Karma Balance

Vanessa Smiatek

by Vanessa Smiatek

Story
At the train station

“Can I help you?”

The trains were always late, so one might as well do a good deed. The old woman who had been looking up and down between the map at the station and some papers in her hand, flinched and looked a bit confused and pointed to the name of her destination on what turned out to be her ticket. The destination was a city about an hour from the station they were at. The only problem was that the train departed from a different platform. Felicity checked her phone. They had 10 minutes to get there, and her own train departed at the same time, but she also knew that she had an alternative 5 minutes later, so it was a small risk. With more gestures than words, she got the lost woman to follow her and escorted her to the platform where her train was just arriving. With a few reassuring nods, she motioned the woman onto the train and then sprinted back to her platform where she was just in time for her own train.

A notification on her phone popped up. “You have received 20 Karma credits.” She clicked on the notification and entered what looked like a banking app with a balance of 20. She clicked on the tab below saying Rewards. There was an interesting list of premiums ranging from access to concert tickets to winning the lottery (which was way beyond 20 credits). And one was a promotion she had been wanting for a while now and the price did seem reasonable. So, on the way home she offered her seat to an elder gentleman, picked up some trash, rescued a tired bumblebee… all things she’d also normally do, just with some extra incentive.

At work, one of her newer colleagues approached her because he needed some help with a report. Thinking about how many credits this could earn her, she told him to put it on her desk and that she’d get to it when she could. The report was overall fine, but you could see that the writer was lacking experience. Normally, she would have left it as is, made a list of feedback, and given it to the colleague. But would that earn her more credits? She decided to go over everything and ended up rewriting the whole report and handed it proudly back to her colleague, who seemed a bit bewildered when he was handed a new report. He asked her for feedback. She told him not to worry about it and that he was welcome. As she walked away, another colleague approached her and asked “Was John’s report that bad?” Felicity looked confused. “I sent him over to you because you normally give great feedback and explain very well, but you just redid his entire report.” Felicity was too stunned to speak for a moment but ended up saying that she just had a bit too much time on her hands and that she’d go over the report with John again with everything she had noticed. It turned out, she had done the right thing for the wrong reason but the wrong thing for the wrong reason. And when she checked her balance, it showed. Not only didn’t she gain anything, she had lost some and felt quite embarrassed of herself.

On the way home she was quite lost in thought, yet she spotted a young father with a stroller struggling in front of the stairs. She hesitated for a moment, uninstalled the Karma app, and approached him.

“Can I help you?”

© Vanessa Smiatek 2024-07-09

Genres
Novels & Stories
Moods
Challenging, Reflective
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