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I had this one a while back. I never wrote it up. It keeps coming back to mind periodically.
The setting is the future. Or maybe now, but in an alternate universe. Most things you'd consider familiar. Almost everything is done by automatic computer processing. And anything that needs to be done is triggered by a code. These codes are scanned, sort of like bar codes. Really, the entire society is based on these bar code-ish things. It's all very efficient, because the encodings can handle massive amounts of information, but the production cost is very cheap since it's just paper.
I'm waiting in line to pay for a pair of shoes or something like that. The clerk does a double-take when she sees me hand her my code. She's struck by the ornate, retro styling of it. [It is at this point that I realize that I am, in fact, the inventor of this barcode system, and I have determined that it's much simpler to just live my life anonymously and not draw attention to myself.] I thank her but say it's nothing special, I just have a really old code machine.
After this, perhaps the next day, I am in class, learning how the bar codes work. I'm getting a degree in some other subject, and the barcode studies class is a required distribution course. Of course it's stupid to take it, but if I try to flaunt my superior knowledge of the system, I'll blow my cover. Besides, I always enjoy seeing how the professors interpret things in the system. It's not unusual for them to miss the subtleties I put in but turn around and completely overanalyze some trivial piece of it that I gave absolutely no thought to.
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