Darren didn't leave Pike Street.
He told himself he was just walking. Clearing his head, processing the fact that he was apparently experiencing a psychotic episode with impressive production values and a functional payment system.
But his feet kept bringing him back to the pawnshops.
There were five of them on this three-block stretch, each more depressing than the last. Golden Eagle. EZ-Cash. Rapid Loans, they all had the same reinforced glass, the same flickering light signs, the same desperate customers cycling through like it was some kind of misery assembly line.
The tags appeared above everyone.
[STRESS: MODERATE] [$2.15]
[ANGER: RISING] [$8.92]
[RESIGNATION: DEEP] [$5.50]
Small numbers, pocket change. The emotional equivalent of finding quarters in your couch cushions.
Darren's stomach growled, he'd skipped breakfast—couldn't afford to waste food when he was counting calories against bank balances—and lunch was looking equally unlikely. His last protein bar was a day ago, the ramen supply would last maybe a week if he stretched it.
[USER BIOMETRICS: BLOOD SUGAR LOW]
[RECOMMENDATION: CALORIC INTAKE]
"Yeah, thanks, I hadn't noticed I was starving," Darren muttered. A passing businessman gave him a wide stare, the universal Seattle response to people talking to themselves.
He should go home, open LinkedIn and Start the humiliating process of begging his network for referrals, maybe update his resume to somehow spin "fired for having a personality" into something marketable.
Instead, he stood outside Golden Eagle Pawn and watched the door.
The man appeared at 2:47 PM.
Darren had been there for an hour, lurking like some kind of financial vampire and he knew this was rock bottom, knew that whatever happened next would define exactly what kind of person he was willing to become.
The man was older than Darren had initially thought—maybe late fifties, with gray stubble and the weathered skin of someone who worked outside. He held a small wooden box to his chest like it contained his soul.
Maybe it did.
The door chimed as he entered, through the reinforced glass, Darren watched him approach the counter, watched the clerk—a different one now, younger but with the same dead-eyed expression, examine the box's contents.
A watch. Even from outside, Darren could see it was old. The kind of timepiece that came from an era when things were built to last, before planned obsolescence became a business model.
The man's mouth moved, Darren couldn't hear the words, but he could read the body language. The hunched shoulders, the way his fingers trembled as he set the box down, the desperate pleading tilt of his head.
Above him, the tag blazed:
[TARGET: UNREGISTERED]
[EMOTION: DESPERATION]
[AURIC YIELD: $187.50]
One hundred eighty-seven dollars.
Darren's rent was $1,200. His bank account had $408.23. The math was simple and cruel.
Inside the pawnshop, the clerk was shaking his head. The man's face crumpled, he said something—probably "please," probably "I need this," probably all the things Darren himself had said three years ago—and the clerk just pointed to a sign on the wall. STORE POLICY. NO EXCEPTIONS.
The man started crying.
Not the quiet, dignified kind of tears. The ugly, desperate kind that came from a place beyond shame. His shoulders shook, his hands clutched the counter edge and the golden text above his head pulsed brighter.
[DESPERATION PEAKING]
[AURIC YIELD: $187.50]
"Transcribe the emotion. Claim its value."
Darren's hands were shaking, his vision was shaky too, but Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice that sounded suspiciously like his college ethics professor was screaming about exploitation and moral hazards and the commodification of human suffering.
But louder than that voice was his landlord's text from yesterday: "Rent due in 17 days. No extensions this time."
Louder still was the memory of lying awake at 3 AM, doing the math over and over, trying to find a variable that didn't end in eviction.
The man stumbled out of the pawnshop, the wooden box clutched to his chest. He'd kept the watch, couldn't bring himself to sell it, even when desperation said he should, some things were worth more than survival.
He collapsed onto a bench ten feet from where Darren stood, put his head in his hands and sobbed.
[TARGET: OPTIMAL PROXIMITY]**
[AURIC YIELD: $187.50]
[HARVEST AVAILABLE]
The prompt pulsed. Waiting.
"I'm sorry," Darren whispered. He didn't know if he was apologizing to the man, to himself, or to whoever he used to be before he got desperate enough to consider this.
He mentally reached for the [ACCEPT] button that wasn't there but somehow was, and—
[HARVESTING INITIATED]
—the world went cold.
Not temperature cold. Soul cold, the kind of emptiness that felt like falling through frozen vacuum, like every warm thing inside him was being siphoned away and replaced with hollow static.
Golden script bloomed in the air above the crying man. Not tags anymore, Words, flowing, cursive text that looked like it had been written by someone's grandmother, elegant and terrible:
"My father wore this watch on his wedding day, through two wars, through forty years at the mill, he gave it to me the day before he died, said 'keep time sacred, boy.' Now I can't even keep the lights on, can't feed my daughter. Can't—"
The script fractured mid-sentence, dissolving into particles of light that streamed toward Darren like iron moving to a magnet. They hit him—
...and he tasted pain and shame and the specific flavor of failure that came from letting down everyone who ever believed in you..
—felt the weight of a child's college fund evaporating, of medical bills piling up, of pride dying by inches in a system designed to grind you into dust—
—knew, with absolute certainty, what it felt like to hold your dead father's watch and realize you'd become exactly the kind of man he'd hoped you'd never be—
Then it was over.
The golden particles dissolved into nothing. The script vanished and Darren stood there, gasping, his heart racing like he'd just sprinted a mile.
On the bench, the man had stopped crying.
His shoulders were still slumped, but the desperate energy was gone. Replaced by something worse: hollow resignation, the kind of empty that came after you'd cried yourself dry and realized nothing had changed. He stood slowly, robotic and walked away with the wooden box tucked under his arm.
His tag read: [EMOTION: DEPLETED] [YIELD: $0.00].
Darren wanted to throw up.
His phone buzzed.
DEPOSIT: $187.50
FROM: AURIC ASSETS LLC**
MEMO: TRANSCRIPTION COMPENSATION
NEW BALANCE: $595.73
He stared at the notification, at the numbers that meant he could eat today. Could buy ramen in bulk, could even push back the eviction clock by another day.
His stomach growled again, louder this time, demanding fuel but beneath the hunger was something else: a ravenous emptiness that had nothing to do with skipped meals, like he'd burned through some internal resource he didn't know he had.
And strangest of all, he felt nothing about what he'd just done.
No guilt. No shame. Just a flat, emotional numbness, like someone had installed a noise-canceling filter on his conscience.
[FIRST HARVEST: COMPLETE]
[METABOLIC COST: 60 KCAL]
[EMOTIONAL RECOVERY: 4-6 HOURS]
[EFFICIENCY RATING: ACCEPTABLE]
"Efficiency rating," Darren said aloud. His voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else. "Right. Because that's what matters."
He walked to the nearest convenience store in a daze. Bought a chicken sandwich, a Gatorade, and a bag of chips. The cashier—[BOREDOM: MODERATE] [$0.15]—didn't look at him twice.
Darren ate standing on the sidewalk, slowly chewing and swallowing and felt the physical hunger fade while the other emptiness remained.
Back in his shoebox apartment, Darren opened his laptop with hands that had finally stopped shaking.
The severance spreadsheet was still open, mocking him with its red cells and countdown timer. He created a new sheet. Titled it: GOLDSCRIPT EFFICIENCY LOG.
He stared at the blank screen for a long moment, then started typing:
Date: 9/30/2025
Target Type: Financial desperation (pawnshop)
Auric Yield:$187.50
Metabolic Cost: ~60 kcal (estimated)
Emotional Recovery: TBD (currently at 2 hours, still feeling numb)
Efficiency Ratio: $3.12 per kcal
Notes: First harvest. Target was crying over father's watch. Script described generational poverty, medical debt, dying pride. I felt everything he felt for maybe 3 seconds. Now I feel nothing. Is this what being a sociopath is like? Or just being desperate? Does it matter?
He paused, cursor blinking.
Added one more line:
Time spent: ~5 minutes active observation
Hourly rate equivalent: $2,250/hour
Darren leaned back on the futon. Did the math again, because his brain couldn't help it, four hours at his old job would have paid $120 before taxes, Five minutes of standing on a street corner watching someone's life fall apart had paid $187.50 after... whatever the Goldscript Protocol's cut was.
"I just got paid more to stand there than I made in four hours at my old job," he said to the empty apartment. "The free market is truly beautiful and terrifying."
[OBSERVATION: ACCURATE]
[CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR FIRST SUCCESSFUL HARVEST]
[TUTORIAL MODE: DISABLED]
[YOU ARE NOW A REGISTERED AURIC CONTRACTOR]
The golden text faded, leaving just the normal UI elements at the edge of his vision. The tags on people, the yield calculations, the quiet, persistent reminder that everyone around him had a price and he was the only one who could see it.
Darren closed his laptop, looked at his bank account: $595.73.
Looked at his calendar: 16 days until rent was due.
The math was still brutal, but for the first time since Margaret from HR told him his personality was statistically incompatible with employment, he had something resembling a plan.
Even if that plan made him hate himself a little more with every passing hour.
His phone buzzed, another notification, this one different:
[DAILY QUEST AVAILABLE]
**[HARVEST 3 EMOTIONS: MINIMUM $50 TOTAL]**
[REWARD: +$25 BONUS]
[TIME LIMIT: 24 HOURS]
Darren stared at the screen.
Then he grabbed his jacket and headed back out into the gray Seattle afternoon, where desperate people cycled through pawnshops and the Goldscript Protocol hummed with approval, waiting to quantify their pain into profit margins..