entered and began searching vigilantly for signs that would be unambiguous enough to point them in the right direction. A rather detached gate hostess, clad in the usual nondescript universal dark aviation blue uniform with gold piping at the collar and sleeves, manned an information counter and intently scrutinized her very long and very colorful fingernails. Not far from where she sat, a chubby security guard wearing what might easily have passed for the latest suit out of the cutting-edge Kim Jong-il-Vogue collection glanced up sporadically now and again, interrupting his nervous rapid-fire scrolling through the pages of a bestseller fiction e-book, to obliquely survey the silent stream of passengers as they emerged from the gate area and entered the main concourse.
Before them was a long corridor with a stupendously purple carpet runner under fluorescent lighting that was intended to lead the new arrivals all the way to the immigrations counters and then to the baggage claim area beyond. At this early hour, none of the passengers trudging along took any serious notice of the offerings of any of the prodigious number of fast food stands that lined the route all the way to the baggage delivery hall.
At some point further down the corridor, they passed a small group of janitors wearing furrowed brows and very stern expressions who could be seen busily cleaning and polishing the floors to the left and right of the carpet runner, their buffing machines adding to the largely functional terminal atmosphere a determined humming noise that competed with the ambient music for that particular niche in a traveler’s consciousness where it is registered but simultaneously ignored, not there to be enjoyed but to nudge the flow of traffic onward instead. A few bleary-eyed travelers lay prone on the vinyl-covered benches of an adjacent seating arrangement, snoring lightly with open real-estate propaganda magazines forming small tents over their faces, an almost intimate campground bridging the public expanse of time that lies between involuntarily being here and somewhere far away.
Sponge cheese wrappers and a few Mr. Ed’s All-StarµSurrogateSirloin sandwich boxes littered the tabletops next to the seating area.
Niklas seemed to finally have sobered up somewhat prior to disembarkation and as they made their first steps in Libertyville@Esperantia. Within only a short stretch of distance, he soon made an almost lively impression as he eagerly forged his way toward the baggage claim area. Occasionally he would try to nudge Jacqueline in the one or other direction in order to squeeze past a few slower fellow travelers or to circumvent small groups of people standing about while they talked or studied a variety of messages displayed on rows upon rows of flat screen monitors mounted at eye level on the walls.
Charles was a bit surprised by how unremarkably nondescript this place thus far seemed to him. If Niklas was awaiting Shangri-La, then he was now most certainly about to be locked into a fast-forward reality check.
As the stream of passengers descended yet another escalator and finally fanned out into a high-ceiling hall with evenly-spaced tall columns and a gray granite floor, Charles could see an endlessly long row of NationStation desks ahead of him. The men and women sitting behind them watched the arriving passengers trickle in with blank expressions and simply waited.
Upon closer examination, Charles noted that the area was divided into three color-coded zones for the arriving travelers.
Citizens and Residents.
Visitors.
New Arrivals.
Niklas took his place in the latter line after a short moment of hesitation and, directly behind him, Jacqueline and Charles. There were not a lot of others joining in the line behind them, perhaps a dozen people at most. A second row had formed to their right.
Charles quickly noted that most of the travelers in these two lines made the appearance of being rather elderly to him. In fact, he also registered that he was the only child awaiting his turn before the New Arrivals desk.
As Niklas stood in line and waited, he nervously clutched beneath his arm a tattered English-translation book that quite possibly dated back to his school days.
“In case I need it …” he said in a furtive whisper to Jacqueline just before they took their place in the line. “I don’t wanna make any mistakes.”
He smiled the most charming smile Charles had seen him afford his mother in ages.
“Not to worry. I just happen to speak English, you know,” Jacqueline responded flatly and rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, but we don’t wanna make no mistakes here!” was his curt reply.
As he stood edgily in the waiting line, Niklas was soon silently fuming upon registering that everyone else standing in the same line–at least those who appeared to be in need of some sort of translation assistance–possessed the trendy e-versions with the very latest software installed. And the longer he stood and waited, the plainer it was that something else had begun to gnaw at him, probably infuriating and intimidating him simultaneously: to his great surprise and disdain, it appeared that, without exception, everyone else biding their time in the same line or those adjoining appeared to be of Asian or African descent, or some combination thereof.
Charles could read from the look on his stepfather’s face that Niklas was thinking hard about what he had expected to see in this ideal society that he had pinned his, and the family’s, highest hopes on. It was the one society where, he was informed, everyone was created in the Lord’s image. In this line–Niklas shuddered hard as the realization hit home–no one even came close to resembling him in the least.
The officer at the NationStation desk motioned for them to step forward.
After much shuffling of papers and scanning of various barcodes, Niklas, Jacqueline and Charles were successively subjected to a barrage of various short interviews and scans; they were also photographed from front and side and finally fingerprinted. The officer handling them rarely even looked up from his desk or the monitor glowing before him when he addressed them.
“So what did you say the reason was that you want to come here?” he inquired from the corner of his mouth while closely studying their travel documents yet again.
Niklas Vladimir Bratislav stood at the NationStation Desk and beamed at the prospect of soon shedding his old identity and the life that went with it: “I wanted to get away from all those dotcommunists and pacifists and atheists. You know, Sir, this here feels like I’m finally coming home!”
The officer nodded briefly and flashed the most fleeting of smiles in the direction of the monitor and routinely answered: “Sounds good a reason as any. That’s what I wanted to hear. To be processed at your next station, you’ll need to go to that counter over there. Have a nice day!”
He handed them their documents and promptly directed his attention to the next person waiting behind the wide yellow line painted on the floor.
Upon completing the copious immigrations formalities at the NationStation counter, the next stop for them was a quick visit to the transit area medical service facility, or TAMS, for a cursory but mandatory check-up.
And, more significantly, this stop was the one that was required for the implantation of the obligatory VitaMeter chip. The three of them joined the small groups of others queuing in the customer waiting area, intently studying the screens, upon which they were duly informed that men generally prefer to have the chips planted on their upper arms while women, at least statistically, more often opted for the discretionary implantation between the shoulder blades. The very basic no-frills genuine TAMS-approved package included the implantation along with a circular patch tattoo that was offered with a choice of one of the standard designs; additionally, an impressive array of optional aesthetically-appealing designs, many of them variations on a wide range of esoteric themes such as Ying and Yang, Far Eastern dragons or glow-in-the-dark Sanskrit script, was also available at a modest extra charge.
Alternatively, for those who prided themselves for their good taste and individuality, a deluxe solution was available in the form of extravagant Asian sak yant motives being offered by independent craftsmen who had set up their shop directly adjacent to the rooms of the TAMS facility. While acceptable, they were not explicitly encouraged by the staff manning the TAMS facility desk,