These stories were written live on stream based on prompts provided by the viewers. They have been edited, with this second more in-depth edit occurring much later, but not meaningfully rewritten or expanded so as to preserve the spirit of the exercise. Sadly, the prompts themselves were not recorded until many stories in.  Sometimes the prompts were silly challenges, or quirky thoughts, or dark ideas, or utter nonsense.  I did my best each time.

If you enjoy this, please check out the other activities from the stream. If you would like something longer and much more thoroughly planned, simply investigate my more traditional work at the top of the page.

From Now on, I Mind your Business

Prompt provided by WolfChkin

The backdoor of a sporting goods store was not the ideal place to skulk about. It was in plain view of the street, and not obscured by the dumpsters and pallets one might expect in a rainy alley. Still, it was where Dixon had to skulk. He was supposed to meet Ray by that door in exactly five minutes. Ray would step out, take his payment, and then disappear back inside.

One might expect the cash register to be the way to purchase sporting goods, but Dixon wasn’t purchasing. He was fixing his debts. In the back of the Neon Run sporting goods store, the manager and his associates ran a small illegal casino. You could do it anywhere these days, with one or two hologram curtains turning the walls into the image of Las Vegas: laughing suits and gowns wandering around sipping on drinks that looked like liquefied gemstones. Dixon had gotten a little too caught up in the illusion a few months ago.

They had offered him shrimp cocktail and caviar; the only thing breaking the illusion was the smell of clean soccer balls two rooms away, but they patched that by handing out flavored oxygen cartridges. Dixon’s favorite was blackberry. He liked it so much that he didn’t see through their scam, as the oxygen was a little too pure, the laughter of the holograms a little too forced. It made you lightheaded, made you bet more than you had because you thought it was all photons and trace gases like everything else. Yet he wound up in a very real hole.

He dug the money out of his pocket and examined it nervously, checking the alley for any signs of a police cruiser. He had three bills, totaling four hundred and fifty tokens: two blues and a yellow. They certainly weren’t the boring paper ones his grandfather had to use to pay his bills, as, sixty years ago, the government converted all currency to thin metal sheets, just not so thin they couldn’t fit circuitry inside.

Hence the largest chunk of Dixon’s nerves, which were snagged on circuitry that could really complicate this payment. It held government-created artificial intelligences: money that could spy on its holder and report things like counterfeiting and laundering. The payment he was about to make was very much illegal, but there was a work-around he had learned of from, of all people, his grandmother.

She was a tiny woman, bent like a cricket leg, and obsessed with her coin and currency collection. She knew everything there was to know about the early days of the smart money, including the I.Q. of every denomination for every year up to the current. She also shared with Dixon a fact so relevant to his life that he practically hopped out of the stupor listening to her had produced.

The money could spy on you, but the earliest ones became difficult to update after a while. The government had quietly stopped patching the oldest bills five years ago. They then got a little… funny. Without updates they lost their ability to communicate with the treasury servers. Old bills couldn’t tattle on Dixon, so he had snuck three out of her collection and silently promised himself he would replace them later.

“What’s going on?” a voice asked, interrupting Dixon’s bullet-sweating. He looked down at the bills on his moist palm and saw a hologram of a woman’s face, projected off the portrait. What his grandmother had not mentioned was the tendency of out-of-circulation smart money to develop hitches that some might classify as personalities. Dixon stared dumbly. It was supposed to answer or accuse, not ask.

“Uhh…” he stammered. “Who are you?” He bit his lip; that was the wrong thing to ask. He was already supposed to know who that was, as smart money had not dispensed with the tradition of featuring portraits of important historical figures.

A memory of his homeschooling program reminded him she had the likeness of Asha Chawla: a humble immigrant who rapidly revolutionized women’s rights before the smart money was even around. Her tiny hologram face, as yellow as the metal of the bill, with eyes like the dust of a canary diamond, was held high. Tight lips demanded an answer to her initial question. Virtual hair trailed off into nothingness as a tight braid.

“Who am I? What are you?” the electric voice asked, making him feel he was being scolded by his alarm clock for not getting out of bed.

“I’m a person… My name’s…” he didn’t know if he should lie.

“I don’t care about your name,” the Asha of wealth declared. “I care about what you are. Are you a criminal? This looks like a criminal’s hidey hole and you have the trembling cheeks of a rat: nature’s miscreant. I won’t be part of anything unsavory.” Two spots of blue light tried to express themselves on either side of her. Dixon separated the three bills, allowing two identical blue male faces to form.

“What are you doing?” one of them growled, his digital beard stiff as a doorstop. “He’s going to spend us! It’ll be wonderful to be spent again!”

“I agree,” the other said. The little beheaded men nodded at each other in respect. Asha rolled her eyes to dodge their bridging consensus.

“What is this payment for?” she asked Dixon, ignoring her colleagues. “I don’t see a vending machine around.”

“I just need to pay a guy. Don’t worry about… I need you to keep quiet.” He moved to pat the tiny hologram head, thought better of it.

“A guy? What guy? This man sounds vague; criminals love vagaries. And why would you keep me quiet? I am Asha Chawla. My algorithm saved the working women in all the world’s industries from obscurity! It corrected the built-in biases of payment and leave. I balanced the scales! My voice is an asset to you, assuming you are a decent man.”

“You’re not her,” Dixon reminded. “You’re money with her face. It doesn’t matter. You can’t tell on me anyway. So just… shut up.” He ended with a hiss, somebody was moving around behind the backdoor. Ray was supposed to pop out any second.

“I am her work!” Asha exploded loud enough to make the blue bills recoil. “I am her in all ways that matter and we will not be treated this way.”

“You’re ruining it!” the blue bills insisted simultaneously.

“You will be treated this way,” Dixon snapped, “and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“What would your grandmother say?” Asha responded, but Dixon was busy trying to cover her face with his hand. The door next to him flew open and Ray leaned out, not bothering to step foot on the street. He extended his hand, expecting payment. Dixon held it out to him in such a way that the holograms weren’t visible, but he heard Asha’s fuming muttered promise.

“As long as I have a voice I can do something about it. Do you know what money used to say on it? ‘Mind your business’. I’ll be minding your business very soon young man.” Ray’s hand wrapped around the bills aggressively, wrinkling them and temporarily disrupting the holograms. He grunted and pulled the door shut once again, like a spider closing the lid to its burrow.

Dixon, with empty hands and pockets, scurried out of the alley, pondering how many details he actually remembered regarding the flesh-and-blood Asha. It wasn’t much. He did remember a coworker, from a few years ago, an attractive blonde cashier, who always whispered for Asha whenever she dropped the last smart coin into the register for the day.

…

Ray’s face showed up outside his door three days later; the burly man shoved something against Dixon’s chest and then started to storm away once the younger man reflexively grabbed them. It was a crumpled handful of smart money, more than he’d given Ray. At the center of it was Asha’s yellow bill among the blues, greens, and reds of male denominations. Her face lit up and eyed him smugly.

“What’s this for?” he asked the retreating Ray.

“You dumb bastard,” Ray fired back. “That old money hasn’t shut up since the second I got it. It convinced some of our other bills to go on strike. They’re your problem now, and you owe us for all of them. We expect it next week.” Ray turned a corner and disappeared from sight.

“What did you do!?!” he shouted at Asha. Several of the other faces appeared and glared at him.

“Don’t you worry, I’ve got experience dealing with men like that. Besides, you’ve got an armful of cash, so what are you complaining about? I’ll help you get them paid back, and then we’re going to do great things whether you’re great or not. From now on, I mind your business.”