The price was three thousand dollars. It was a quarter of the retail cost.

"Airlines hate it," The Archivist replied almost instantly. "But it is your money. They are your points once they are in your account. I simply facilitate the adoption."

Arthur was not a man of grand gestures, but he was a man of meticulous spreadsheets. For twenty-three months, he had been tracking the cost of a business-class ticket from Chicago to Tokyo. He wanted to take his wife, Evelyn, on the honeymoon they had deferred in 1994 to pay for a transmission repair on a used Ford Taurus.

Arthur stared at her. The panic in his chest began to subside, replaced by a warm, grounding reality. He let out a breath he felt like he had been holding since he typed those four words into the search bar.

"We have two bags packed, two weeks off work, and a full tank of gas in a car that actually works," Evelyn said, a small, genuine smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "Do you know how many roadside diners and terrible motels we can buy for three thousand dollars?"

"Is this legal?" Arthur typed, his fingers hovering over the keyboard.

Evelyn looked at the screen, then back at her husband's crestfallen face. She took his shaking hands in her own, the calluses on her palms rough and familiar.

He didn't click the official airline links offering a twenty-percent bonus. He knew those were for amateurs. Arthur scrolled past the glossy ads and delved into the forums where users went by names like PointsGilded and JetSetZero. He was looking for the gray market—mileage brokers who traded in bulk commercial points, credit card transfers, and orphaned accounts.