Darren stood in Che's shop wearing clothes that fit like they'd been grown specifically for his body. Because in a sense, they had been. The Confidence fabric made his shoulders sit differently. The Competence accents—burgundy pocket square, tie bar—caught light in ways that suggested he knew things and the Indifference lining did something he couldn't quite articulate: it made him feel less "present", like he was observing the world from a comfortable distance.
"Stop fidgeting," Che said, adjusting the collar. "The suit is doing its work. Let it."
"It feels weird."
"It feels right, you're just not used to being treated with respect." Che stepped back, examining his work with those gold-threaded eyes. "There. You're no longer a charity case, now you're a predator in camouflage."
Darren looked at himself in the full length mirror.
The man staring back wasn't him, not exactly. Same face, same build, but everything else was different. The suit made him look purposeful, expensive. Like someone who belonged in rooms with leather chairs and whiskey that cost more than groceries.
"Elizabeth will be pleased," Che said. "Try not to ruin it in the first week."
Liz picked him up at 6 PM in a different car—this one an Audi that also drove itself. She wore a cream colored dress that probably had its own insurance policy and regarded him with the approving look of someone inspecting a successfully completed project.
"Much better," she said as he slid into the passenger seat. "You look like you might actually know what a stock option is."
"I don't."
"Nobody does, that's not the point." The car pulled into traffic. "Tonight is your next lesson: target identification and cultivation. We're going to an art gallery opening."
"I don't know anything about art."
"Neither does anyone at a gallery opening, they're there to be seen, to network, to feel cultured. The art is just expensive wallpaper." She handed him a slim black card. "That's your credentials, you're a freelance consultant in 'brand optimization.' It means nothing, which means you can talk to anyone."
Darren examined the card. It had his name embossed in gold, along with a phone number he didn't recognize and an email address that definitely wasn't his Gmail.
"Did you just... create a fake identity for me?"
"I created a real identity with fake credentials, there's a difference." Liz checked her makeup in the visor mirror. "In our economy, perception is currency. If people believe you're a consultant, you are one. Reality is negotiable."
The gallery was in Belltown, all white walls and track lighting and people holding wine glasses like they were religious artifacts. Darren recognized the type immediately: tech money trying to buy culture, old money slumming with the nouveau riche, artists trying to pretend they weren't desperately courting both.
Above everyone's heads: tags.
But Liz was teaching him to see different patterns.
"There," she said, gesturing subtly toward a woman in her forties examining a painting of what looked like a melted clock. "What do you see?"
Darren focused. The woman's tag read: [ENVY: MODERATE] [$12.50].
"Envy," he said. "Worth about twelve bucks."
"Look deeper." Liz sipped her wine. "What's she envying?"
Darren watched, the woman kept glancing at another guest—younger, wearing a shiny expensive necklace. Every time she looked, her tag pulsed brighter.
"The necklace," Darren said.
"Exactly, material envy. Steady burn, low intensity." Liz moved them subtly closer. "Now watch what happens when I engage."
She approached the woman with a smile that looked genuine enough to be dangerous. "Excuse me, I couldn't help but notice you admiring the Dali piece. Do you collect?"
The woman turned, clearly pleased to be noticed. "Oh, I wish. I'm more of an enthusiast, though I've been thinking about starting a collection."
"You should," Liz said warmly. "You have excellent taste. That's rare." She paused, let the compliment settle. "I love your bracelet, by the way. Vintage?"
"This old thing? Yes, it was my mother's." The woman touched it self consciously, and her eyes flicked to the younger guest with the expensive necklace. Her tag shifted: [ENVY: RISING] [$15.75].
"Timeless," Liz said. "So much more elegant than some of the ostentatious pieces you see these days. All flash, no substance."
The woman's smile became more genuine. "Exactly! Some people just buy the most expensive thing they can find without any consideration for—"
She stopped herself, but the damage was done. Her gaze had landed on the younger guest again and this time her tag spiked: [ENVY: ACUTE] [$22.40].
Liz had planted a seed, validated the envy and given it permission to grow.
"Well, I should let you enjoy the exhibit," Liz said, already moving away. "It was lovely chatting."
The woman nodded, but she was staring at the younger guest now, her expression subtly sour.
Darren followed Liz to a quiet corner. "You made her feel justified in being envious."
"I cultivated existing emotion," Liz corrected. "She was already envious, I just gave her a framework to nurture it. Now someone—not us, we're too visible—could harvest that emotion at nearly double the original value."
"That's manipulative."
"That's gardening." Liz gestured around the room. "See that couple by the sculpture? Holding hands too tightly?"
Darren looked. A man and woman, early thirties, tags reading: [INSECURITY: MODERATE] [$8.25] and [INSECURITY: MODERATE] [$7.90].
"They're insecure," he said.
"About their relationship, notice how they keep checking each other? How they mirror movements?" Liz watched them with clinical interest. "One pointed observation about how other couples seem more comfortable, and that insecurity would spike. Maybe double, maybe triple if you time it right."
"Jesus."
"Not Jesus, just basic psychology weaponized." She turned to him. "That man obsessed with the painting—the abstract one—see him?"
Darren found him. Fifties, expensive suit, staring at a canvas of violent red slashes like it held secrets. His tag read: [DESIRE: INTENSE] [$45.60].
"He wants to own it," Darren said.
"Desperately, look at his body language, the way he keeps calculating. He's imagining it in his home, how it'll make him feel, what it says about him." Liz sipped her wine. "Desire is high density fuel, Sustainable, renewable and if you know how to tend it, incredibly profitable."
She moved through the gallery like a shark through a reef, pointing out patterns Darren had never noticed:
The nervous laughter that meant someone was out of their depth. [INADEQUACY] [$6.50]
The way certain people positioned themselves near the most expensive pieces, desperate to be associated with value. [ASPIRATION] [$4.25]
The subtle competitions happening in every conversation—who traveled more, who knew the artist personally, who could afford to buy without asking the price. [PRIDE] [$varying]
"This is what I meant by efficiency," Liz said. "You were harvesting whatever emotion happened to be available. I'm teaching you to cultivate. To plant seeds and watch them grow, to engineer scenarios that produce specific, high value emotions."
"So we're emotional farmers," Darren said. "I guess the crop rotation schedule is 'whatever makes people miserable.'"
Liz laughed. "You're getting it, though not just miserable—any strong emotion works. Desire, pride, even joy can be harvested if it's intense enough. We just focus on the negative emotions because they're easier to produce and generally worth more."
"Why?"
"Because humans are wired to feel pain more intensely than pleasure. Evolutionary psychology, a bad experience teaches survival; a good experience just feels nice." She finished her wine. "The market follows biology."
They spent another hour circulating. Liz didn't harvest—couldn't, as a Broker—but she taught Darren to see the invisible architecture of human emotion. How to spot ripe targets. How to predict when someone's feelings would spike. How to position himself to benefit from those spikes without appearing predatory.
"The key," she said as they finally left, "is to never be the direct cause. You're not pushing people off cliffs. You're just... noticing which ones are standing near the edge, maybe mentioning how far down it is."
In the car, Darren pulled up his harvest log. He hadn't actually taken anything tonight—too busy learning, but he'd identified at least twenty high value targets. Mentally calculated their collective yield.
Over $400 in a single room, just waiting to be harvested by someone who knew what to look for.
"Tomorrow," Liz said, "you'll do this for real. I'll take you somewhere crowded. You'll practice cultivation techniques, small pushes, subtle redirects, nothing that screams manipulation."
"And if I'm not comfortable with that?"
Liz turned to look at him, and in the dashboard light, her eyes had that golden till again.
"Then you go back to your old apartment and your duct tape shoes and your seventeen day eviction countdown but we both know you won't." She smiled. "Because you've already seen what's possible and that knowledge doesn't go away, Darren. It only grows."
The car pulled up outside his new apartment building.
Darren sat there for a moment, the $5,000 suit making him feel like someone else, the lessons of the evening playing on repeat in his mind.
Liz was right. He couldn't unsee what he'd learned, couldn't unfeel the difference between survival and success.
"Same time tomorrow," he said.
"That's my boy," Liz said. "Wear the navy tie, we're going upscale."
Darren got out, and the car pulled away, leaving him standing on the sidewalk in clothes woven from other people's confidence, thinking about all the ways to make strangers feel worse so he could feel better.
The Goldscript Protocol pinged with approval.
[LESSON COMPLETE: EMOTIONAL CULTIVATION]
[NEXT OBJECTIVE: PRACTICAL APPLICATION]
[RECOMMENDED TARGET ENVIRONMENTS: HIGH SOCIAL DENSITY, ELEVATED STRESS]
Darren went inside, took off the suit with almost religious care, and lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
Somewhere in the building, someone was crying. He could hear it through the walls.
The tag appeared automatically: [GRIEF: INTENSE] [$67.50].
He closed his eyes and didn't harvest it.
Not tonight.
Tonight, he wanted to pretend he was still the kind of person who heard someone crying and felt sympathy instead of seeing a profit margin.
Tomorrow, he'd be whoever Liz was training him to become.
But tonight, just for tonight, he wanted to be Darren Nova: fired software developer, occasionally decent human, not yet completely lost to the mathematics of manufactured misery.