Elena fired up LedgerMind. The interface was cheerful, with a little cartoon robot stamping "APPROVED!" on entries. She pulled up Ana M.'s time punches.

The fluorescent lights of Contabilidad y Asociados hummed a low, anxious tune. At 11:47 PM, the only things awake in the city were the stray dogs and Elena Vargas, Senior Accountant.

Elena had been doing this for fifteen years. She had seen tax reforms, currency devaluations, and the great Excel crash of 2018. But this month was different. This month, the new AI accounting software, "LedgerMind," had been installed.

But Elena trusted paper. She trusted the smell of ink and the soft scratch of her pen. Tonight, she was doing a parallel run—old school versus new school.

He paled. "But LedgerMind says it's perfect."

According to the machine, Ana had clocked in at 8:00 AM and out at 5:00 PM, then back in at midnight for five nights straight. The machine had not flagged it because the biometric reader was broken. Someone had typed in the numbers manually.