‘Zoom in on the camera there, Sal,’ Johnny whispered to Sally. She was home sitting in their small den on the military base, Johnny still in the hospital. Talking with the HoloSphere was all they could do now with her this far along in her second trimester. ‘Ya see it? The price? What’s it say?’
‘$4.06.’
‘So higher than the advertised price?’
She zoomed the camera toward the back of the store. ‘Yea,’ she nodded. ‘Much higher, even if they changed prices at the distributor this morning, it’s still higher than the tax and bottle deposit.’
‘Okay, that’s what I thought,’ Johnny said. ‘I been talkin’ to Jimmy, and his gal noticed the same thing. Different prices at different times of day, for different people. I’m gonna get our ol'd buddy Jake on the line, see is he can test some algorithms for US without seemin’ too desperate. I think they’re using racism and reparations encoded in the machines to ID targets, and run war numbers for China, using the system simultaneously to herd people economically speakin’, but I can’t be sure without more data.’
Sally hung up the HoloSphere, smiling. Even paralyzed in the VA Johnny was more man than anyone she had ever met.