After a good night’s sleep and a quick breakfast, we were back in the truck.
“So why do we have to go to this place so early?” I grumbled as I slowly drove the truck out of the hangar and into the open sky.
“Evelyn, it’s eight thirty in the morning, that’s hardly early,” Jane chastised . “And to answer your question, we need to be there by ten to watch the samurai parade!”
I blinked a couple tis, then shook my head. “I’m sorry, I think my ears malfunctioned for a minute. The what?”
“The samurai parade. Nimbletainnt is one of the world’s biggest entertainnt companies, and since most people love samurai, they have a number of shows, gas, and interactive sh experiences based on samurai,” Jennifer explained, rolling her eyes. “I can’t believe you don’t know this.”
“Why would I know this? I don’t exactly go around looking up corporations on the net!” I exclaid.
“That’s no excuse,” Alan snorted. “They had a couple of those floating holo billboards hovering around the undercity before you began your restoration efforts. They were the only company not advertising firearms or flavored nutriblocks. I’m almost as oblivious of my surroundings as you are, but I’d at least heard the na.”
“Looking up would have ant there was a chance of missing a particularly juicy piece of scrap,” I said.
“Or maybe you just couldn’t see them because you had your hood up, like always,” Eddie laughed.
“Oh, I probably saw them,” I snapped, looking at Eddie in the rearview mirror. “Just because I have a hood up doesn’t an I was completely oblivious. I never paid much attention to the ads because I always had sothing more important to do. There’s no point in fantasizing about luxury goods when we were struggling just to keep everyone fed.”
The boy flinched a little, his confident smirk fell, and he leaned back in his seat. I imdiately regretted snapping at the kid. Today was supposed to be a fun excursion, but I just couldn’t take the constant needling.
Even though we were fairly well off now, just a year ago we’d been struggling to survive. Those mories were still extrely clear in my mory, and there was so small part of that feared we’d end up back there one day.
I wish I could just joke about it like everyone else, but I couldn’t. I had far too many bad mories for that.
That being said, I didn’t want to bring down the mood, and I didn’t like snapping at everyone. So I looked at Jane, silently pleading for her to change the topic.
“It’s unfortunate that Evelyn doesn’t know anything about Nimbletainnt, their properties, or Nimbleland, but that just ans we can spend the rest of the day educating her on everything she’s missing,” Jane said smoothly, taking control of the conversation. “What is everyone looking forward to today?”
“The gas!” Eddie declared, regaining a little bit of his previous pep.
“The stuffies!” Issi shouted a second later.
Jennifer didn’t reply imdiately. She probably wouldn’t have if Jane hadn’t turned in her seat so she could look at the kids.
“The samurai simulator,” she finally admitted.
“A samurai simulator?” I repeated in surprise. “How would that work?”
“It’s a sh simulation that replicates an incursion,” Jennifer explained slowly. “It has a database of hundreds of thousands of catalogs, and when you earn enough points, it suggests a handful of top choices based upon your public profile. Most people treat it like a ga, but from what I’ve heard, it’s a fairly realistic simulation.”
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“Interesting…” I muttered. “Maybe I should check it out.”
“Maybe it would be a good ti to ntion that even though you can’t legally be held responsible for any damage you cause, due to your samurai status, you should be careful about doing anything reckless in the park,” Alan said.
Frowning in confusion, I turned to look at my little brother.
“Why the… heck… would I want to go around and cause damage to an amusent park?” I said, rembering to censor my language in front of the kids. “It’s not like I have a habit of wandering around, busting up private property. Not without a reason anyways.”
“So that little crusade you went on six months ago?” Alan prompted.
“I had a very good reason for that! It was all in the defense of civilians… right up to the point where the forr council went too far,” I said defensively. “And even then my friends and I focused all our efforts on the corporate military assets, not the facilities.”
I glanced back at the kids, who were looking between Alan and curiously. Although they’d been aware that I’d been involved in the fighting around the city at that ti, I had intentionally downplayed how bad the fighting was. “What’s your point?”
“It’s just that… After you beca a samurai, I went online a couple tis to see if there’s anything you had to be worried about. Although you spent a lot of ti looking after our protection and quality of life, you rarely looked after yourself, so I wanted to see if there was anything you needed to watch out for,” Alan said.
“Why is this the first ti I’ve heard of this?” I asked.
“Because the consensus online was: Unless it’s literally the first day after awakening, Samurai can one hundred percent look after themselves with their AI’s help. Even if a gacity dedicated all their resources towards eliminating a samurai, most of the ti the samurai would win,” Alan explained. “At the ti I thought the idea was ridiculous. How little I knew.”
“Get to the point,” I growled.
“Right, well, there are a couple caveats. Although samurai can absolutely crush corporations, they should avoid starting an unprovoked beef with multinationals. Many of these companies either have the support of other samurai or have alternative ways to fight back. A lot of people used Nimbletainnt as an example of a company you shouldn't ss with,” Alan said.
“What? They’re just a dia company. How bad could it be?” I asked.
Alan looked at for several seconds, then turned towards the kids. “Hey, do you guys know the Clumsy Crusader?”
“He’s funny!” Issi laughed. “He cos up with all these plans on how to fight the Antithesis, then always needs Samurai Girl and Samurai Man to co rescue him!”
Alan just turned back towards and raised an eye.
“I don’t get it. Who’s Clumsy Crusader? What do they have to do with this?”
“Clumsy Crusader is a character of Samurai Friends, a super popular kids cartoon,” Jennifer explained. “They’ve released nurous press releases claiming he’s a completely original creation, and any similarities to any real-world person are completely coincidental.”
I felt a shiver run down my spine. “That’s not a foreboding statent at all.”
“The word online is that he’s based upon a samurai out east, nad White Knight. He dresses up as a knight, and he used to investigate large corporations to look for signs of corruption or illegal business practices. He didn’t find anything on Nimbletainnt, but apparently he stord into several of their branch offices and tore them up ‘looking for proof of their wrongdoing,’” Alan said. “Nimbletainnt couldn’t do anything to stop him legally, but after wrecking the fourth or fifth office, Samurai Friends suddenly had a new, legally distinct joke of a character. From what I’ve heard, White Knight had to stop his corporate crusades. Too many people equate him to the cartoon character these days, and no one will take him seriously.”
“I’d start a real crusade if that happened to ,” I grumbled.
“They did a complete psych profile of the guy and knew exactly how to make him stop,” Jennifer explained. “There was very little chance he’d get violent, and if he did… Nimbletainnt is partnered with hundreds of samurai around the world. They have backing if they need it.”
“You seem to know a lot about this,” I said.
Jennifer shrugged. “I also did a little research. Did you know most corporations have a samurai threat index? Most of them end up getting leaked to the net. You almost always end up in the ‘No Corporate Value’ category, which actually has a surprisingly small number of samurai in it. It consists of samurai who dislike corporations but won’t do anything unless provoked. Asking to use their image, or using their image without permission, will probably result in corporate losses.”
“Sounds about right. Why is that category so small?” I asked.
“Because most samurai are either open to so sort of deal, if the offer is right, or outright hostile to corporations. The big corps actually shut down all the advertising in the area where hostile samurai are located, doing their best to avoid provoking them,” Jennifer said.
“Seems like a lot of work,” I grumbled. “Wait… how did we get to talking about samurai threat indexes? What was the point of this discussion again?”
“Don’t cause damage to the park, or any trouble, unless there’s a really good reason to,” Jane declared. “Just be good!”
“Well… Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” I said indignantly. “It wasn’t like I was planning on causing damage today.”
“Are you planning on bringing your bears into the park? Taking Bob?” Jennifer asked.
My eyes unfocused, and a cold sweat ran down my back.
“Give a minute,” I replied quietly. “I need to take care of sothing before we arrive.”
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