Chapter One - Good Investnts
Was spending so precious points on a kiddy pool a good investnt?
No.
Did I do it anyway?
Yes.
Was I currently sitting in my brand-new pre-inflated kiddy pool, shirtless and with only so panties on while watching the news with so 500%-daily-sugar-intake drink in hand?
Also yes.
When I gave Lucy a bunch of resources and told her to furnish up the house, that had apparently included getting a TV wide enough that even sitting across the room from it, I had to turn my head to see the entirety of it. It was very extra and I loved it.
Exactly the kind of stuff I expected so super-rich celebrity to have in their house and that I’d dread of having one day.
Now all I was missing was a useless private jet, and a butler. Or maybe so maids? I could get a maid uniform for Lucy, she’d love that.
The door to the room opened and I prepared to chuck my can in case it was a kitten walking in. Instead, it was Lucy with a tablet held up to her chest. She paused halfway in to read the little door-hanger sign I’d left hooked to the door. “Don’t Tits Open Inside?” she read.
“What? No, you’re supposed to read it from the top down, then left to right,” I said with a demonstrative wiggle of my can. “Don’t open, tits inside.”
“And that’s supposed to keep people away?” Lucy asked.
I shrugged, then grinned as I noticed Lucy’s attention straying downwards. Hell yeah. “What’s up?” I asked.
She closed the door with a click and moved over. “Why are you in a kiddy pool naked--”
“I’m not naked,” I interrupted.
“--Without ?” she continued.
“But I could be with very little persuasion,” I said. “I was just relaxing, watching the news. The whole world got ssed up pretty bad you know, it’s my job to keep up with all of that.”
“While mostly naked in a kiddy pool?”
“The job description never included any details about how I should keep inford. Or that I should bother at all. Actually, my job cos with very little by ans of instructions, which is great because I’m iffy with those.”
Lucy pulled a chair over from next to this little make-up table tucked in what had beco ‘her’ side of the room. She set it next to the pool, took off her shoes and socks, and dipped her feet into the pool. “Oh, that’s cold!”
I scooted over and placed her feet on my stomach, then started stretching the muscle in the arch of her foot. “It’s ant to be a chill-out pool,” I said.
“We’re not actually leaving this here, are we?” she asked. Her eyes went half-lidded, as they usually did when I put so effort into a massage. “Because it doesn’t fit the decor at all. Also, while I’m totally down for trashy-chic, a pool in the bedroom’s a bit weird.”
“If it’s inflatable, it’s deflatable too,” I said. “Rac can toss it into the matter reconfiguration machine later, get so exotic plastics out of it or whatever. What’s with the tablet?”
“I was doing so howork,” Lucy said with a knowing smile. "Have you done yours?”
I sank a bit deeper into the pool until the water was up to my nose and I had an excuse not to open my mouth.
“Cat,” Lucy whined. “Co on, it’s not that hard, is it?”
I pushed myself up a bit. “But it’s howork. Co on, we’re too old for that.”
“No we’re not. We’re basically college-aged. Plenty of people our age have howork to do. I’ve done mine.” She wiggled her tablet for emphasis.
“But it’s so boring,” I said.
Lucy sniffed. “I’ll tell Grasshopper,” she said. “Can you imagine how disappointed she’d be? Not even angry or pissed off, just like, sad. She’ll look you in the eye and be like ‘I understand, it’s okay.’ But deep down you’ll know she’s sad because you didn’t even take the effort to try.” I glared up at Lucy until she broke down into a cruel cackling fit. “Okay, okay, I’ll stop. But you really should do your howork.”
I pushed myself up until I was sitting on the end of the pool, legs pulling back until my feet splashed. Grasshopper had spent the evening with the kittens, going over lessons that we were probably all supposed to get if we had ever had a proper education. She was... actually a pretty good teacher.
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Her weirdness helped. So did her ability to liberally spend points to summon up teaching aids. It was one part lesson, one part live cody show, and the kittens had eaten it up. So had Lucy and I, admittedly.
Then the lessons ended, Grasshopper gave us all howork, and she left without a hint as to when she’d return, but only the ominous promise that she would.
My howork was in two parts. One was a set of questions ant for soone in early high school, covering things like chemistry and math. Grasshopper left a note saying I could cheat as long as I understood how the cheating worked... I didn’t know what that ant, exactly. The second part was a link to a matrix-location where there was an online shooting arena.
I think my bad aim had offended her, sohow.
I had been planning on working on that for a while anyway, so no harm in actually trying. “I’ll get to it,” I said. I let my hands drop with a pair of dismissive splashes. Was I being a petulant little shit? Yes, yes I was. It was nearly noon, on my only day off in a long while, and I had planned on doing nothing of import all day.
I’d even set so rules for myself, such as the ‘you can only wear less clothes, not more’ which had so far served to make the day passively entertaining and relaxing.
“I’ll make sure you do,” Lucy said. “If I wasn’t so sore I’d make a ga of it or sothing.”
I nodded. Grasshopper had kind of blueballed us yesterday. The making up of that afterwards was great, but I wasn’t ready for more just yet. Maybe in an hour or three. “I need to go over my purchases too. Can’t just spend everything on cool furniture.”
Lucy nodded. “You should. Your armour looked a bit... cooked last night. You’ll need sothing better.”
“Yeah, that’s on the list. I’m thinking of getting sothing big too. For moving around.” I gestured to the TV. “Looks like things around New Montreal are cooling down. Literally and otherwise.”
That massive heat bomb Gomorrah and I had dropped next to the city had made the news. So environntalists were whining about it, others were complaining that it was a massive and unnecessary destruction of property and infrastructure. But most comntators were happy that they hadn't been eaten by plant monsters overnight, so the mood was pretty grateful overall.
Other cities weren’t able to complain as much, with the dia people being on the sa nu as everyone else as far as the antithesis were concerned. So places had co out of it better than we had. Other places had gotten utterly screwed. The full tally wasn’t out yet, but it seed that even just a couple of days into it, this global incursion was probably one of the biggest losses of human life in a short span since the first world war.
Then the news cut out to an ad for burgers with free at-ho delivery.
“Okay, I’m gonna get this training shit out of the way, we can do the rest of this howork stuff later, alright?”
Lucy pulled her feet out of the water and wiggled them dry. “Sure,” she said. “Want help with that? Either part?”
“Uh, yeah, I can’t rember where I put that matrix stuff. I probably shouldn’t shell out for another when I still have one that’s perfectly usable.”
“Oh, I know where it is, give a minute!” Lucy darted out of the room, slipped on wet feet, then caught herself with a giggle by the door. “Running’s complicated, you know.”
I nodded, then waited for the door to click shut before I started to stand up. Now, where could I find a towel?
I think I was supposed to feel a bit guilty about relaxing at ho while the world burned, but it felt so distant. The people dying were far from ho, and I had a whole heap of little distractions to deal with between now and then.
I’d feel guilty about it later, when it beca my problem to fix all of the world’s many, many issues. For now, I was busy debating on whether or not to wear a shirt.
***
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