The Accountant

Written by Sophie Sparham for ‘Tales from Cybersalon’, November 2021.

“Tell me again what you want,” I said, cracking my fingers.

Denis squirmed in his seat, twisting his hat in his hands. “I need the sex credits bringing down,” he said, “and the alcohols ones.” One lamp lit the dark room. I had positioned it in his direction to keep myself in shadow. In the cone of light, I could see the beads of sweat on his face.

“What’s your code?” I asked.

“Five five four seven eight six,” he replied.

I typed the numbers onto my screen and almost spat my coffee. “Two hundred sex credits this month?”

Denis hung his head and I felt the pit of my stomach drop. Sometimes it was hard to tell who you were dealing with. Who cared as long as they paid?

“I took out a few magazine subscriptions,” he shrugged, “visits to Coco’s. It’s been a month since the wife left …”

“I don’t care,” I stopped him. I looked at his health credits, which were considerably lower. I transferred fifty over. Moved another fifty to home credits and transportation. He sat there in silence as I went through the bank statement, added a few weekend trips, a fake gym membership, art classes. Finally, I sat back and sipped at my coffee.

“That should do you,” I said.

“Really?” He beamed.

“Really,” I replied.  “When’s the job interview?”

“Next week.

“Consider your credit test passed.”

Denis stood up. “Oh, thank you!”

He held out his hand. I didn’t take it.

“You can go now,” I gestured to the door.

I always waited fifteen minutes after every client left. I tapped my watch, waited until the hand struck one, before putting on my trench coat and stepping out into the darkness. Outside, the first signs of autumn littered the street. Dead leaves crunched beneath my boots as I crossed the road and made my way through the park. Something caught my eye. It was small and silver and shone dimly in the light. I bent down, ran my fingers over it. How the hell had it got here? I hadn’t seen a coin in over ten years. Not since the system went total digital.

I shivered, thinking back to the leather purse I used to carry in my left pocket, a time before the days of digital monitoring. A time when you could walk into a bar without having to turn your balance into alcohol credits, where your gym membership didn’t count towards your health score, when bank statements weren’t checked like passports. A time when I had a job. One that was above board. There were few of us left now. Most had retrained or been sucked into Monetor, the financial monitoring conglomerate. I put the coin into my pocket and squoze it tight, stepping back onto the street. The wind picked up and I hitched my scarf around my neck, crossing the road. My pager beeped. I pulled it from my pocket. This was the only way me and Akeel were able to keep in contact without them tracking us.

New job.

Akeel, I typed, it’s late.

New job. Keep walking. 

A shiver ran down my spine. I turned around. The street was empty. I walked faster, damning my heels as they clicked against the concrete. A woman was stood on the corner. She lowered her hood as I approached.

“The Accountant, I take it?” she asked.

I remained silent.

She had straight black hair and olive skin, a mole just above her lip on the right side. A sweet smell drifted from her, like cheap strawberry perfume, the kind you wore at school to impress boys.

“Did you get the message?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. She’d intercepted my pager. How?

She handed me a credit statement. My credit statement, before the edits I’d performed. My hairs stood up as I stared down at my real name.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

She smiled, “I’ll walk with you to the train tracks.”

The woman looked me up and down as we walked. “I thought you’d be …”

“A man,” I finished her sentence.

“Blonde,” she corrected me.

I ran my hand through my ginger bob. I’d always prided myself in keeping my red hair.

“Did you like the coin?” she asked. “Took us a while to find a collector, we thought it’d remind you of the good old times.”

“Who are you?”

“A friend.” She offered me a cigarette. I shook my head and she lit her own. “You’re a difficult person to find,” she said.

“I try and keep myself offline,” I admitted. Harder done than said in a world that no longer had paper money.

“We’ve got a job for you,” the woman continued.

“We?”

“Me and my employer,” she said, taking a drag. “We need you to change the credit history of Alva Damn.”

I took a sharp intake of breath. Damn was one of the candidates running in the elections to lead the Strive Party. A little too Mother Teresa for me, but I could get on board with her.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“We’re quite sure.” The woman threw her bud to the floor.

“I don’t really …”

“Don’t get all charity case on me, you just cleared that pervert’s record.”

My cheeks flushed. How long had they been watching me?

“That’s different,” I said.

“How?” the woman asked.

I paused.

She smiled. “There will of course be a fee.”

“How much?”

“Sixty thousand credits.”

I tried to keep my features neutral.

“Pretty good for only a few minutes work?” She paused. “I’ll leave it with you.”  She put a hand on my shoulder, before turning and walking back down the street. I leant against the boarded-up newsagent and caught my breath. Half a woman’s face smiled down at me on the peeling billboard across the road. The old railway stretched out into the distance. I climbed onto the bridge and walked into darkness, away from the metropolis. Alva Damn was a politician, but not a monster. It was difficult to say if she was one of the good guys. I didn’t believe in good guys. ‘…you just cleared that pervert’s record …’ My new friend was right and I hadn’t even thought twice about it.