The Itemised Receipt

What it looks like, and what it does

A narrow strip of thermal paper, slightly warm, printed in flat grey dot-matrix type. No shop name. A barcode that scans as the carrier's date of birth. A total at the foot, underlined twice.

Appears once to each recipient, at a low point. Is replaced by the next if destroyed. Never mentions credit, but sometimes records it.

What is known

Found in pockets and bags, usually after a long difficult stretch. The line items are in plain bureaucratic language: “Patience (father), 14 yrs.” “Sleep, Nov–Feb.” “Benefit of the doubt (J.) ×6.”

The total is a single number with no unit. Holders who compared successive receipts found it rising, except after rest, when it fell. A balance brought forward is printed at the foot. Nobody has yet been shown a way to pay.

What it can do

• Itemises any non-material cost the carrier has incurred
• Re-issues itself, in the same ink, if destroyed

Where it stops

• Cannot list a cost the carrier has not personally paid
• Fades blank within the hour if shown to a person it names as creditor

An encounter

Qureshi read “Compassion (patients), 2,114 hours” and “Recovery, owed.” The foot read: BALANCE CARRIED FORWARD. THANK YOU FOR YOUR CUSTOM. She took two weeks' leave. A second receipt arrived in the post with a smaller total and a new line: “Rest (self), 14 days — credit.”

Dr. Samira Qureshi, GP, Pocket of a white coat, Thornhill Surgery, After a thirty-hour shift

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Eight holders kept their receipts. In every case the totals tracked reported hardship and rest.
• incomplete: Two holders report line items for costs they could not recall paying.
• rumor: That a receipt with no balance has been seen once.

Still unresolved

Someone is keeping the books on what we are made of. The receipt has never been wrong. It has never said who the shop is.

Where it has been recorded

• Thornhill Surgery (confirmed) — Recorded by Dr. Samira Qureshi, GP.

Stories about it

• Itemisation of an Evening (Entity story, 4 min) — A home help coming off a fortnight of double shifts finds a till receipt in her coat that sets down what she has spent that was not money, in an accounting she has never opened.

Connected entities

• The Meter Reader — Both keep accounts of things that cannot be paid in money. Neither has been seen collecting.
• The Second Shift — Both settle accounts in households that never opened them. Nothing from either has ever been billed.
• Mr. Osk — Both keep the cost of other people's burdens. Neither has ever been seen to be paid.
• The Auctioneer of Small Hours — Both trade in costs that are not money. The Receipt records the bill. The Auctioneer collects it.