Dreamland

National I.D.

I'm having a party and I need to go buy some beer. My car isn't running so I ask my brother if I can borrow his. It's a classic red '64 Chevy Impala. I'm driving to the market. It's a clear dark night. The air is crisp and cold, and the ground is dusted with a light covering of snow, it feels like Christmas.

I'm standing in line to pay for my beer. The store has a large flat screen monitor above the register for the customers to watch while waiting. It's showing music videos, the current one is in Japanese. The woman singing is coated in white powder. She's nude, except for a black satin G string and a white transparent veil draped over her upper body. She is performing a dance, a sort of acrobatic ballet, while singing. The melody of the song is haunting, the overall effect of the video is very artistic, sensual, mesmerizing.

I pay for my purchase by handing over my National I.D. card. It's a combination identification-credit-debit card. The young clerk swipes it through the reader and informs me that I'll have to wait for the authorities. "You card shows you have two crimes on record, the first you've served time for, but the second one has never been reconciled."

I tell the clerk that the second one was a records error, it was supposed to be removed from my file. He says that the authorities will be able to verify and correct this when they arrive.

I'm talking to the clerk while waiting: "You're probably too young to remember this, but when they first mandated that citizens use these cards, lots of people were against it, claimed they were infringing on our freedom. But with all the problems we had back then with terrorists and criminals, most folks said it was a small price to pay for our security. It didn't bother me much at the time, I was already using a swipe ID badge at work, and a debit card for most of my purchases anyway."

The Federal Agent arrives and checks my I.D. in a laptop he is carrying. He apologizes for the confusion, says it will be corrected. The clerk returns my card and I'm free to go. I leave the store. Driving back to the party, I notice that I've tracked dirt onto the carpet of my brother's car. I'll have to clean it up once I get back home.