution and I was pulled out of thesis research to teach this class."

Oh, this bitch was not happy to be here. That explained the lemon-sucking look, at least.

"I'm not going to mince words. We're starting from the top, and if you can't keep up, that's on you. I'm being forced to teach, not to make sure you learn. We're starting with some history, but I don't want to go too far back. The Rise of the Sovereign Corporation. You should all be receiving a digital copy of the textbook now... I'd suggest refusing and finding a pirated version instead before you add a year's work to the amount you'll have to pay for this class."

I blinked as my augs flagged an incoming packet, and as she asked, I refused it.

"I won't even be reading from the book anyway," Professor Roswell continued. "In the early 2000s there was an economic shift in most first-world countries. The top one-percent of the population in terms of wealth held thirty percent of most nations's wealth. The housing crisis slowed their growth down for a time, but they soon recuperated and by the late twenties that was up to forty perfect. Now it's ten percent, can anyone tell me why?"

A few hands rose, but I figured samurai were to blame for that.

"Wrong," the professor said, ignoring all the raised hands. "The real answer is that power shifted and changed definitions with the arrival of the samurai and antithesis. Power was no longer held by human individuals, but by corporate individuals. A far safer alternative when the world economy was in shambles and most governments couldn't find their ass with both hands. Like it or not, for a small sliver of human history, capitalist corporations were actually the better option... for a very, very small sliver."

She turned and snapped at one of the TAs to go get her some water, then refocused on the class.

"That moment was enough for corporatocracy to almost become the de facto form of government. Fortunately, or not, corporations only hate one thing more than governments; other corporations. Hence, the governments of the world were suffering to live as a balancing agency and a tool to poke and prod at rival entities without each individual corporation having to foist all of the work of handling an entire population, work which is highly unprofitable, I might add."

I sat back and listened. This lady might actually be onto something, but then she started to ramble a little, tossing out figures and numbers, and I quickly realized that unlike my combat classes, there was no story here to latch onto. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to remember any of this stuff without anything to tie it all together.

I glanced to the side, and Lucy was staring, stars in her eyes as she listened and even took notes.

Well, at least one of us was enjoying it.

***

Still plugging away!