9.05.25: The Price of Emojis

In the year 2041, every emoji costs money. Thumbs up? 3 cents. Crying laughing? 5 cents. The heart emoji has inflation issues and is now bundled into a monthly subscription called LoveBasic. People communicate less. Sarcasm is risky without the right face. Romance dies slowly. Then someone develops a black-market emoji keyboard. Illegal winks. Bootleg eggplants. Governments crack down hard. I got fined for sending a fire emoji to my friend’s mixtape. He got flagged too. We appealed. They said it was “incendiary language.” I miss the old internet. Before feelings were monetized. Before language had a price tag. Before all this.