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Airport Line Up
5 July 2007 18:13It’s time. I step forward to the red line in front of the customs guard.
There’s a flicker in the corner of my eye and I watch a marriage turn to flames for a second before ash floats away on the wind.
I’ve rented my personality out to a smuggler.
There a flush of adrenaline through my whole system and the warning pictograms flicker up into my field of vision. Intense focus blooms in the middle of my sightline. A deck of cards listing all the available targets with suggestions concerning engagement shudder around the person I’m looking at as my sight shades to red.
I smile and hand over my passport.
It’s a secondary motion suppressant that keeps me from going for my gun that isn’t there. My reflexes have been purposefully druglagged to give me time to cancel with my conscious mind.
This wasn’t supposed to be going down like this. I can feel sweat on my forehead. Luckily it’s hot and I’m wearing a suit so it won’t look out of place.
I’m staring.
Stop staring.
I’m a chip in the back of this guy’s head. I’m a backup program that his nervousness is starting to access. I can detect no danger but I’m ready for battle. It’s a bad place to be. It looks very suspicious.
I try to shut down but it’s like trying to take a nap during a skydive.
I’m a soldier that died a while ago and I’m making a few dollars post mortem by being an emergency backup to shady characters.
So far, it’s a lame gig. These smugglers don’t know how to stay calm.
They’d be better off renting the personality of an honour student who’s never even smoked a cigarette. They’d sail through customs.
It’s not how these guys think, though.
I mentally cross my fingers and sit back, a killer at the starting line, the spider in this brainstem, hoping that my employer here doesn’t screw up and start yelling.
tags
There’s a flicker in the corner of my eye and I watch a marriage turn to flames for a second before ash floats away on the wind.
I’ve rented my personality out to a smuggler.
There a flush of adrenaline through my whole system and the warning pictograms flicker up into my field of vision. Intense focus blooms in the middle of my sightline. A deck of cards listing all the available targets with suggestions concerning engagement shudder around the person I’m looking at as my sight shades to red.
I smile and hand over my passport.
It’s a secondary motion suppressant that keeps me from going for my gun that isn’t there. My reflexes have been purposefully druglagged to give me time to cancel with my conscious mind.
This wasn’t supposed to be going down like this. I can feel sweat on my forehead. Luckily it’s hot and I’m wearing a suit so it won’t look out of place.
I’m staring.
Stop staring.
I’m a chip in the back of this guy’s head. I’m a backup program that his nervousness is starting to access. I can detect no danger but I’m ready for battle. It’s a bad place to be. It looks very suspicious.
I try to shut down but it’s like trying to take a nap during a skydive.
I’m a soldier that died a while ago and I’m making a few dollars post mortem by being an emergency backup to shady characters.
So far, it’s a lame gig. These smugglers don’t know how to stay calm.
They’d be better off renting the personality of an honour student who’s never even smoked a cigarette. They’d sail through customs.
It’s not how these guys think, though.
I mentally cross my fingers and sit back, a killer at the starting line, the spider in this brainstem, hoping that my employer here doesn’t screw up and start yelling.
tags