Joshua Gayou - Commune - The Complete Series - A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Box Set (Books 1-4)

“Very well,” Stacy declared. “Our last few sessions have covered our little groups’ modified system of balances and cash flows. I think it’s about time we start covering the overdraft buffer.”

“Oh, hell, what’s that?”

“Relax, it makes perfect sense once you understand what it does, though it can get rather complex in practice, like all things. Baby steps, okay? The point is: a client might complete several transactions with several different tallymen throughout a given day, right? So! Let’s use some simple numbers for now and keep this easy, okay? Let’s say we have a guy named Jim with twenty credits total in his account—”

“Jesus, that ain’t much!”

“No, but it’s an easy number to keep track of. Okay, so Jim heads out and runs one transaction at the armory for five, then runs down to the other end of town… oh, hell, I don’t know—say he needs some new clothes from the Distributors and spends another five. Now he’s down ten.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, pretty easy. Those transactions can safely be carried out between two different tallymen, and when we square it all up at the end of the day in Johnny’s Master Log, it all works out. Let’s say Jim goes around and spends twenty-five, though, among six different people.”

“Well, Jim’s a fucking crook, then,” Heather said.

“Right, he is, but we have to protect against people like that. You can’t always come together at the end of the day, figure out that ‘oh shit, he spent more than he had’ and make everyone just give everything back. Things get too confusing; too complicated. And, in the case of food or something similar, Jim might have already consumed what he bought with money he didn’t have!”

Heather tapped a pencil against her teeth as she thought about the problem. “So… how the hell do you keep it from happening?”

“That’s the problem,” Stacy smiled. “You can’t. Not working by yourself, anyway. We have several different measures we employ to protect the system, including weighted percentages, randomized audits, and hourly resynchs with Johnny Demaio’s Master Log. Of course, there’s the final accounting at the end of the day where we all reset to the Master, but we have to refresh incrementally, too.”

“What a pain in the ass,” Heather mused. “No wonder you guys always look like you’re running everywhere.”

“Yeah, it’s really what we have. Until someone comes up with a way to actually mint currency, that is what it will continue to be. But it’s important—incredibly important—that we keep it up. We can’t really afford any screw-ups, in my opinion. The first time someone’s account is messed up to a degree where it can’t be corrected that’ll be it. Confidence in the system will collapse utterly, and it just won’t work anymore. Or rather, it only actually works right now for so long as we all believe in it.”

“Shit…”

“It’s not so bad. Remind me to tell you how the New York Stock Exchange used to run some time; you want a real eye-opener. But let’s not get bogged down in the big picture. Again, baby steps. We’ll start with this concept of the percentage buffer and go from there. The buffer is weighted based on the time of day, see, so that the value assumes account levels are more accurate earlier in the day before all the serious trading begins…”

They finished up one hour later. Stacy gave her some more exercises to work over until their next meeting, pulled out his own real notebook and, after reviewing it a few moments, found a way to fudge a credit into her account so that her time was answered for (just in case Isabelle ever got nosey). He had one of his own credits transferred over shortly after to fill the hole. The shell game was probably unnecessary—he probably could have just run a direct transfer over to her, but then again, he did design the audit system for Johnny. He was well aware that it could turn up unfortunate little truths if he was incautious.

Collecting his things, he informed Heather that she was coming along beautifully, let himself out of the tent, and began the half mile walk back to his home.

He arrived sometime later, having traversed half the distance in darkness before allowing himself to use the flashlight. The single-wide trailer sat imperiously on a mound, elevated only marginally above the surrounding shacks and other improvised structures. The cost to get it hauled in had been prodigious, taking the work crews as well as the price of fuel into account, but it had been worth it, so far as he was concerned. All things considered, it was almost on a par with luxury living—Moira had even cried on the day they moved in. She’d been overjoyed at no longer having to live with a dirt floor, and shoes inside the house had been absolutely prohibited from day one.

He regarded the front door quietly, smiling. He would have looked down his nose at such a home, not so very long ago. And now…

Bracing his hand against the wall, he unlaced and stepped out of his shoes before climbing the wooden steps. He tapped gently on the door with a fingernail to let Moira know he was home before letting himself in.

He froze instantly in the entry. Perhaps oblivious to his reaction… or perhaps not, Moira called to him in a happy voice.

“Hey, Love! We have some company.”

A man sat next to her at the dinner table. He had long, muddy-brown hair that hung to his shoulders, a sharp hawk’s nose, and a wide, wet toothy grin. His eyes were open uncomfortably wide like he was some sort of religious zealot, and he was dressed in a faded blue Mickey Mouse t-shirt, blue jeans, and a pair of white socks. He was disastrously thin.

Stacy’s heart began to beat faster, though he wasn’t yet sure why. He was certain he recognized this man from somewhere, saw him somewhere fairly recently. The man sat with one leg crossed over the other; he wiggled the toes of his suspended foot at Stacy in a kind of wave and said, “Well, hello!”

Confused, unreasonably frightened, Stacy said, “I didn’t see your shoes outside.” He felt like an idiot as soon as the words left his mouth.

The man’s eyes swiveled in their sockets towards Moira, the rest of his face frozen in that ugly grin, and swiveled back. “I wore sandals. I left them under the porch.”

“Sandals?” Stacy blurted. He looked like the last person on earth that would wear sandals.

“ Jerrrrrrusalem Cruisers , hey?” he smiled.

Moira cleared her throat and said, “Well, I guess you boys have things to discuss—Oh, I was just keeping Riley company while we waited for you, Babe.”

As she rose from the table, the smile slipped fractionally from Riley’s face. He shot up out of his seat, surprising Moira and scaring the holy hell out of Stacy, causing him to flinch away. Riley’s gaze darted back and forth between them before his lips pulled back into a restored grin. He patted his front pockets absently with both hands; bounced lightly on the balls of his feet. “It was a pleasure Moira, hey?” He reached out to take her hand in both of his and shook it lightly. She looked down at the way he held her, confused. Rather than a handshake, he’d grasped her in such a way that her second and first fingers were enclosed in his right fist while her third and fourth fingers were enclosed in his left as if he would split her hand like a wishbone at any moment. He continued to bounce her hand like that, flapping it gently like a sheet of fabric. “A pleasure all over, right?”

She nodded, though her smile faltered. “Well… good night!” she said, tugging her hand back. She wandered down the hallway to the bedroom at the back of the home.