25 September 2026 · fiction: 2030

2030: What the Loyalty Scheme Knows

Fiction. The people and the places in it are invented; the arrangements they live inside are the ones this site argues about. One instalment a day, a longer one on Fridays, and the story carries on.

The bakery had a new loyalty screen, and the loyalty screen had no discretion at all.

She put her thumb on the terminal and it lit up pale blue for the whole shop to read: WELCOME BACK. VISIT 53. YOUR NEXT BUN IS ON US. It played a little chime, three notes going up.

T. was at the window table. He had watched it light. When she sat down he did the sum out loud, because that was his job.

"My daughter's lessons moved to Thursdays last September," he said. "So I've been coming here thirteen months. Fifty-odd Thursdays." He turned his cup. "You've been coming here fifty-three times. And we met a month ago."

"I come on other days."

"Do you?"

"No."

The rain had stopped. Outside, a delivery robot the size of a dog had got its wheel stuck in a drain and was waiting, with enormous dignity, for someone to notice.

"And the ferry," he said. "Never. You said never."

"I know."

"And it didn't rain, and it was March."

She could feel the next sentence coming and could do nothing about it, and she thought, very clearly, not here, and then the door opened and it was P.

He was in the green jacket and the good scarf, the Italian one she'd bought him in a sale for his fiftieth and he'd never once left on a bus. He'd been at the dentist on the High Street; she knew because the flat used to tell her these things, and because he was holding his jaw slightly to one side. He saw her and raised a hand and smiled, lopsided, novocaine on one side and pleasure on the other.

"This is T.," M. said, standing. "We've been sharing a table on Thursdays."

"Hello," said P., and held out his hand, and T. shook it, and neither of them looked at her. "I can't feel half my face. Don't let me dribble. Does anyone want anything? I'm getting a hot chocolate, it's the only thing I can drink that isn't soup."

He went to the counter. He asked what was in the seasonal one and listened to the whole answer.

T. looked at M. The question was all over his face and he wasn't going to ask it with P. at the counter, so she answered the other one, the one he'd asked a minute ago.

"I used to take that ferry," she said. "Years ago."

She said it lightly. T. went completely still, the stillness of a man who has been standing on a step in the dark and has just discovered there isn't one.

"You said never."

"I lied," she said. "I do it for a living. Other people's, mostly."

Across the shop the loyalty screen lit again for somebody else, three chimes going up, VISIT 4, and P. turned from the counter with a hot chocolate in one hand and a small orange juice in the other, for her, because he knew without asking, already smiling his half a smile.

"Which crossing?" T. said, very quietly, and P. arrived with the drinks.