Birth of Credit

A response to Nathaniel Lee's "Source of Capital" in Mirror Shards:

“This is the way it works,” said Mr. Bark. “You louts do whatever I say, and I don’t throw your worthless monkey asses out onto the street.”

“But-“

“No buts!”

“You can’t-“

“I can. I just did.” Mr. Bark rustled his leaves, a sure sign of growing irritation; he didn’t move if he could help it. He’d never held with this new-fangled locomotion business. “Get moving.”

Fred and Claude trudged outside, shovels over their shoulders.

“This sucks,” said Claude. “I wish I could quit.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Fred. “It’s not like money doesn’t grow on trees.”

My scene, "Birth of Credit":

"That's perfect," said Claude stopping on the branch and absently twirling the rake on his shoulder.

"What's perfect about money growing on trees, that's our whole problem."

"You're right, it is our problem. Today. But it doesn't have to be tomorrow."

Fred jumped from one of Mr. Bark's lower branches and landed in a leafy pile. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Money it's so abstract. Why do some people value Mr. Bark's tens more than Miss Twig's quarters."

"Because 10 is greater than .25," said Fred.

"No, we just assigned those values. It was a whim of people in power. We need a way to divorce value from these leaves of money."

"How?"

"I don't know. Perhaps a card that is easy to carry. We could call it a credit card, that has a nice ring."