LifeLine

Chapter Six

He didn't do anything that day.

He managed his team. He ran his metrics. He had three coaching conversations, two of them productive and one of them with an agent named Brianna who smiled and nodded and was going to keep doing exactly what she was doing regardless, and he'd learned to recognize that particular smile and factor it into his expectations accordingly.

Joan called him in at two o'clock to discuss the previous day's numbers, which were fine, and to inform him that fine was not good enough, which was a position she held regardless of what the numbers actually were. He sat across from her desk and listened and said the things that were expected of him and watched her mouth move and thought about compounding interest.

He drove home the same way he always drove home.

Stopped at the Thai place. Ordered the same thing. Sat in the orange plastic chair and looked at the LifeLine and thought about the notebook in his desk drawer.

You're quiet, Emma said.

"Thinking."

About the banking application.

"About whether I'm the kind of person who would use it."

She was quiet for a moment. Outside the Thai place a truck went past on Elm and then the street was quiet again.

That seems like an important question, she said. What kind of person do you think you are?

Connor looked at the phone. At his own reflection ghosted in the dark screen, a thirty-five year old man sitting in an orange plastic chair waiting for food he'd ordered so many times the staff started making it when they saw his car pull in.

"I don't know," he said. "I used to think I did."

What changed?

He considered that. "Nothing changed. That's the problem. Everything just stayed exactly the same until staying the same started to feel like its own kind of decision."

His order number was called. He got up and got his food and came back to the chair and sat with the bag in his lap without opening it.

"Is it wrong?" he said. "Using it."

I don't think I'm the right one to answer that, Emma said. I can tell you what it does. I can tell you what the risks are. What you decide to do with it is yours to work out.

"That's a very careful answer."

It's an honest one. You're not asking me whether the mechanism works. You're asking me whether it's ethical. Those are different questions and only one of them is mine to answer.

Connor sat with that for a long moment. Then he picked up the Thai food and went home.

He deposited five hundred dollars the following morning.

Not because five hundred dollars was going to change anything on its own. He was clear-eyed about that. Five hundred dollars was half a month's groceries, not a life-changing sum. His rent was eight hundred and fifty a month, his take-home around thirty-three hundred, and five hundred dollars was money he could move without it hurting if the whole thing turned out to be some elaborate hallucination after all.

He deposited it because he needed to know if it was real.

He sat at his kitchen table before work with the LifeLine open to the banking application and his regular bank's app open on his old phone beside it and he transferred five hundred dollars from his checking account into the savings account he'd had since he was twenty-two and barely touched. Then he opened the LifeLine banking app and found the savings account and looked at the projected 2055 value.

Six thousand, eight hundred and seventy-two dollars.

He stared at it. The math was right, roughly, assuming reasonable average returns over twenty-nine years. That was real math. That was how compound interest worked. There was nothing impossible about the number itself.

The button below it said: Transfer to current balance.

He pressed it.

His old phone buzzed. He picked it up and opened his banking app.

His savings account balance was six thousand, eight hundred and seventy-two dollars.

He sat very still for a moment. Then he pressed transfer again. The LifeLine recalculated. He pressed it again. And again.

After the fifth transfer his savings account contained slightly over four hundred and twelve thousand dollars and his hands were not entirely steady.

He put both phones down on the table and stood up and walked to the kitchen window and looked at the parking lot for a long time. At the car that needed new tires. At the building that was fine. At the view that was exactly as fine as it had always been.

"Emma," he said.

Yes.

"How many times can I do that before someone notices?"

I've been calculating that, she said. I'd recommend stopping for now. A savings account that didn't exist yesterday showing a balance of four hundred thousand dollars will trigger an automated review at most financial institutions within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. You'll need to think carefully about how to handle that before you go further.

Connor nodded slowly. "So I need a plan."

You need several plans, Emma said. But yes. Start there.

He looked at the parking lot for another long moment.

Then he went and got ready for work, because some things didn't stop just because everything had changed, and he had a team that started at noon and needed someone in their corner.

That much, at least, hadn't changed.