Phil

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Phil first realized something was afoot when his favorite dumplings cost sixteen times the previous price. There were always fluctuations, of course, such as when he was particularly hungry, at busy hours, or on Wednesday nights when he was accustomed to sneaking out of the Auracorp offices early to eat and watch the city lights. But he was not hungry, it was not busy, and it was a friday night, not a Wednesday one. And even if it had been a Wednesday, the jump had never been this dramatic, and so he simply froze.

“Look pal, y’gonna buy ’em or not?” The store clerk standing across him said, her delivery monotone.

The bewildered man in front of her occupied only a cursory partition of Emily’s brain; What remained of her paltry focus lied squarely behind Phil on the back of the cheery “Open 24 Hours” sign that condemned her to this fate.

She hated that sign. Almost as much as she hated Liam for leaving her alone to tend to the store for the past 20 hours, 18 minutes and 53… 54 seconds. She couldn’t blame Liam, though. He had only killed himself to escape the sign. As far as she was concerned it was an occupational hazard, borne of the sign’s malevolence. It wasn’t the first time the sign had relegated her to her prison, nor would it be the last.

“I.. I can’t afford this” stuttered Phil finally.

“Then put ’em back” Said Emily. Some neural pathway in her mind noted that this perhaps wasn’t the most helpful answer, but that line of thought was involuntarily discarded as quickly as it was raised.

Phil opened and closed his mouth several times. The opacity of pricing had always been relatively dubious, but never before had the results been unreasonable. Phil set his jaw. This was unjust, that he knew. He had to get to the bottom of this. For the dumplings. For the people.

“What? But I… Why? Why are they so expensive? Just last week I bought these exact dumplings, what happened?” This statement stirred something around in Emily’s sleep deprived soup of consciousness. She knew this guy; Tallish. Lanky. White Collar attire: Probably some low-level Corpo. No. Nothing.

“Look, guy. I dunno why the system does what it does. I dunno if the eggheads who made it know what it does. I do know that I’m meant to charge you 500 Ed’s for those dumplings”

“N.. No. I simply refuse to accept it. I categorically reject this.. This facist declaration. You will sell me these dumplings at market rate. Please.” Phil felt sick. He had never done something so confrontational. No he told himself. you, Phil Benson, are a champion of the people and your cause is righteous. The battle will be grueling and scarring but we will win the war. When in the course of human events…

Emily blinked. This interaction demanded significantly more attention than she had anticipated. As her (depleted) mental reserves rushed in, the man clicked into place. Ah, that was it.

“Oh, hey I remember you, You came in here earlier ’n bought a bunch of those dumplings. Or no.. Wait. You came in and bought some, then left, and did that a few times actually. Must’ve been hungry, haha.” Emily was quite pleased with herself. She fancied herself a modern Sherlock Holmes. This was fun.

This tore Phil out of his mental monologue like a slap to the face. His face went white. “That’s impossible. I was at work. All day. I’m always at work. All day.”

Emily on some level recognized this was probably pretty bad, but her face twisted into a smile. The plot thickens. She spun around without a word and began clicking away at the shop’s surveillance computer.

Phil watched her work in silent horror. After an agonizing four minutes, she spun the monitor around with a flourish and there he was: buying dumplings, plain as day. As she demonstrated the full reconstructed 3D environment, featuring 8k detail, 120Hz framerate, and a helpful little tooltip identifying the man purchasing dumplings as “Phil Benson (98%),” Phil’s eyeballs mercifully rolled backward into his head and Phil was temporarily relieved of duty.

Twenty city blocks away, Phil Benson walked into a pharmacy.

He nodded his head to the music in his ear implant as he made his way down the second aisle. He casually dismissed a warning on his heads up display highlighting a box of blood pressure medication in the aisle to his left, and kept moving.

He grabbed some antibiotics, some fever medicine, and paused. He took a deep breath to settle his nerves and walked to the checkout counter. He just barely held back a sob of joy as the total came out to a paltry 15 Eurodollars.

After paying, Phil stumbled out of the pharmacy in shock: It worked.

He paused and looked down at his hands, which were shaking violently enough to gently rattle the pills in the bottles he now held. “Sorry, Phil, whoever you are” he whispered. Then he melted into the night.