They Taught the Machines to Spend

They taught the machines to read our fingerprints and now they’re giving them credit cards.

I’m at the pawn shop on Garfield, the one with the barred windows and the neon sign that buzzes like a dying fly. A kid — maybe twenty-two, glass behind his eyes — is haggling with the owner over a guitar. He wants sixty bucks. The owner offers forty. They settle at fifty, cash, no receipt. A human transaction. Messy, inefficient, and completely unmonitorable by any API.