It said something like:

1007 Cathedral

Or maybe it was 1087 Cathedral…

Or 1067. Or 1867. Or 1687.

And on and on. Sandro crumpled it back up and stuck it in his coat pocket as he continued walking, trying to act casual as he scanned the buildings for numbers in the gathering dark. A few lights here and there were flickering on. The cool evening mist was giving way to a light drizzle which, for the moment, was pleasant.

The receipt was for a store that was very very far from here in a city Sandro had heard of but never visited. Probably it didn’t exist anymore. Judging by the time-stamp on the front of it, it was somewhere between 4–6 years old. Before the Disruption of Service. Calculating the exact age would depend on knowing what today’s date was, an impossibility Sandro had had plenty of time to grow accustomed to.

The receipt was for jeans in the amount of $149.99. Two different taxes had been applied under acronyms he didn’t recognize: one for 15% and the other for 11% — for a grand total of $188.99.

It seemed like an exorbitant amount of money to him, and he aimed to cash it in.