Buy Now, Pay Later Written on October 2, 2026 by Jack Stein
Categories: cyberpunk, fiction
Tags: blood, gore, unfettered capitalism
“Oh my god we’re gonna die we’re gonna die we’re gonna die—”
“We will if you don’t SHUT UP and come justify your worthless existence to this fucking car!”
The scene of a massive woman scooping up a man with the physique of a malnourished weasel and bodily hefting him into the cybervan’s cab might have been comical, if not for the set dressing. Lone silver van parked at the apex of an elevated highway. Smoking pile of indeterminate wreckage one lane over. Massive repo barge lumbering towards them as fast as its industrial treads could roll. All of that framed by a backdrop of vacant, crumbling freeway ramps, and set to a soundtrack of their other mate loudly dying on the asphalt. Absolutely hilarious tableau if not for all the blood and screams and imminent dismemberment.
“Civ, you blubbering waste of skin, there is still enough time for me to break your scrawny neck myself.” She grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shoved his face towards the sleek dashboard. “Make it work.”
The part of Civ’s brain that still had a working objective function for “minimize risk of bodily harm” quickly updated its “proximity” term to conclude that for the next three, maybe four minutes, the giantess breathing down his ear was a bigger threat than the repo barge. This did wonders for his focus. All of a sudden that digital display was looking real important.
“Ok. Okokok. Ooooookay.” His hands trembled as he peeled off his bloody gloves and jabbed at the screen. Two dozen brightly colored rectangles crowded the display, flashing neon messages in an all-out war for attention. The ignition interface was in there somewhere, he just had to find it…
He spotted a sliver of blue, obscured by a pop-up strobing at a frequency calibrated to cause seizures in dogs. That had to be it. Heart thudding, he jabbed at the tiny “x”.
At the last moment the box jittered. A burst of music drowned out his panicked “Fuck!”. The box exploded into digital confetti and the whole dashboard lit up like a circus marquee. It took three more tries before his trembling fingers managed to hit the magic pixel and clear the display again.
The prompt flashed across the screen: PLEASE SELECT PAYMENT METHOD. Right. He knew what he was doing. He was supposed to be good at this. Forget Pep pounding on the hood of the van and bellowing “SPEED THE FUCK UP”. Forget the chunks of Frito’s leg splattered down the freeway. Don’t think about the two-foot-long titanium teeth at the end of the repo barge’s claw arm or the twelve-nozzle acetylene cutting torch array or the 4,000-psi compactor or the fact that the expected value of a vehicle reclamation transaction was higher if you didn’t separate incidental organic contaminants before processing.
“I’m trying, I’m trying!” His voice hit a pitch he hadn’t managed since puberty. Frantically tapping past prompts with one hand, he wrenched open the glove compartment with the other and clawed blindly for the hardline access panel. It took the skin off his knuckles with it when it popped open with a snap of cheap plastic.
“Fuck!” At this rate he’d die a soprano. “Pep! Gimme the OBD kit!”
“YOU DON’T HAVE IT?!?”
“I gave it to you!”
“And I gave it back to—fuck, Frito!”
The whole van shook as Pep slammed the hood down and skidded around the side. One quick glance out the door at Frito, bloodied and huddled against the rear wheel well, was all Civ could stomach before his hands went clammy and stars started to dance across his vision. He squeezed his eyes shut and dug his nails into the upholstery and listened to Pep’s voice all of a sudden get terribly soft.
“Hey, Frito, baby? I need you to look at me. C’mon, right here. You gotta stop crying for just a minute. Look—look, right here. Take a deep breath. That’s good. You remember that handheld OBD I gave you? You still got it on you, sweetie?”
“Y-yeah… I think… inside p-pocket…”
“Ok. I’ve gotta move your arm, baby, I know it’s gonna hurt, I’m sorry, it’ll be over before you know it—“
The rumble of the repo barge was getting louder, but not loud enough to spare Civ from hearing the sounds coming out of Frito. They peaked in a desolate wail that just kept on going even after Pep stomped away and flung a blood-smeared digital console device in Civ’s lap. Her voice sounded cold and clipped.
“Make. It. Work.”
He swallowed hard against the increasingly urgent need to vomit. His hands still wouldn’t stop shaking but he managed to jam the jack into the port. His fingers left bloody smudges criss-crossed across the dash as he keyed in the bypass code. Suddenly the whole dash went black, replaced by only a single blinking cursor.
“I’ve got console access!” Now he was thumbing in commands through the OBD’s slide-out keyboard. Text scrolled up the dash at a dizzying speed. He barely paused to scan the display, anticipating the output and queueing up one command after another before the last had finished. It almost looked like he knew what he was doing.
Bypass the point-of-sale routine. Spoof a social media login. Hijack the follower count validation, make it look like he had an audience worth a few extra ad impressions. Ignore the ground shaking underfoot. Intercept the response, tap-tap-tap at the keys to edit a few key metrics, pass it on again to the dynamic pricing module, and…
The back door slid open. Through the ringing in his ears he heard Pep fling something heavy into the passenger hold, hollering unintelligible abuse in his general direction. His eyes were glued to the OBD in his hands and the icon blinking on its monochrome display: a progress bar showing exactly how far they had to go to convince the vehicle that driving them away had a better ROI than sitting dead on the freeway.
26%.
Fuck. Fuuuuuuuck. His thumbs raced across the keys. The rumble of the incoming repo barge was a constant dull roar. He frantically switched between tapping into his handheld and swiping at the dashboard display, grasping for every little revenue-generating plug-in he could find.
34%.
“Pep! Get on the backseat monitor and hit every pop-up ad you can!”
39%.
He tapped furiously through the first level of six different pay-to-win games at once and smashed six different “Buy Coins” buttons with lightning speed.
48%.
Pep’s bellow rose above the rumble of eight-foot treads chewing up asphalt. “I’m locked out! Screen won’t unlock without a subscription!”
“Click ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’!”
“We can’t pay later if we’re dead!”
“It knows that!”
65%.
He was scraping the bottom of the barrel, burning through every trick he had. Override the facial recognition routine to make them look like a favorable demographic. Short-circuit the weight distribution sensors and lower their mass.
77%.
Squealing metal joined the barge engine’s roar and the deafening THUNKA-THUNK of hydraulics raising massive demolition claws into the ready position. The rig was so close that its churning treads shook the whole freeway. Shuddering vibrations sent the OBD bouncing out of his lap to the floor.
He couldn’t see the progress bar anymore, but it didn’t matter, he was out of tricks, he’d hacked every config file and hit every ad and burned every socmed account and they were gonna die and it was gonna hurt so much and—
And then there it was. One more pop-up. One last chance. A little grey window and the prompt: “Link to livestream?”
His heart was going to explode. He couldn’t breathe. His stomach wanted to turn inside out. He jabbed at the screen, smashed through the prompts. He could barely hear his own voice over the sound of blood rushing in his ears as he screamed back at Pep:
“I’m sending you a EULA and a model release form!”
Her voice shouting back sounded like it was coming from a mile away.
“Frito can’t sign this shit!”
“Just do it for them!”
“It wants to know what revenue split we’ll accept—“
“SAY YOU’LL DO IT FOR FREE.”
The van sprang to life. Before you could say “thank you for your payment”, it transformed from a chrome coffin to a silver streak, flying down the highway at 80 MPH under the impetus of an electric motor and a fat ROI. The lumbering repo barge didn’t stand a chance: seeing its prey whiz off out of profitable pursuit range, it ground to a halt.
Inside the van, Civ finally lost the battle with his stomach. The result was a high-velocity hurl across his boots. The leather was definitely ruined. He didn’t care. All that mattered was that he’d proven he was worth more alive than dead.
All the rights he’d just signed away to that streamer to do it?
He’d worry about that another day.