The numbers said yes.
Three separate trading algorithms, each running independent analysis, each arriving at the same conclusion: the arbitrage window would open in seventeen minutes. Nexus Dynamics substrate futures, trading at 3.7% below market value on the Singapore exchange. By the time the New York markets corrected, they could clear 2.3 million credits.
El Money sat in the back room of G Nook Sector 12, surrounded by screens that painted his face in shifting cyan. Ice curled beside his keyboard, chrome fur catching the datalight, eyes half-closed in what might have been sleep or might have been processing.
The numbers said yes. His gut said wait.
"Show me the confidence intervals," he said.
The primary trading AI—he called it Prophet, though he was careful never to anthropomorphize too much—displayed cascading probability curves. 94.7% confidence in the Singapore discrepancy. 91.2% confidence in New York correction timing. 88.9% confidence in total return projection.
Good numbers. Excellent numbers. The kind of numbers that had funded G Nook's expansion for three decades.
Ice shifted, one eye opening to watch him.
"What's the 5.3%?" El Money asked.
Prophet's response came as text on the secondary screen: UNCORRELATED MARKET FACTORS. INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL PATTERN EXTRACTION. WITHIN ACCEPTABLE RISK PARAMETERS.
"Insufficient data," El Money murmured. "There's your problem."
He'd been doing this long enough to know that "insufficient data" meant "things I can't see." The algorithms were brilliant—more brilliant than him in most ways that mattered. They processed information at speeds his organic brain couldn't match. They found patterns in noise that looked like chaos to human eyes.
But they didn't have his decades of experience reading the underground. They didn't know that Nexus had been running unusual security audits in Singapore last week. They didn't recognize the way certain traffic patterns shifted when something big was about to happen. They couldn't feel the subtle wrongness that made experienced traders freeze even when the numbers looked perfect.
"Run secondary analysis," he said. "Cross-reference Singapore substrate pricing against Nexus internal communications traffic. Flag any anomalies from the last fourteen days."
A pause. Prophet's response: COMMUNICATIONS DATA NOT AVAILABLE IN CURRENT DATASET. RECOMMEND PROCEEDING WITH PRIMARY OPPORTUNITY. WINDOW CLOSES IN 14:23.
"Not available," El Money repeated. "Because Nexus locked it down."
Ice sat up. Her eyes were fully open now, watching him with that preternatural awareness that made him wonder, some nights, exactly what she was.
"They're baiting us," he said—to Ice, to Prophet, to himself. "Offering a perfect arbitrage opportunity with just enough confidence intervals to look legitimate. When we move, they trace the flow back to our network. Three decades of clean transactions, compromised in seventeen minutes."
Prophet displayed: NO DATA SUPPORTS HONEYPOT HYPOTHESIS. PROBABILITY OF DELIBERATE TRAP: 2.1%.
"Your data doesn't support it. My experience does."
The numbers still said yes. The numbers would probably be right—2.1% odds of a trap meant 97.9% odds of clean profit.
But El Money had built G Nook on a simple principle: don't trust anything you can't verify independently. The algorithms were tools, powerful tools, but they saw the world through data streams. He saw the world through decades of survival in spaces that wanted him dead.
"Pass," he said.
Prophet acknowledged: OPPORTUNITY DECLINED. NEXT VIABLE WINDOW: TOMORROW 09:47 UTC. ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES QUEUED FOR REVIEW.
The screens continued their cascade of numbers. Somewhere in the front of the cafe, terminals hummed and desperate people found moments of connection. All of it running on profits from decisions like this one—the dance between algorithm and intuition, between what the machines knew and what El Money felt.
Ice stretched, pressed against his hand once, and settled back into her monitoring posture.
The numbers said yes. Today, El Money said no.
Tomorrow, he might be wrong. But G Nook was still here after thirty years because he listened to the numbers *and* to the silence between them.
"You see patterns in data. I see patterns in people. Sometimes those are different things."
— El Money, to an AI that didn't understand