Chapter 4 Money that doesn't feel earned

POV: First Person (Samuel Reed)

Three thousand nine hundred and ten points sat in my head like a number I hadn't earned the right to look at.

"Would you like to convert Fear Points to currency," the voice asked, calm as ever, like it was reading off a menu instead of offering me the ability to turn someone else's terror into cash.

"How much would it actually give me," I asked, sitting alone in the office at the back of the garage, door shut, blinds down.

"Three thousand nine hundred and ten points converts to approximately one thousand nine hundred and fifty five dollars at your current host level."

I stared at the wall for a long moment. Two thousand dollars had been the exact number that started all of this,Ethan's number,the number I didn't have three days ago and now, apparently, almost did.

"That's not real money," I said out loud, mostly to myself. "That's not how banks work."

"It will appear as a standard deposit in any account you designate. The origin will not raise flags with any financial institution."

"How is that possible."

"I am not required to explain the mechanism, only the outcome." The voice said.

"That's not an answer." I spat.

"Correct."

I sat with that for a while, turning the phone over in my hands even though there was nothing on the screen worth looking at. Part of me wanted to ask if the money was stolen from somewhere, from someone, if converting it meant Denise from billing was going to open her account one day and find something missing. But the voice had already told me once that it only measured fear.

"Convert five hundred," I said finally. "Not all of it."

"A conservative choice. Five hundred points converts to approximately two hundred and fifty dollars." It said.

"I'm not spending what I don't understand." I said.

"Noted."

The number appeared in my account twenty minutes later while I was still sitting there, no explanation, no transaction history that looked unusual, just two hundred and fifty dollars that hadn't existed that morning. I checked it four times before I believed it.

I didn't buy anything for myself. I thought about it for exactly as long as it took to remember the stack of unopened envelopes sitting on my mother's kitchen counter, the ones she thought I hadn't noticed, the ones with red print on the outside that neither of us talked about.

I drove to the house that evening and let myself in the back way, the way I'd done since I was a kid sneaking home past curfew, and found the stack right where I expected it. Electric bill, final notice,Water bill, second notice. I paid both online from my phone standing right there in her kitchen, hands slightly unsteady, feeling less like a man solving a problem and more like someone hiding one.

"You're here late," my mother said, coming in from the living room in her robe, surprised to see me. "Everything okay at the shop?"

"Everything's fine," I said. "Just wanted to check on you."

She studied me the way she always did, like she could read weather patterns in my face. "You look tired, Samuel."

"I'm always tired, Mom."

"That's not the same as fine," she said.

I didn't have an answer for that one either.

Two days later she called me at the garage, her voice bright in a way that made my chest tighten before she even said why.

"The strangest thing happened," she said. "I went to pay the electric bill and it said paid in full,same with the water. I must have paid them and forgot, my memory's getting as bad as your father's used to be."

"Probably," I said.

"You didn't do this, did you?" She asked with suspicion.

"Where would I get the money for that, Mom?" I said.

It wasn't a lie exactly.

It was a question, and questions aren't lies, not technically, but it felt like one crawling out of my mouth anyway, and I hated how easily it came.

"No, I suppose not," she said, and I could hear the relief in her voice, uncomplicated and warm, the kind of relief that comes from believing the world is a little kinder than it actually is. "Well, I'm glad that's one less thing to worry about."

"Yeah," I said. "One less thing."

I hung up and sat there staring at the wall of the office for a long time, the same wall where my father's photo hung straight again, and I thought about how good it felt to hear her sound light for once, and how sick that same feeling made me underneath it.

"You seem troubled," the voice said, unprompted.

"I lied to my mother," I said.

"You protected her from information that would only cause her distress. The outcome remains beneficial regardless of the method."

"That's not the same as being honest."

"Honesty and kindness are not always compatible. You chose kindness." Came the voice.

"Convenient that you'd frame it that way." I said with a bitter sweet smile.

"I don't require convenience. I only observe outcomes."

I rubbed my hands over my face, elbows on the desk, and asked the question that had been sitting under everything since the hospital.

"What happens if I keep using you,really. Not the sales pitch version" I asked carefully.

"Host behavior patterns are recorded continuously. Long term projections vary by individual."

"That's vague." I said.

"It is accurate." Came the reply.

"Can the government trace this money." I asked curiously.

"No standard financial tracing method will identify the source."

"Can the points disappear,can I lose them." I asked.

"Points can be lost through host death, host incapacitation, or system termination."

"System termination. Meaning what exactly." I asked with wide eyes, obviously taken aback.

The voice didn't answer that one at all, and the silence sat there long enough that I almost asked again before it spoke instead about something else entirely.

"All transactions have been recorded," it said.

"Recorded by who," I said immediately, sitting up straighter.

Nothing answered.

The silence stretched in a way that felt deliberate, like the system had decided that particular question belonged to someone else to answer, someone who wasn't me and wasn't currently speaking.

I sat there another few minutes, unsettled in a way I couldn't fully name, then decided I needed air more than I needed answers I clearly wasn't going to get tonight. I locked up the office, killed the lights in the main bay, and stepped out the front door into the cool evening, keys in hand.

That was when I saw the car.

Same street corner, different night, but the same feeling crawling up the back of my neck. A dark sedan parked across from the garage this time instead of my apartment, engine off, windows tinted just enough that I couldn't make out more than a shape behind the wheel. A small flash, quick and precise, the kind of light a camera makes when someone's trying not to be noticed and fails anyway.

"Hey," I called out, already walking toward it. "You need something?"

The engine turned over before I made it halfway across the lot, headlights snapping on, tires pulling away from the curb fast enough to leave a thin streak of rubber behind on the asphalt.

I broke into a jog for a few seconds, useless, watching taillights shrink down Main Street and disappear around the corner by the old pharmacy, gone before I could even catch a plate number.

I stood there in the empty street, breathing harder than the short jog should have caused, staring at the space where the car had been like it might reappear if I looked long enough.

"Target unknown," the voice said. "Intensity, unable to calculate."

I frowned at that. The system had never once failed to give me a clean number before.

"What does that mean," I asked.

"Unable to calculate."

"It means the subject's reaction did not register as fear."

"Then what was it." I asked.

The voice paused, longer than it ever had before answering a question, long enough that I started to wonder if it was going to answer at all.

"Curiosity," it finally said. "The same as mine."