Darren woke up to golden text floating above his face.
[GOLDSCRIPT PROTOCOL: ACTIVE]
[SYNCHRONIZATION: COMPLETE]
[WELCOME TO YOUR FIRST DAY AS AN ENTREPRENEUR]
For a moment—a beautiful, blissful moment—he thought it had all been a dream. The firing, the budget spreadsheet, the impossible glowing words offering him salvation. Just stress and bad takeout combining into the world's most vivid nightmare.
Then he tried to blink the text away.
It didn't budge.
"Oh no," Darren whispered to his ceiling. "Oh no no no no—"
He sat up too fast and his vision swam. The golden text scrolled smoothly with his movement, perfectly tracking his field of view like the worst AR interface ever designed, Except he wasn't wearing any AR glasses, wasn't wearing anything except his wrinkled t-shirt and boxers that had definitely seen better days.
His laptop was still open on the folding table, now displaying a simple message: SYSTEM INSTALLED - HARDWARE INTERFACE NO LONGER REQUIRED.
"This is fine," Darren said aloud, his voice climbing an octave. "This is totally fine, I'm just having a very detailed, very persistent hallucination. Probably a brain tumor or maybe I died and this is hell's onboarding process."
[PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT: CATASTROPHIZING]
[RECOMMENDATION: COFFEE]
"Did you just—" Darren stared at the text. "Did you just recommend coffee for my existential crisis?"
The system didn't respond, the words simply faded, replaced by a new prompt:
[TUTORIAL MODE: ENABLED]
[PLEASE EXIT RESIDENCE TO BEGIN CALIBRATION]
Darren looked around his apartment, at the cardboard box by the door containing his entire professional life, at the budget spreadsheet that still showed 17 days until eviction in cheerful red cells, than at the phone that hadn't rung with job offers.
What did he have to lose?
(Besides his sanity, which was clearly already gone.)
The coffee shop on 45th was called "Grindstone" because Seattle coffee shops were legally required to have pun names. Darren had made it three blocks before he realized the golden text wasn't going away and another two blocks before he noticed something worse.
Other people had text too.
A jogger passed him, ponytail bouncing and above her head floated: [STRESS: LOW] [MOOD: ELEVATED] [YIELD: $0.08].
An elderly man waiting at the bus stop: [CONTENTMENT: MODERATE] [YIELD: $0.12].
A teenager scrolling through her phone, probably TikTok: [BOREDOM: HIGH] [YIELD: $0.03]
Everyone had tags, everyone had numbers and they were all painfully, impossibly low.
Darren stumbled to a stop outside Grindstone, his heart doing something arhythmic in his chest. This was it, he'd finally snapped, too much pressure, too much rejection, and his brain had decided to gamify reality as a coping mechanism.
"I should go to the hospital," he muttered, pulling out his phone. "I should call someone. Anyone, except I can't afford the ambulance ride, so maybe..."
[TUTORIAL: TARGET ACQUISITION ACTIVE]
The text grew brighter and suddenly everything else dimmed, not physically—the street was still the same choking Seattle morning, still smelled like rain and espresso—but his attention narrowed. Focused.
A man in a suit stood on the corner, phone pressed to his ear, face the color of a ripe tomato.
"I DON'T CARE WHAT THE PROJECTIONS SAID, HENDERSON!" His voice carried across the street. "THE CLIENT WANTS RESULTS, NOT EXCUSES!"
Above his head, the text was different. Brighter.
[TARGET: UNREGISTERED]
[EMOTION: RAGE]
[AURIC YIELD: $22.41]
Darren blinked. Twenty-two dollars, that was... that was okay money, that was food, that was something in a bank account that currently had $412.73 and a countdown timer.
The businessman continued his rant, spit flying and the number moving up: [$22.63].
"Transcribe the emotion."
The voice wasn't out loud, It was in his head soft and insistent, like a thought that wasn't quite his own.
"Claim its value."
"Transcribe?" Darren said aloud. A passing cyclist gave him a weird look. "What does that even mean? I don't—"
[TUTORIAL: FOCUS ON TARGET]
[VERBALIZE OR DOCUMENT EMOTIONAL STATE]
[CONVERSION RATIO: 1 AUTHENTIC OBSERVATION = AURIC VALUE]
The businessman slammed his phone into his pocket and stormed off, still muttering. The golden tag followed him for a moment, then faded.
[TARGET LOST]
[OPPORTUNITY MISSED: $22.63]
Something twisted in Darren's gut, not quite regret, not quite frustration, just the familiar ache of watching money slip through his fingers because he didn't understand the rules fast enough.
He spent the next hour walking.
The University District was waking up around him. Students stumbling to early lectures, service workers opening shop gates, the unhoused population stirring in doorways, cardboard signs already positioned for morning commuter traffic.
And above every single person: tags. Numbers. Emotional states rendered in cold, quantifiable terms.
Darren stopped focusing on the high-value targets—there'd been a woman screaming at a parking enforcement officer, [$31.15], and a teenager crying on a phone call, [$18.92]—and started testing the system with smaller observations.
A woman in scrubs sat at a bus stop, checking her watch every thirty seconds, her tag read: [ANXIETY] [$3.50].
Darren pulled out his phone and opened a notes app, his hands shook slightly as he typed: "She's worried about being late, keeps checking the time like it'll make the bus arrive faster. Classic pre-shift anxiety."
He hit save and looked up.
The tag still read [$3.50], the woman stood as a bus approached and the text faded to nothing.
"Okay," Darren said. "So writing it down isn't enough. Great, very intuitive system design, really user-friendly."
[TUTORIAL: INCOMPLETE]
[USER HAS NOT ACCEPTED TERMS OF SERVICE]
"Terms of service?" Darren laughed. "You're telling me my psychotic break has legal documentation too?"
The text didn't respond.
Of course it didn't.
By noon, Darren found himself on Pike Street, where the city's financial desperation became most visible. Pawnshops and payday loan operations clustered together like remoras(suckerfish) on a shark, feeding on the people who'd run out of options.
He'd been one of those people once, three years ago. Student loans coming due, bank account in the negatives, standing in line at EZ-Cash with his great-grandfather's watch in a plastic bag, the shame had tasted like copper.
Now he stood outside "Golden Eagle Pawn," watching a man in paint-stained jeans plead with the clerk through the reinforced glass.
"Please, man, I just need another week. Two weeks, tops. I've got a job lined up, I swear.."
The clerk, a thin man with dead eyes, shook his head. "Policy's policy, thirty days to reclaim. After that, we sell."
"That's my kid's Xbox!" The man's voice cracked. "It's all I could afford for his birthday, I just needed quick cash for rent. Please..."
[TARGET: UNREGISTERED]
[EMOTION: DESPERATION]
[AURIC YIELD: $147.88]
The number glowed like a beacon, One hundred forty-seven dollars, that could potentially be rent money, but that was definitely survival.
Darren's mouth went dry.
The man in the paint-stained jeans pulled out his wallet, hands trembling. "What if I pay the interest now? Would that buy me time?"
"Cash only, no cards."
"I don't have cash! That's why I pawned the damn thing!"
The clerk shrugged with the casual cruelty of someone who'd seen this exact scene a thousand times, the man's shoulders sagged. Defeated. He turned and shuffled out, passing within three feet of Darren without seeing him.
[TARGET DEPARTING]
[AURIC YIELD: $147.88]
[CLAIM WINDOW: 45 SECONDS]
The prompt flashed urgent red at the edges.
Darren's hands clenched. This was insane, this was like a parasite, watching someone's pain and thinking about profit margins.
But seventeen days, $412.73, the math was merciless.
"Transcribe the emotion. Claim its value."
"No," Darren whispered. "This is wrong, I'm not—I can't—"
[COUNTDOWN: 30 SECONDS]
The man stopped at the corner, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, the gesture was small, private, the kind of moment people tried to hide from the world.
And Darren could monetize it.
His stomach twisted, his vision blurred with something that might have been tears or might have been the system glitching, he didn't know anymore, didn't know where his thoughts ended and the Goldscript Protocol began.
[COUNTDOWN: 15 SECONDS]
"Great," Darren said, his voice hollow. "My mental breakdown comes with a user interface. Does it have a dark mode?"
The man rounded the corner and disappeared.
[TARGET LOST]
[OPPORTUNITY MISSED: $147.88]
The golden text faded, leaving Darren standing alone on Pike Street, watching the pawnshop's glowing sign flicker in the gray afternoon light.
His phone buzzed, a notification from his bank: ACCOUNT BALANCE: $408.23.
Apparently, even buying coffee was a luxury now.
Seventeen days..
The Goldscript Protocol hummed at the edge of his vision, patient and relentless, waiting for him to make a choice he couldn't take back.