I paid cash at the front desk.
I watched her put it in the drawer.
"You can enter through that first door on your left," came the emission over the desk and through the fist-sized circle in the phony glass.
Through that door on my left is a big red arrow on a wall insisting I go left again. Down that hall, I lost count of the closed doors. But after a handful of strides there's one open on the right.
"Hello, dye-oh-jeans! Please sit down."
There's no one here to mispronounce my name, as usual. One chair, pretty comfortable.
"It's Diogenes." I know full well the thing won't remember the correction after I leave.
"How can I help you, Dye-ah-jeh-kneez?"
"I need a refill."
"I can help you with that. Please wait one moment while I contact the pharmacy."
I still don't understand why I have to come all the way down here for this. It's not like my kidneys will decide to continue functioning a little bit longer because I showed up to get next month's supply. I have a damn mailbox.
"I'm sorry, the request is taking a little longer than usual. Please standby for just a couple more minutes."
Typical. Plenty of news to catch up on anyway. The President is making more overtures to Microsoft. Maybe this time they'll actually approve some of the extra compute resource increase the government claims to need.
More cyber attacks on the Texas datacenters. Those never end. Looks like there's been a breach. Also not rare. Headlines are pretty vague but my content filter service picks out one ominous snippet: "...attackers' years-long foothold in the backend capitalized with massive exfiltration of unspecified data."
That's not reassuring.
A headline about Consolidated Health crypto wallets losing value. None stolen but the coin is cratering. The finance feed blasts red for CH Coin.
A smaller number on every refresh.
2335.3756
2127.4675
1984.3647
1436.5487
986.4857
"I'm sorry. The Pharmacy is not responding," comes the voice in the room again. "Please exit and I will contact you through the method on file when your prescription is ready to be filled."
Out the door. Back down the hall and out that other door.
There isn't anyone at the front desk. The lobby is standing room only. Talking heads on the screens bleat about CH Coin losing value.
It makes sense. The providers have to buy the drugs from the pharmacy using the Consolidated Health Coin. It's the only currency the machines are programmed to handle. There aren't any humans licensed to practice so there's no need for dollars. They touted it as a way to break free of the conspiratorial cabal of big banks.
If the virtual coin isn't worth enoguh to pay for the drugs, the pharmacy can't release them. They also don't have anyone onsite to take dollars.
It could take months for a patch to land now that all the good developers work exclusively for European employers. All we have left are code attendants.