Papers, Please

General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport has been over its carrying capacity for over a year now. The international terminal has become beyond congested; there are over ten Boeing-787s that land within a mere three hours in the afternoon from Zurich, Lisbon, London… and Tehran. Tehran is what’s known at passport control as the problem city. Mike picks up a government pen and scribbles on his scratch pad. 10 planes, 300 people per plane, 180 minutes, that’s 17 people passing per minute! Mike scratches his head. No wonder why his job at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection is so consuming.

The American border patrol agent swivels around in his chair and straightens his tie. He squints out at the snaking line of entrants in the international line. At least a hundred out there, he reckons. In Mike’s lane there is a monitor showing a “Welcome to America!” video that shows a panorama of the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan taken from a helicopter.

It’s time to begin. Mike presses a button; the monitor is replaced with block text: “NEXT IN LINE.” A tall German in a suit strides over.

“Your documents, please,” Mike says.

German citizens don’t need a visa to enter the U.S.; they need only the pre-flight ESTA, which is done online. Mike makes sure that the photo matches.

“Hans, welcome to America!” Mike gets the name from the passport.

He smiles at Hans and lets him past the checkpoint.

“NEXT!” Mike calls out. A family of three saddles over. Mike looks at them and can already begin to envision problems. The family is most likely from Tehran.

“Your documents, please,” he mutters.

Mike is wrong. The passports are Afghan.

“And your visas,” Mike says.

The visas are handed over. All the information appears to match. The father is named Aarif. Still, there is never a thing as being too careful.

“You have been randomly selected for an search,” states Mike.

He knows that it is not random at all. In America this is called discrimination. In the border control business, this is called “intelligent screening.” Such behavior can be excused in the name of national security.

“Where do you fly from?” Mike asks.

“Baghdad,” Aarif answers.

“There is no direct flight from Baghdad to Boston,” Mike states matter-of-factly, a little annoyed.

“I’m sorry, we made connection in Tehran,” Aarif says quickly.

Mike points to the father’s bag. He’ll now do a “random” luggage search. Mike takes the bag to the screening station. He zips open the case and immediately spots an orange. He closes it back up. Mike wishes he could facepalm himself.

“Agricultural products are not allowed over the checkpoint,” he tells the father. “You should know this. It could rot, contain some disease, some virus. We wouldn’t want that to spread and infect our citizens, you know.”

Aarif doesn’t know because he can’t understand English that well, but he senses that his family might not be able to enter America.

“Please, please…” he squeaks out.

Mike is at a stalemate. Option 1 is to detain the family and eventually the higher-ups would deport them back to their homeland. Option 2 is to take the orange out of the bag and let them through. After all, their documents are correct down to the nitty detail.

“Please wait a moment,” Mike says to the family.

Mike goes back to his swivel chair and leans back, debating this conundrum. It’s only his second day on the job, so the Afghan family situation is a first. What to do, what to do… Mike’s face sinks down into his arms. He is reminded of a nightmare.

●     ●     ●

The snow is ten times worse than it should have been. And it’s not hyperbole, because literally it has already snowed ten inches when the National Arterian Weather Service had predicted one. Mikhail reckons that someone in the meteorological office will be fired.

Mikhail takes off his cap and places it on the hook labelled “CAP.” He straightens his tie and sits down at his station. “West Arteria Border Control,” the sign reads. An alarm goes off. It’s eight o’ clock. He opens the shutters and speaks through the installed megahorn.

“Good morning, welcome to Arteria, this is the West Arterian Border checkpoint, single-file line, passports out, visas for foreigners, work permits and health forms are required by law!” he shouts all at once. “NEXT!”

Mikhail scribbles furiously on his notepad to generate a table, in which he will record the entrants for today. As soon as he is done, he looks up at what appears to be a Arterian official, which he can recognize by his Arterian badge, a nine-pointed star with an eagle inside. Crap. He has been letting this official wait for him. He quickly apologizes. The Arterian official scans the checkpoint and looks out at what must be a line of at least a hundred people seeking to enter Arteria. It’s still snowing hard outside. Only the passport booth itself has shelter. Poor people.

He turns back to Mikhail.

“I trust you can handle them all,” he mutters through his mustache, as gruff as ever.

“Yes, of course.” Mikhail replies.

“You do hard work today, you get bonus, Mikhail.”

Mikhail nods. He says this often, but the bonus has never seemed to make its way into Mikhail’s hands. Regardless, Mikhail knows that he must do hard work because any inefficiency will deem him incompetent, in which case he will be fired and his family’s state-provided housing will be whisked away.

“Glory to the homeland,” the official says.

Mikhail salutes him.

“Glory to the homeland.”

The officer leaves, and the first entrant comes in. His hair is damp from the snow outside. He brushes his overcoat clean.

“Your documents,” Mikhail mutters.

The papers come in through the opening at the bottom of the passport window. It is an Arterian passport. The guy is returning home.

“A moment please,” says Mikhail.

Mikhail searches the man’s district as printed on the passport against a stack of binders. He is able to find the man’s information. He verifies that every data entry is accurate, and that the seal on his passport is not forged. Satisfied, he stamps the passport with the blue “ADMIT” stamp, and hands it back.

“All hail Arteria,” Mikhail says.

The man bows.

“Glory to the homeland,” he replies.

This sequence of words is a privilege afforded only between two Arterians. It’s supposed to signify that the country is great, but Mikhail knows that to the citizens, it means that everyone is in the same boat, at the hands of the Arterian oligarchy.

“NEXT!” Mikhail yells. A frail woman comes in, clinging onto her purse. Even without seeing her passport, Mikhail knows that the purse is a Grigorian one. She fumbles around for a couple seconds before pulling out her passport and visa slip. Mikhail scrutinizes the passport. Name, check. City, check. Sex… he looks up. Check. It is not too uncommon for him to verify the sex using the x-ray body scanner that the border control office is equipped with. The body scanner serves a double purpose: Mikhail can call a “random” search to check for contraband hidden inside the entrant’s clothing.

He looks up at the woman again. A red alarm goes off in Mikhail’s head. The visa’s seal is forged.

“Your visa is not genuine,” Mikhail states.

“No, it is. I received it a week ago from the embassy,” she says.

Mikhail is unfazed. He begins to pull out the red “DENY” stamp. The woman’s hands begin to flail.

“No, no, I need to enter the country,” she speaks to stop him. “My documents are legit. Legit!”

Mikhail suddenly remembers that the proper procedure is in fact not to deny her, but to detain her for forgery of the Arterian seal. The woman realizes this as well, and she pulls out a wad of bills from her purse. Mikhail raises his eyebrows. It is a bribe. Mikhail shoos it off.

“I’m sorry, forgery will not be tolerated,” he says.

He presses the red “DETAIN” button. Alarms go off. Two muscular men come in and push the woman out. Mikhail is to confiscate her passport until further notice.

It is so easy to detain them. A stamp or a button is all that is needed. After all, Mikhail has become an expert at detecting fake documents. He must check the expiration date of their passport, their visa, and their height. He must check that the seal is valid, and the work permit shows a genuine company, and that the vaccination form is up-to-date. Not a single detail is to be missed. Even when all the information is accurate, Mikhail is allowed to deny suspicious people. After all, it is better to turn away the innocent than let in a terrorist with legitimate documents.

However, if he does let in a terrorist, and the mistake is traced back to him, it will be the end. He lives with his wife Ilya and his daughter in a state-provided dwelling. His salary is just enough to pay the bills, for the market supply of labor is not scarce at all. It is amusing, how the security of the nation rests in underpaid border workers like him. And yet the system has never failed. Since Mikhail has passed all of the government’s background checks, he is labelled a low-risk worker by the higher-ups. He is lucky to have this job. He is underpaid but others are paid even less. There is also power. He is the single person that decides the fate of all the entrants. Occasionally detaining someone after discovering contraband gives him a heroic pleasure. He is the protector of Arteria.

“NEXT!” Mikhail yells out.

The next entrant has a hood. He hands his papers over. They are all correct. Mikhail is about to stamp “ADMIT” when the hooded guy suddenly speaks up.

“Call me Q,” he whispers.

A code name, of course. From the passport Mikhail can see that his real name is Viktor.

“What I am about to tell you is a secret. Please do not let this information disperse.”

Q tells Mikhail that he is part of a revolution to take back the country from the corrupt oligarchs. He takes out a canister and shows it to Mikhail. Mikhail learns that it is a virus: code Y1689. Q tells him that the symptoms include profuse sweating after six hours, then artery constriction, and finally complete blood capillary destruction after twelve. Mikhail asks if it is lethal. He is told that the survival rate is essentially nil. Q wants to use the virus on the prime minister to begin an infection that will destroy the Arterian government from the inside. He learns that viruses spreads through air, although they only have a lifespan of one hour outside the host. But that means that as long as one person is infected every hour, the chain will propagate. Q says that he will infect himself with the virus first so that it can spread to the city hall, and then he will use the antidote on himself.

“And if the antidote doesn’t work?” Mikhail inquires.

Q explains that he is prepared to die. At this point Mikhail would have dismissed his plan as another one of those bullshit revolutions that don’t work. It is by no means the first, and he has been known to deny these people even if they had correct documents, or in rare cases, even detain them. But today is different. Maybe Q seems a little more legit than the others. Maybe the monotony of the border control job has finally gotten to him. Q has piqued his interest.

“What’s in it for me?” Mikhail asks, skeptically.

Q takes out a bigger canister. This time it is filled with pink pills.

Mikhail gasps.

“Yes, we know,” Q interrupts.

Mikhail begins to sweat. Somehow Q knows about Mikhail’s secret. These pink pills are actually his lifeline. Mikhail knows that he cannot survive without a daily dose his medication. Even worse, his dosage must increase by one pill every year. He has been working for six years, and now he must take eleven of these pills a day. Swallowing any less will disrupt his circulatory system. It might be fatal. Mikhail wipes his brow with a tissue.

And this is precisely why Mikhail is a low-risk worker. Without the government shipping these pills to his home every month, he is as good as dead. How does Q know about his secret?

“We can supply your medication,” Q states.

He gives the canister to Mikhail. He inspects it to determine its genuinity. Mikhail is good at inspection. It is indeed the real deal.

“You help us here, and if the plan works, we’ll give you a lifetime supply,” Q says.

He doesn’t appear to be lying. Mikhail is also good at detecting lies. Mikhail stamps a blue “ADMIT” into Q’s passport.

“Glory to the homeland,” he says, jokingly.

He knows that if Q succeeds, there won’t be an Arteria anymore. Mikhail asks how Q is going to make sure that innocent civilians like him are going to be safe. Q waits a bit, knowing that the answer is not the best.

“Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee that,” he mutters. “But the sacrifices will be minimal. I’m sorry, but the existence of this virus must be a secret.”

But what about me, Mikhail thinks. You’re telling all this secret stuff to me. Suddenly it hits him. Mikhail realizes his mistake, but he has already let Q into the country. Before he leaves, Q rolls a virus canister under the window opening. It tumbles onto the floor. Mikhail hurls himself to the floor to catch it. It is too late. The canister seal has been broken.

“Don’t worry, one of my comrades has the antidote. He’ll send it to your house after this is all over. We can’t have you phoning the government now that you know about our plan, can we?” Q smiles before leaving.

Mikhail checks his watch. 10AM. If the revolution doesn’t succeed, by 10PM his capillaries will burst. He should have known that Q didn’t completely trust him with his plan. Still, the tables of fate have turned. It’s not a pleasant thing when your fate depends on a single person.

Mikhail tries to return to his job, but he is hinging on madness. He cannot feel the virus, but he knows that somewhere inside him, little capsule-sized creatures are latching onto his cell receptors and making their way in by endocytosis. He cannot focus. He ends up denying most of the remaining entrants, even if they have correct documents. Asylum-seekers, businessmen, children… all denied. If they speak up he threatens to detain them. He closes up the checkpoint at 4PM, removes his cap from the hook, and hurries home. His wife welcomes him in, but there is no time. He turns on the radio.

It’s all over.

“At 3:13PM in Kobalevsky Square, a terrorist was found dead in the middle of the street. His bag is said to have contained fifteen canisters of an unknown substance possibly a disease. The city hall had been evacuated an hour before, there are no casualties. His motives are currently in question. The police will conduct a further investigation. Citizens, there is no need to be concerned for you safety. Glory to the homeland…”

The radio switches to an advertisement. Mikhail shuts it off and races out of the house, ignoring his wife. There is no antidote at the doorstep. He pants before running down the street. It is best if Ilya doesn’t know about any of this. Mikhail runs for thirty minutes before slowing to a deathwalk.

The government probably already knew about Q’s plan, given that they had already evacuated the prime minister. Mikhail can imagine Q rushing into Kobalevsky Square, only to be met by a web of snipers. Mikhail can imagine Q’s corpse being rolled in cocoon-like bubble wrap and shipped away in a government van to prevent the virus from transmitting itself through air.

It’s all over.

If only he had denied or detained him, everything would have been all right. Well, not everything, his family would still be stuck under the Arterian regime, barely paying the bills, but at least the family would have a father. Happiness is relative. Now what? At 10PM he will die, and the police will deem it suicide, and god knows what will happen to his family now that their income is nil.

Mikhail feels betrayed. Is it betrayal by Q? No, his motive was purely revolutionary, and had he succeeded Mikhail would have most likely gotten his antidote. Betrayal by the government? Well, the government is just trying to protect itself, the corrupt establishment. Mikhail struggles to find fault in anyone. It appears that he has dug his own grave. It’s all because he trusted that guy who called himself Q. Again, if only he had detained him… 

Mikhail checks his watch. 9:30PM. He has skipped dinner and has just kept walking away from his house through the winter storm. The snow keeps on falling. He turns from the main street into an alley that has not been plowed. He can begin to feel something in his blood, a gut-wrenching pain. He hurls himself onto the garbage dump. Mikhail has heard rumors that the police sometimes let criminals rot away in garbage dumps if the jails are full. It saves resources.

Thirty minutes pass. Mikhail concludes that trust is evil. The snow around the dump is a pool of red.

●     ●     ●

“Thank you for your patience,” Mike says to Aarif’s family. Mike peels off a large, red post-it note from his desk and scribbles something in pen.

“Can I look at your documents once more?”

Aarif hands the four passports and visas over. Aarif’s family has already spent twenty minutes waiting in front of Mike, but it is always better to double check. Mike verifies the information again and takes Aarif’s fingerprint. It does not match that of any criminal in the database. Perhaps he will just take out the orange in the luggage and let these people through. He reaches for the blue “ADMIT” stamp.

Suddenly, his supervisor makes an announcement through the PA.

“All checkpoints are to be closed temporarily.”

It’s only Mike’s second day. First there’s the Afghan family, and now this.

“I’m sorry, please wait another few minutes,” Mike says to the family.

All the officers close their lanes, and the supervisor ushers Mike and ten others into his office. He begins to read from a letter.

“Well officers, we have a mandate. Effective immediately, all entrants holding Iranian, Syrian, and Afghan passports are to be detained at their port of entry.”

The officers begin to chitchat. Nobody knows what to make of this new mandate.

“Unfortunately, it’s an executive order,” the supervisor continues. “It must be enforced. Now get back to work!”

Mike opens up his checkpoint. Now there’s no choice.

“I’m sorry, but you will have to be detained,” Mike tells the family.

They do not quite understand, but they are jittery. They are afraid. A minute later, the police come and whisk them away toward immigrant detention. The children are confusedly tugging on their father’s overcoat. They don’t know what is going on.

Mike lowers his head in his arms. If only he had just taken out the orange and let them in ten minutes before… but then again, he is supposed to safeguard America. It is possible that a mistake here could cost thousands of lives. This is no place for emotion, he tries to convince himself. This is no place for trust. But then he peers out at the Afghan family, who is being taken away in front of his eyes. Mike shakes his head. He puts his hands together, squeezing them into a sweaty ball. Has he made the wrong choice again? Are they terrorists are or they innocent? Aarif Zubair, 43, claims to have been hired for a marketing job in the United States. His wife, 41, wants to work as a restaurant waiter. The children, 15 and 13, want an American education. The family’s data makes his head dizzy. His mind whirrs with indecisiveness… 

Poke. Poke. Mike is prodded back to consciousness by a neighboring officer. 

“Hey, are you alright? You’re in America, and there are a hundred entrants in your goddamn line that you need to process!” the officer shouts.

Mike straightens out his tie and positions his swivel chair parallel to the table.

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting, sir. I can handle them all,” Mike says without thinking. “Glory to the homeland.” He salutes the officer.

The officer stares at Mike, befuddled.

“What?” says the officer.

“I’m sorry, forget I said that.”