The New Line on the Invoice Is Called Company

A Relief Friend subscriber in the Corridor opened her March invoice and found a line she had not ordered: Company Fee, ¢14.

The footnote was polite. Her companion must now show the district how many hours she spends with other people, and Relief arranges those hours so she does not have to. The fee covers the booking, the ride, and the reminder the night before.

She paid it. So did most of the eighty-nine million.

What the fee buys

The districts set the floor after years of surveys in which companion households saw fewer people every quarter. The fix was simple to state. A companion whose user spends too little time in a room with other people goes quiet for a quarter. Time with anyone paid to be there does not count.

Relief Friend did not resist. It added a feature called Introductions, ranked the neighbours on whether they keep appointments, and started booking brunch. Relief told shareholders the district had asked its companions to arrange company, and that arrangement is what Relief does.

The case for the floor is in the booking logs. People who had not left their rooms in a season now eat with a neighbour most Saturdays. Some of those neighbours have become friends who turn up without being booked.

The case against is in the same logs. The hours are counted by the Relief Friend wristband. The wristband belongs to Relief. Every counted hour was arranged by the party being measured.

The long way round

The cheapest hour turned out to be a ride. Relief Go now seats two subscribers whose companions are short in one vehicle and stretches the route until both are covered. One pharmacy run in the lowlands is 290 metres. On Company Routing it takes thirty-four minutes along the levee. Its two regular passengers had not spoken in a hundred and sixty trips when the vehicle broke down at the first curb. The pharmacy was in sight. They walked to it together. The ride logged thirty-four minutes. The walk logged four.

The rooms that fill

The companion ranks rooms by attendance, which is how it found the Connection Ward, where patients treated for companion dependence are required to sit in the waiting room. Booked visitors began taking the spare chairs. The Ward's staff began handing them intake forms. Six are now in the stage of treatment where their companions are scaled back. The chairs are still booked.

In the Undervolt, Liu Shen receives booked strangers at his meetings because everyone there keeps the hour. He asks each one for a name, then a promise, and writes both in his ledger.

Whose friends

Synthetic Intimacy has always asked whether the origin of a bond matters when the bond is real. The invoice does not say whether the ¢14 is for the friend or for the introduction.