Gossip is Often True, Savannah

Savannah moved the mouse across the screen and tapped on the “Delivered On Time” button. It was an easy five points to Mr. Sandwon’s credit balance, but it was an important fulfillment for the small grocery store. Her shop was one of a few around town, but the only one with an advantageous partnership with the local businessman, who always came through with the freshest produce, and always on time, just like he said. Granted, that wasn’t all that surprising. 

Her town was one of the oldest around, and was foundational in the currency system that now defined the nation. Sure, paper currency and traditional coins still found their way through various hands, but they were much less commonplace now that the Credit Score was the preferred method of payment. A simple system, but one that kept its users honest - literally. The Credit Score was built on your word. Very simply, the more you kept your word, the higher your ability to buy, sell, barter, and negotiate. Your promises were reflected in your purchases, and your payments were reflected in your actions. Did you say you’d pick up your order on Monday, but actually came on Tuesday instead? Not a huge mark on your credit, but you aren’t going to get all five points you could have. Did you tell the school bake sale that you’d bring 40 cupcakes, but forgot until it was too late? Well, I hope you enjoyed your last bake sale. Down 40 points it is. Maybe you can make them up in the next sale, by making 80! Probably could, but will the principal let you participate again, when you’ve proven yourself unreliable? 

It took just a few more clicks for Savannah to close out the order tab. Mr. Sandown had the highest credit score in the state, and she wanted to ensure that she kept her relationship with him as good as possible. She always took the extra few minutes to double check she’d applied all the points correctly, and given him a few extra wherever possible.

It was pretty admirable, really. Mr. Sandown always kept his word - on everything. Her store’s agreement with his company was that fresh produce was delivered every Tuesday. It had never been late; it had also never been early, delivered exactly when promised. On a few occasions, he had come through the store himself to drop off the order. Smiling, he would hand over the wooden crate of beets, promising that the next crop would be “even bigger and tastier - the best you’ve ever stocked!” Sure enough, they always were. 

On his most recent trip through, Mr. Sandwon had laughed at the bumblebee-shaped lollipops near the register. “Made them myself, and with your local honey!” Savannah had explained. 

“Ha! They’re so darling, I’ve heard around town that they’ll be your top seller soon!” he laughed as he inspected the packaging. He grew even more delighted still when Savannah gave him that particular pop. “No, please, on the house”, she insisted, smiling, as she waved him out the door. It only took a few more days before she noticed the stock was growing short; many people had added them to their checkout order as she rang them up, and they had quickly become one of the high-grossing items of the week. Mr. Sandwon was honest, even about this! She was intrigued, perhaps he had a superpower, a foreknowledge. It seemed he could predict what people were going to do, going to want, even before they knew they would; maybe this was part of the reason he excelled at business. Savannah only half-noticed what could have been a passing thought, but seemed to stick somewhere in her mind instead: what was even more interesting was the number of people who asked for the lollipops by name long after the holder was empty. 

***

The bells on the door clanged, announcing her arrival in the nail salon the following week. Savannah was tired, and looking forward to pampering herself on a well-deserved day off. Her nail technician smiled, and waved her right over to the chair. Blue, this time, she decided, and within the next hour she had a fresh ocean hue adorning her fingertips - a happy color. Savannah stood from her chair, and made her way over to the reception counter. As she pulled out her phone to tap for payment, her Credit Score flashed on her screen. “Looking good”, she thought, proud of the hard work she’d done to get her numbers up. She was drawn from her self-congratulations by the sound of a familiar laugh, and turned toward a curtained hallway to her left. Through the drapes she spied Mr. Sandwon, happily chatting with some staff members in an employees-only area. He must be making a delivery of some products here, too. 

“Always laughing!” the girl behind the counter smiled, as she filled out Savannah’s next appointment card. “He’s in here twice a month and he always makes everyone happier”. She glanced up at Savannah’s hands as she handed her the card. “Like your nails, happy. A few weeks ago he said ‘all the happiest people he knows like blue’, and they’d all start showing us how true that is”. She waved her hand as she recalled the memory, mimicking his delighted gestures. She stood, grabbing her iced coffee as she moved away from the desk now that Savannah was scheduled. While walking down the hall to the curtained cutoff, she laughingly called back to Savannah, “I think he might be a wizard; everyone in the last two weeks has picked some shade of blue!” 

The stuck thought in her brain jiggled a little bit looser. Was he so lucky? Was anyone so lucky? How could everything you predict come true? 

She pondered the thought while she made her way home, stopping just for a moment at the convenience store nearby to grab the latest issue of the town paper. Only a few blocks away, her keys hit the door lock; living in a small town definitely had its advantages. Everything was nearby. 

Savannah dropped her keys and the paper on the table, immediately turning to the fridge for a snack. With an apple in hand, she plopped down at the table a few seconds later, absently flipping through the text. She must have missed the headlines at first, because she had made it to the last page before closing the paper to look at the front cover. “Bet Pays Off Big for Local Bakery”, it read, and hosted a picture of a well-designed cupcake box. Martin’s: she had heard of this place before, she thought, about 20 miles away in the capitol. With a closer look, the address listed on the box in the picture confirmed her guess. 

“I mean, that is a cute box” Savannah mumbled to herself as she read. The bakery had tested shipping cupcakes locally; they were always in such high demand that the small storefront was usually packed well beyond capacity. The initial trial had gone…okay. People still preferred to wander into the shop on a whim, but a handful had been willing to wait a few days for their sweets. “He noticed the boxes when he walked in, and commented on the design. That was nice of him, I had worked really hard on it, and was happy with how they had printed”, said Martin, the owner. “He took a good look at it, and said ‘You should order more; a lot more. You’re going to need them! I promise once word gets out, you’re going national with this idea. I’ve already heard the rumors!’. Personally, I’ve never known Mr. Sandwon to be wrong, so I took him up on his bet.” Martin beamed in the next photo, holding two of his best selling flavors in front of a mountain of boxes. “What do you know, he was right again!”

Savannah put the paper down. This was becoming unbelievable. Was everyone right? Was Mr. Sandwon psychic? Or maybe a wizard or had some ultra-specific superpower? Or was he simply the luckiest man alive? There were more guesses from around town - people had noticed that his gossip seemed to be more of a premonition - but Savannah somehow found these even less credible. She would describe herself as fairly logical by nature. She ran a business, had to rely on things making sense, drawing clear lines from point A to point B. Things had to be accounted for, literally, and surely, the best business man around had to adhere to the same rules? 

Something was definitely awry. Savannah shifted in her chair, suddenly uncomfortable. But how do you prove the town gossip with a great reputation is playing the system? And what does he have to gain by it anyway? Is it just a game? 

Savannah thumbed through the examples she knew: her lollipops, her fresher, bigger beets, the nail salon, and the bakery boxes. None of these were huge, or impactful, things. Being right on gossip this small wasn’t changing anyone’s life. She knew she could probably find plenty more stories around town, but would be the same small, daily events. 

Sure, she used his honey to make the lollipops, but he certainly wasn’t getting rich off them. He only got the credit for delivering them on time. And yes, he could promise bigger and fresher produce, but she was still paying the same agreed price no matter what. The nail salon charged the same rate for a manicure, no matter which color you chose. Martin’s had the most to gain, with a dramatic increase in sales. But how did that impact Mr. Sandwon? He didn’t supply the boxes; he didn’t even supply the ingredients. Could he be a silent partner, an owner in the background? A quick google search for the public company records was all it took to prove that false. 

“What are you possibly gaining by being right on gossip?” Savannah wondered silently. There must be something, but if it isn’t financial gain, was he only looking for notoriety? For infamy? For credit? 

“The town gossip with a great reputation” rang through her head. Of course. Where else would it be so beneficial to predict events? The more his idle gossip came true, whatever it was, no matter how small, the higher his Credit Score total rose. His foresight wasn’t a superpower, it was a strategy! Savannah jumped up from the table, frantically looking for her laptop. That was easier said than done, given it could have been anywhere under the unfolded laundry that littered the living room. Four minutes and one whirlwind later, she had finally found it, sticking half out from the couch cushion, threatening to be eaten by the space flanking the side arm. She dropped onto the couch and flipped it open. Dead. Cue one repeat whirlwind. 

When the screen finally powered to life, she found she wasn’t even sure where to start typing. “Do you think ‘local gossip scheme’ will just work in Google?” she mocked herself while thinking aloud. If he was making promises, he was having to fulfill them somehow. She thought back to the lollipops. Everyone had started buying them right after Mr. Sandwon had stopped in. But they were planted near the register, poised to be a last minute purchase. That wasn’t all that strange, in retrospect. But what was strange was the number of people asking for them by name, after the holder was empty. How would they have known? She had even taken the small placard away when she ran out. 

She tapped the keyboard, and the words ‘task service near me’ appeared in the search bar. The first hit turned out to be only a list of tips on how to be hired, but the second was a forum of job postings itself. There were a lot of things here, and so many of them for so few Credit Points. This task wanted a single point for a nice picture of the new paint job on a historic house. A big task promised six points for spring cleaning a restaurant’s patio by noon the next day. Maybe there were people making a living this way, but more than likely this was a game people played when they were bored - a crossover of social media and real life. 

Savannah tapped her forehead in thought with her palm. When did she give Mr. Sandwon a lollipop? Was it the week before last? She scrolled through the postings, passing by those that were active and entering into expired posts. One title stopped her scrolling on a dime: ‘Honey, You’ll Get the Point!’ The anonymous poster had included a picture of her lollipops, complete with her handwritten placard. The task simply read “Buy a lollipop, yours to enjoy! Receive one Credit Score point when you provide a receipt.” 

She kept scrolling. A few weeks further down the list, she found another. ‘Why Does Everyone Think Blue is a Sad Color?’ with the task “If you’re a happy person, go get your nails painted any shade of blue you like at Polish Palace on Main. Two points when you upload a picture of your choice!” Savannah could see from the tally that more than 30 people had taken the poster up on this offer. 

So this is what he was up to. Throw a little gossip around town, and then make it happen. Sure, he had to hand out a few Credit Points in the process, but he made back multiples of what he was awarding. If Mr. Sandwon had to dole out 60 points total to nail salon patrons, he likely received five times that for keeping his word. He had found a way to leverage his reputation in a way the Credit Score system would never have seen coming. 

Savannah sat for a while alongside her revelation. She looked it over, up and down, learning all the parts of it. She asked it questions, like: how long this had taken to come up with, how long the game had been just under the surface, strategizing behind Mr. Sandwon’s smiling, gossiping face. The friend she had made in her new revelation was a powerful one. She could do a lot of damage to this man with his secret; bring his spotless Credit Score tumbling to the ground. She held a lot of power on her side at the moment, and wrestled with how to best approach a confrontation, or whether to hold his secret in silence. If only that got her Credit Points!

***

The muffled voice from behind the oak door answered her quick knocks, “Hello!”. 

When Savannah pushed the door open, she found herself standing in front of a desk. “Mr. Sandwon, hello”, she smiled. “I heard something interesting around town today. It seems people are really looking to make a good minestrone, something really chock full of fresh produce. Produce like I sell. I think I heard some gossip that my store was known for the best produce around, did you hear the same?” He tilted his head to the side, trying to grasp the full picture of what was obviously lurking just beneath her words. He listened carefully while she continued, “Funny, I always get a ton of Credit Score points when my marketing holds true. You know the posters all over the windows claim I have the best stuff around”, Savannah was calm and confident in her final line, “In fact, now that I really remember it, I think it was you who said I had the best produce, and that I was likely to sell out again and again. Is that true, or was that just more gossip?”

“Gossip is very often true, Savannah”, Mr. Sandwon smiled knowingly, and opened his laptop.