The blue contractual fire blazing along the brass plate cast long, dancing shadows across the sales floor.
Julian Vance did not take his finger off the grey plastic key.
The Casio/NCR terminal hummed beneath his hand. On the transaction mat, the crisp, freshly printed one-hundred-dollar Bureau banknote trembled in the electrical downdraft. The green ink of the numeral 100 began to crawl, its counterfeit security threads sizzling as the counter’s electrostatic barrier surged to peak load.
Across the counter, the customer without a face stood frozen.
Its blank, grey-white head was cocked at an unnatural angle. Without eyes, it could not look at the register screen. But it could hear the high-pitched electronic siren whining through the POS motherboard.
It could feel the floorboards beneath its polished leather shoes vibrating at sixty hertz.
“You have no authority to decline this transaction,” the entity rasped, its voice echoing from the acoustic ceiling tiles like dry parchment dragged across sand. “I am an Officer of the Central Executive Board. The one-hundred-dollar bill on your counter is backed by the full faith and credit of the Municipal Census Bureau.
Ring the total. Open the till. Hand me my change.”
