Chapter Fifty-One - Wake Up

“John Hopkins-Pepsico University is proud to announce the addition of a Consumer Neurosciences course for our Spring 2025 curriculum!”

--Excerpt from JHUPc Message to Students, 2024

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Catherine, I believe you should wake up now.

A small jolt hit me. It wasn’t quite painful, but it was still startling, a buzzing snap that started in my skull then travelled down my spine, lightning-quick.

I sat up, almost fell off of the... bench I was on, then grabbed onto the edge of a table to steady myself as I regained my bearings. The temporary cafeteria? Someone had shut the room’s lights off, though there was still light coming in from the other rooms nearby, as well as the low murmur of people at work.

Rubbing my eyes, I sat up on the bench that I’d apparently used as my bed. I was going to be sore, I just knew it.

Blinking, I realized that someone had draped a thin blanket over my shoulders, and placed another rolled-up bundle of cloth down to serve as a pillow. Lucy? That would be very much like her. I smiled, then lost the smile to a jaw-cracking yawn. “What time is it?”

It is six-seventeen AM.

“Oh, shit, how long did I sleep for?”

You had ninety minutes of REM sleep. Sufficient to be functional. Though I imagine that a few more hours would have been better for your overall health.

“Yeah, I feel that,” I said as I tilted my head way to the side and worked a crick out of my neck. The blanket and makeshift pillow was a nice gesture, but a real bed would have been awesome. Still, I couldn’t complain. A nap was a nap. “Why’d you wake me up?”

The situation hasn’t yet gotten to the point of being out of control, but your intervention will be needed soon.

Oh, that was Myalis-speak for everything was going to shit.

I stood up, then looked for my helmet and found it waiting on the corner of the table. I started to slide it on, then stopped and put it back down. “Hey, got something like... super coffee? Nothing like that Mind Crank Ultra shit, I just need something to wake me up.”

I can provide something for that. Budget?

I shrugged. “A few points, I don’t know?”

Points Reduced from 51,590, to 51,586

A can clunked onto the top of the table without much ceremony. I picked it up and looked at the label. There was a cute pastel cat snoozing on a pile of cartoony alien corpses. The label read Cat Nap Cure.

“Is this custom?” I asked.

I had a nanosecond to waste.

I rolled my eyes and popped the tab, then took a sniff, then a pull. It was pretty mild. Soda with a hint of bubblegum flavour. Not entirely to my tastes, but very much something Lucy would like.

It’s packed with sugars and essential vitamins, as well as delayed-reaction chemicals that will act similar to caffeine in approximately ninety minutes. And it will cure your morning breath.

I laughed and finished the can, then flicked it over to an empty trashcan in the corner where it tapped the lip and then bounced off onto the floor with a clang.

I sighed, walked over, picked the damned thing up, then dunked it before returning for my helmet. I tucked the helmet under one arm and started for the exit. “So, what’s the situation like that I had to be woken up?” I asked.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t Myalis who answered, but Lucy.

“Things have, predictably, gone to shit,” she said. “Hi Cat, I was about to wake you up.”

Lucy looked a bit frazzled. Her poofy hair was matted down here and there, giving it a wild, dishevelled look that definitely worked for her, but the bags under her eyes didn’t. “You okay?” I asked as I moved closer. Instinctively, we fell into each other’s arms, and I regretted that my armour didn’t let me feel her warmth.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. Her head tilted back, and I pressed my lips to hers. “Oh, you taste good,” she said. “Is that bubblegum?”

I grinned. “Yeah. I’d get you some, but you look like you need sleep more than anything else.”

Lucy groaned. “I was going to grab a cat nap too, but then there was one thing, then the other, and I didn’t get the chance to sleep at all. I might carve out an hour or two right now to catch some shut-eye.”

“You look like you need more than a couple of hours,” I said.

“Yeah, I need eight hours of sleep and an army or two, but we can’t always get what we want, can we?”

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“I don’t know, I think I’ve got what I want right here,” I said before I gave her another soft kiss.

Lucy grinned. “Smooth, Cat,” she said. “But I’m too tired for anything fun, and besides, the world’s on fire right now.”

I rolled my eyes. “Can’t I just flirt for the sake of flirting?” I asked.

She jumped onto the tip of her toes for one last kiss. “Sure, but I’ll still remember this later,” she said with a wink. “Now, go save the city, please, I’m going to go see if the door of my office locks from the inside and then I’m going to set six alarms to wake me up in... eh, three hours or so.”

“No explanation of what’s going wrong?” I asked as I let her go.

“Myalis will explain it better than I could. Or ask Intel-chan, they should be waking up from their own sleep soon enough.”

Right, Intel-Chan had a person behind the avatar, they’d need sleep too. I watched Lucy go, then slid my helmet on. “Okay, so, what is going on?” I asked.

I’ve been paying some attention to current local events, of course. Give me a moment to summarise.

“Go ahead,” I said.

On the more local front, the Kittens have continued their rotations through the night. The group in charge of rooting out the model-seven ‘zombies’ have discovered a small apartment complex near the inner part of downtown with several infected individuals and have been working through the night to clear the area.

Annoying, but at least they were on it.

The move from River Heights is nearly complete, though things have slowed overnight. Gomorrah retired for the night at around the same time as you did, as did Arm-a-Geddon.

“Sprout?” I asked.

Functioning on a mix of stimulants and determination.

“Well, he’s an adult,” I said. “Did Manic get any sleep too?”

Lucy found her a place to rest. She is still sleeping.

“Alright, so where have things gone to shit?” I asked as I left Lucy’s headquarters.

There are three major fronts. First, a group of civilians have begun preparing a protest in the centre of Downtown. It hasn’t yet gained much traction. My social engineering suggests that if not addressed, that will change, especially if the civilians learn of any potential food shortages.

“Fuck,” I said.

Second, the displaced River Heights citizens have decided to take out their anger at their displacement on you and the militia as a whole. Several members of their group are on the board of directors of the shell corporations who run the militia’s finances. They have passed an emergency vote cutting off the militia’s pay.

“Are you... for fuck sakes, are they stupid?”

Yes.

Well, at least that was confirmation of one thing.

Stupid and angry and impotent. Though once the news that they won’t be paid reaches the Militia, it’s possible that a number of them will defect.

Yeah, predictable. “What’s the third problem?”

The number of antithesis testing the defences on the edge of town has increased significantly over the last five hours. No one else has noticed a pattern yet, but from what I’ve noticed a constant increase in the number of aliens pushing the walls, and they are pushing from different angles and against different parts of the defensive line.

“Testing our defences, then?” I asked.

That’s my read on the situation. It’s likely that there won’t be a big push until the antithesis probing finds an area of weakness or their numbers increase to the point where that no longer matters.

I paused by the exit, wracked by temporary indecision. Three problems. Which one did I need to stomp out first?

Which one was going to make things worse for us in the immediate future?

“When will we be announcing the food shortages?” I asked.

The militia was planning on making an announcement around nine AM.

“Okay. Send them a message to delay that for a bit. I have enough points to buy food to feed an army, if need be. We’ll manage for the day. The walls are still holding against the probes?”

So far, yes.

“Then they’ll hold for a few more hours. Let the people who are sleeping sleep. They’ll need it. Which leaves the River Heights problem.” I smiled. It was nice, being able to reduce my problems to something I could focus on immediately. “Let’s go pay them a visit right now, shall we?”

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