Tag Number 37¶
The synthetic musk of a hundred stranger’s coats clings to the air, a cloying stew of perfumes and anxiety sweat. Mara flicks the scanner wand at a dripping umbrella, its tip sputtering like a dying cigarette. The tag reads 37. She slams it into the ice bucket with the others, the plastic numbers blurring as her eyes water. Her boss, Vex, hovers behind the security screen, his fingers drumming a rhythm only he hears—a countdown to her eviction.
Three hours ago
The man in the velvet suit pressed a physical bill into her palm, the kind stamped with a living watermark that wriggles like a worm. “Simple job,” he’d said, voice honeyed with the accent of someone who’d never worried about rent. “Tag 37’s a duplicate. Retrieve the original for me, and we’re square.” He’d gestured to the coat check’s digital ledger, where two entries for 37 glowed faintly, their codes tangled. “Clerical error. Happens all the time.”
Mara hadn’t asked why he didn’t just take it himself. The bill thrummed against her thigh now, half her week’s pay for ten minutes’ work.
Now
A woman in a lab coat slams her ID chip on the counter. “Check 17,” she barks. Mara doesn’t bother scanning it. The tags are all duplicates today—some glitch in the convention center’s mainframe, Vex had muttered, as if that explained why the same numbers kept spawning. She hands over a mink stole that definitely wasn’t there yesterday. The woman snatches it, her eyes narrowing. “This better not be another forgery.”
Mara smiles, sweet as the saccharin tablets she chews to kill the taste of her own panic.
Two hours ago
She’d found the original 37 easily enough—buried under a pile of disposable raincoats, its tag hand-labeled in shaky ink. A child’s drawing decorated the lining: stick figures holding hands around a sun. The man had paled when she handed it to him. “Not this one,” he’d hissed. “The other original.”
“But there’s only—”
“Don’t play stupid.” He’d thrust a forged tag at her, the numbers laser-etched but smudged at the edges. “Swap it. Now.”
She’d obeyed, wedging the swapped tag into the bucket, its number 37 flickering between two versions of itself.
Now
Vex looms, his breath reeking of nicotine patches. “You’re slow today. System says you’ve mislaid three coats.” He jabs a finger at the ice bucket, where the tags rattle like bones. “Start with 37.”
Mara’s throat tightens. The bucket holds two 37s: one soggy and hand-labeled, one pristine. The woman in the lab coat had taken the wrong one. The man in velvet would know soon enough.
She reaches for the pristine tag, but her hand hesitates. The drawn sun on the lining of the other coat—the stick figures’ hands had six fingers each.
One hour ago
The man had stuffed the child’s coat into a biodegradable sack, muttering about “sentimental value.” As he left, his suit’s embroidery shimmered—revealing, for a split second, the outline of a larger shape beneath, something tentacled and vast.
Mara tells herself it was a glitch.
Now
She hands Vex the pristine 37. “Check this one.”
He scans it, scowling. “Empty.”
“See? System’s broken. All the tags are lying today.”
Vex’s glare lingers, but the queue grows restless. He retreats.
Mara stares at the ice bucket. The hand-labeled 37 stares back, its numbers smudged into a third shape—half the original, half the forgery. She pockets it. Let them sort it out.
The woman in the lab coat returns, mink stole smoking faintly at the hem. “This is garbage,” she spat. “I want the real one.”
Mara smiles. “Everything’s a copy today.”
Outside, the convention center’s neon flickers: SynthLife Expo – Where Identity is Just a Draft. The bell on the umbrella stand rings, though no one is there.
The ice bucket shudders, one tag left behind: number 37, its number now a perfect 0.