Error

by Ásgrímur Hartmannsson

Chapter 3

'Error' synopsis

One day, Jonas, who has recently migrated to the city, discovers that all his records — including his assets — have been erased somehow. No longer able to get work, buy anything on credit or sell his now legally non-existent car, his life becomes a unique adventure.

The greyness continued inside the building. The marble floor looked harder than hard, the walls looked like the inside of a granite cave, and the artwork looked like the innermost bowels of Hell.

Jonas stared at a large painting. It covered about three square meters at least. It was basically a red plane, contaminated by blackish grey smudges. The paint looked as if some of it had coagulated before it was applied.

“Next, please.”

Jonas looked away from the painting. It was his turn, finally. He went to the receptionist and displayed his number, even though he was the only one there. She reluctantly acknowledged his presence.

Jonas explained his plight to the woman, and she listened with a bored, lifeless look on her face, nodding now and again to indicate that she was listening. But she did not believe him. Jonas could see it in her cold, malicious gaze. She most likely suspected him of being a criminal of some sort; a drug smuggler, a terrorist, or just an annoying prankster.

She was also most likely considering informing the authorities, but first she tried to confirm Jonas’ story. She looked him up in the computer. She did not find him in there, and she told him this.

“I need your full name and social security number,” she told Jonas.

Jonas supplied her with his driver’s licence. She leered at it, evilly, and punched the info into her computer. She probably did this evilly also, but Jonas couldn’t tell. At any rate, she didn’t find him in the files.

“Sorry sir, but this name does not exist in the archives.”

“It did yesterday.”

“That may well be, but it does not today.”

“I want to know why.”

“Everybody is on file. You are not. This cannot be your name.”

“But it is my name. I have never had another.”

“I suggest you stop fooling around. I am busy.”

“I want to see someone in charge.”

The woman leered at Jonas. Yep, he was definitely a joker of some sort, making mischief for his own ends. She pressed the silent alarm, and a couple of neckless guards appeared from a side room and approached Jonas’ physical form.

Jonas could not help but to feel threatened by the large men, and ran away before the grunts could lay hands on him. They tried to give chase, but Jonas was lighter and faster than they, and he got out and to his car. The grunts stopped when they were just outside of the door, and they wrote down the licence plate number on Jonas’ car.

Victorious, the guards returned to their domain inside their little side room. Aha! They thought, now they could track down that man, and send the cops to pick him up, mess up his day for him.

They went to their computer, and wrote the registration number on it. A second later, they would try again. There seemed to be an error.

“Are you sure this is the right number?”

“Hey, I confirmed it with you, didn’t I?”

They checked their notes again. They had both written down the same letters and numbers. Each in a different handwriting, but either way, it was clear. The entered number did not fit any existing registration plate. It did not belong to any car or to any motorcycle.

They concluded that it must be a fake and called the cops.

The police spotted Jonas two hours later.

Jonas was just driving around, deep in his thoughts, wondering what to do. How would he pay for his apartment, food, or anything if he could not get a job because the state did not acknowledge his existence? And not only that, they reacted with hostility when he stated his plight.

He would have to get an illegal job somewhere, where he would get paid in cash. He figured he had about a month left in the apartment before he got kicked out. He would not be able to apply for welfare. He was in big trouble indeed.

And this was not helping: A police car was behind him, flashing blue lights.

Jonas wondered what the problem could be. He was sure that he was well within the legal speed limit, and he did not remember anything being wrong with the car. But perhaps that was the thing. Maybe a safety breaker had gone out, and he suddenly had no rear lights. Jonas convinced himself that was the matter, and pulled over.

The patroller came to a halt behind him, and the policeman took his time to get out. Jonas wondered what took him so long. Finally he got out of the car and walked toward Jonas.

He asked to see Jonas’ driver’s licence. Jonas was only too happy to show his licence. The cop could keep it for all he cared. It seemed to him it was a useless piece of plastic now that it was not a sufficient proof of his existence in the eyes of the law.

The policeman looked at the licence, and seemed to think it was for real. But still, he asked to see further identification. Jonas produced his credit card.

The policeman had already checked the plates. It was true, as dispatch said, they did not exist. And neither did this man, yet all his credentials seemed legitimate. The policeman would have completely ignored this, but there was the constant threat of terrorist activity to think about. The guy could well be a terrorist with connections inside the institutions themselves, able to have fake credentials made by the actual machine that makes the real ones. Or would that be real credentials with a fake name on them?

It had crossed the officer’s mind why the suspect had not just created a fake identity on the computer itself to come with the more tangible credentials. But he quickly figured the reason out: the state computer was guarded by the very best anti-hack software that money could buy; no one could hack into it. Not even L33t Haxor himself.

Finally he had it. He was supposed to apprehend this suspect on suspicion of suspicious behaviour and bring him in for questioning. Perhaps he was a hardened criminal mastermind, out to build a death ray and conquer the Moon; perhaps he was just a common punk with access to some government machinery. At any rate, he was guilty of something.

Jonas was annoyed to be arrested for questioning. And just for wanting to be reinserted into the state archives? The state did not use to behave like this. It used to be completely hopeless to be erased from the archives once in. It was even impossible to have unnecessary info, like religious beliefs, deleted. But back then, it was all printed out. They no longer did that. Not so much because of budget cuts, more just because of public will. People wanted the archive to be available on-line, because they knew now that they rarely bothered to go to the library to look at info on microfilm. Not many even knew what microfilm was anymore.

Jonas quietly went with the man. He took his keys from the car and was directed by the officer to have a seat in the back of the patroller. The child-locks were on, and once the doors were closed, Jonas was locked in. It was no matter. Maybe they would put him in jail, and his worries would be over.

The state would feed him and keep him warm forever, he thought. He didn’t exist, so they could do this without any problems from Amnesty International. Yep. Jonas had just had his destiny selected for him. No longer did he have to worry about starvation or cold. And really, he had never been free, because, how can a man really be free in civilisation?

With this in mind, it did not bother Jonas any to be arrested. He did not watch as the policeman removed the front plate off his car and brought it in with him as he entered the patroller. He placed the plate in the passenger seat, and radioed in. “Got the fake plate guy — bringing him in now — be ready...”

Jonas breathed deeply. The policeman drove away smoothly, like a taxi driver. It takes training, minutes of it, to take off as smoothly as this. The patroller was driving a relatively new car. The black leather was still clean and soft, not defiled by vomit and piss like older cars. Cop-cars were cheap when bought from the department, but had high mileage, like taxis, and often smelled bad. No vehicle is puked in as much as a police squad car.

It took just twenty minutes to go to the police station. It would have taken just fifteen, but the police must set an example for the population. Besides, the car most likely had a bug in it that told how fast it was going at any given time. The state was still thinking about inserting this in all new cars. Ah, the good old days, they were over. Unless you found the device and disabled it and the world is fun again.

Jonas was driven into the courtyard behind the police station. He had never been there before, mainly because he never had any business there. The policeman opened the door for Jonas, and led him inside the station. Jonas hadn’t been inside the station for years. He couldn’t remember why he had come there last, but it was in no way connected with crime.

Not that the reason he was there at this time had but vague connections to a possibility of criminal intent, if not crime. At any rate, he was now at the police station.

Jonas was led to the interrogation room, and seated there. He waited for five whole minutes, pondering the meaning of life and various other stuff until someone came to interrogate him.

“What is your full name?”

“Jonas Arnes.”

“That is the name on your driver’s licence.”

“Yes. Because it is my driver’s licence.”

“But is it your name?”

Jonas looked at the ceiling, in feigned recollection: “Yes, I think so. That’s what my mother called me. You can call her if you wish. I think she will confirm that is indeed the name she gave me.”

The interrogator gave Jonas a long, blank stare. He took down Jonas’ mother’s telephone number, and then he called someone into the room.

“Have someone check out this mother he claims to have, see how she is involved,” the interrogator whispered to the man who had entered.

Jonas snickered.

“Why are you laughing?”

“I am just thinking what my mother’s reaction will be when you guys call her and ask if she is positive she has had a child.”

Jonas was interrogated for whole three hours, on matters of national security, explosives, al-Qaida connections, and who gave him the credentials.

Jonas, of course, tried to resist the temptation to give stupid answers to stupid questions, and mostly succeeded. He told them, as it was, that he did not believe in national security any more than he believed in the Easter bunny; he knew nothing of explosives other than firecrackers; he had no al-Qaida connections, although he once had an ADSL connection; and he got the credentials from VISA on one hand, and on the other, from the state itself, namely, the department of motor vehicles.

Asked about how he got his driver’s licence, Jonas tried as he could to outline from memory all the tests he had to go through to convince the authorities to give him the piece of plastic that permitted him to operate that deadly machinery known as “a car.”

Jonas was most surprised when the cops led him out of the building and sent him on his way.

“What about my car?” he yelled at them. It would take him at least two hours to walk back to the car. He wasn’t happy about that. But he did. He had to.

The cops sent the plate from Jonas’ car to be checked out at the lab. The result was that the plate had been made with the proper tools, it had been subjected to the elements for over ten years, and numerous stickers had been glued to it and removed. Just like a real plate.

Thus, the plate would have needed to have been forged at least ten years ago, and gone unnoticed on that car for the entire time. They could only assume it had been done to evade state vehicle payments. That would be well beyond the statute of limitations by this time and thus unpunishable by law.

As for the man himself, well, they did call Jonas’ mother. She confirmed that he was giving the right name. She also told them she hadn’t heard from him for a week. But that was not uncommon. However, she had tried to call his number today, but there was some flaw in the phone system and it came out as a dead number.

The cops got his number from her, and tried for themselves. It was true. No user at this number. They were stumped. They figured the woman who went by the alias “mother” was somehow in league with this Jonas and that they were onto some plot unknown to them. Finally they decided this matter was not worth their time. Turning their attention to other, more important matters, like doughnuts, they forgot all about Jonas. Who cared about him anyway?

On his way to the car, Jonas walked past the house of an old friend. And he thought perhaps he could get some help from him. Jonas figured that if enough people backed him up, he might get himself into the national archive again and thus get his bank account back, his VISA functioning and his car insured. Perhaps he might even get a job.

Jonas walked toward the house, now hopeful again after having been spared free meals and housing for life. Worse come to worst, the guy might even let him stay once his apartment was leased to someone else. Jonas hoped things would be cleared up before then.

He took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.

Proceed to Chapter 4...