Errorby Ásgrímur Hartmannsson |
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| Chapter 7 |
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.
Having finished the porridge, Jonas got up from his seat and went through his daily routine of washing the bowl and eating utensils. Then he put on his shoes and his jacket, rooted around in his pockets to make sure he had all his keys, as they might have been lost while he may or may not have been sleepwalking outside during the night and early morning.
Jonas did not know whether he sleepwalked or not. He doubted it, but he was not taking any chances.
Sure enough, his keys for everything from his house to the car were in his jacket pocket as usual. Now Jonas could go out to the Bureau of Personal Information protection to query about his identity — again.
He locked his apartment before he hurried down the stairs. He had enough time, but he just was not used to waking up in daylight at this time of the year. It made him feel like time was running out, for some reason.
His car was still where he had left it the night before. It had not been broken into either. Nobody seemed to want what was inside it, or the car itself, for that matter.
Jonas got his keys, unlocked the door and went in. He took a deep breath before he started the engine. He revved it a couple of times before he put in gear and reversed out of his space. The tarmac was a bit slick, for it had tipped a little below freezing during the night, and the thin film of water on the ground had formed a white sheet of crystals.
It could have been worse. It could have actually rained on the freezing cold ground. Had that happened, Jonas would not have been able to go anywhere, walking or in his car, at least not without incident.
Jonas drove slowly and carefully out of the parking lot. No use slipping and sliding. He already knew full well it was slippery. He was no longer 18 years old, yearning to do stunts in the snow. Gravel football fields could be used for the same purpose in summer. Footballers did not think it was a good idea. But then, what do footballers know about having fun? Jonas did not think that football fields were a good use of land, so he guessed they were about even.
Ah, in the old days, Jonas would gather a little speed — great speed is not necessary but can be harmful to the car’s sheet metal — and then turn sharply, pulling the handbrake. Even more fun could be had driving rear-wheel drive cars. In those, one could spin without the help of a handbrake.
Over-steering is fun. Under-steering is just scary.
Kraftwerk was playing on the radio. Jonas always thought that was a very peculiar band. A whole band that made music from funny computer sounds. Computers no longer made such sounds. Now they were all high quality speakers and stuff, and did therefore not go “bleep” anymore. It was good. Jonas had always disliked the “bleep.” There was still the “whirr,” but that was less annoying. Besides, it made Jonas feel that something was inside the box, doing something; even if that something was just making a low mechanical sound.
Maybe, once computers were built in such a way that they emitted no sound; fans that made a whirring sound would be inserted just to make the customers feel good.
Finally Jonas arrived at the building housing the Bureau of Personal Information protection. It did not look any less evil this day than the day before, with its impossible angles protruding out of the very dimension. Jonas parked as close to the building as he could and locked the door. One never knows where thieves may lurk.
The Bureau of Personal Information protection building loomed over Jonas more threatening than ever when he approached it on foot. Having left the security of the car, Jonas’ brain entertained a deep fear that he might fall into an inter-dimensional rift carved in reality by the building’s angles.
Jonas therefore tried to stay well away from all corners.
It did not help that everything was grey: the sky, the building, the ground. The building was dark granite and concrete both inside and out, and all the grass in the distance beyond the parking lot was covered on ice crystals. Jonas took out his wallet and looked at a 500 KR bill just to make sure he had not gone completely colour-blind.
As Jonas approached, the door opened automatically before him. A stray cat had placed itself beside the door on top of a heat vent. Jonas saw it as he entered. The cat was grey like everything else.
Behind a desk sat a woman, different from the one the day before, but in many ways the same. She too looked haggard and rough from foul indoor air and years of boring work. Like other government workers, she was probably completely incompetent for anything other than landfill but most likely knew someone in the inner workings of the system who, while most likely equally useless as a life-form, had a little power over who was hired.
Jonas walked toward this person, if a person is the right word, and in just a minute was acknowledged by the entity. Jonas stated as he had the day before, that he seemed to have been edited out of the national archive. The woman gave him an evil look, just as the woman before her had. And like the woman before her, she did not believe a word of what Jonas told her.
A terrorist, most likely, she thought, in a similar vein as her co-worker before her, or a smuggler. They all looked like that: two eyes, two feet, and a healthy complexion. No law-abiding citizen was ever without a layer of dust, her instincts told her.
With this in mind, and also what her co-worker had told her yesterday; that a man had tried to get an identity so he could live, she summoned the guards without even checking Jonas’ credentials.
This time Jonas did not bother to run, but peacefully let himself be captured by the guards. They did not handle him too unkindly, his manner being peaceful, but they did bring him to their lair for questioning.
Jonas told them his story as it appeared to him, leaving out of course how he planned to live his life without identity, and the guards looked on him with greater interest and compassion than the dusty wench at the desk.
The guards even took the time to look at Jonas’ credentials, to see if they were not real. And real they seemed to them. And they checked his identity, and were surprised to see that he was not in the archives. They even called his mother and his friend Mac for confirmation.
“Perhaps it is a glitch in the computer, or maybe they just forgot to punch in your name,” one of the guards offered as an explanation. In the back of his mind, he still wondered if Jonas was telling the truth.
“I suggest you try to find your birth certificate, the original print. It should be at the hospital you were born in. Check it out. If you find that, they can’t deny your existence.”
Jonas nodded. He would do this — but tomorrow, at a more Christian time of day. The guards, not having anything criminal on Jonas, let him go after having ceremoniously led him out to the parking lot.
Jonas walked back to his car and turned on the radio. Now he had to wait until midnight before he could even think about distributing the little parcels that Frank and the guys had let him have. None of the receiving parties ever came out in the day. He might as well sit in the car for fifteen minutes listening to the radio.
Jonas turned on the news to keep from being bored.
“Officials say that the personal information protection database is working well beyond all hopes, and has even on the very first day of operation solved numerous problems...”
Jonas turned to the classic rock station. It told him nothing, but it told him no lies. He sat back, listening to the tunes until the light had waned outside. Then he turned his engine on and exited the parking lot. He went home to watch TV until night. TV is good. TV is your friend, Jonas thought.
Copyright © 2010 by Ásgrímur Hartmannsson
