The Virus

by Janelle Diller

  She gave me some options, which were better for Eddy than me, but we’d still make it to Lincoln and Dulles by the end of the day.

  I tried to relax. I’d never missed a flight because of something I did, but there’s a first for everything. Fortunately, I didn’t think my manager, who was rumored to have missed multiple flights over the years due to, uh, food poisoning, wouldn’t even send me a nasty gram, making it the one stupid sin I could commit myself and not get fired.

  We inched closer till we at least got to the point of showing our IDs and boarding passes. The humorless—and I know she was humorless from the forty-five or more Monday mornings I’d smiled at her without a response—TSA agent said, “Your health cards, please.”

  Eddy and I looked at each other. I pulled out my wallet, glad for the first time that I hadn’t shredded it on the corner of Tejon and Pikes Peak like I’d fantasized, and handed it to her.

  The TSA agent took my card and swiped it in a card reader, compared the information on the screen to my ticket and driver’s license, and handed it back. She pointed off to the left line. “Over there,” she said and held her hand out for Eddy’s card.

  “I don’t have one,” Eddy said.

  “We thought the proof of vaccination requirement didn’t begin until January eighteenth,” I said.

  “It doesn’t,” the TSA agent said mechanically and for the first time it occurred to me she was humorless because she was actually a robot. “But you won’t be able to get on your return flight without it, so we’re not letting people take off unless they have proof they can get on their return flight.”

  Clever Eddy didn’t bite. “So when am I returning?” he asked her.

  “How would I know?” the TSA agent responded a little huffily.

  “Exactly,” Eddy said.

  I stiffened because I knew it only took a wave of the TSA’s hand, and he would be banished to the far right, the line of thorough and completely humiliating searches that would keep us from getting on a flight for two hours by the looks of it this morning.

  But then Eddy smiled at the TSA agent. Luckily for him, there wasn’t a woman on either side of twenty that didn’t melt a little, okay—a lot, from that smile. “Tell you what,” he paused and looked at her badge, “Jasmine. Now that’s a pretty name. Jasmine. Very exotic. Matches your eyes.” He smiled again.

  And she actually smiled back. The first time in a year. Holy Pazolies is right. I needed to travel with this man more often.

  “Jasmine, I give you my word that I’ll be returning by the twelfth. If I miss that flight, I can come back on the thirteenth. And if I miss that one, I’ll return on the fourteenth. You get the picture, Jasmine.”

  She nodded, no doubt in defiance of all her training.

  “And if the gods go crazy and I can’t return on one of those days and get stuck there till the eighteenth, I swear I’ll return by train.” And then—this is the truth—he actually winked at her. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud.

  Jasmine shook her head and tried to hide another smile. “Okay, Mr. Rider, you get a free pass today. Just so you know, though, you’ll need your health card for the train, too.” She waved her hand off to the left. “Go ahead and get in the TSA pre-check line.”

  Eddy smiled back at Jasmine and said, “Thanks,” while he politely steered me to the left before I could swear at the government. Out loud.

  The TSA pre-check line moved at its normal pace, and we reached the metal detector within ten minutes. Once again, a TSA agent asked for my boarding pass and my health card. I glanced at Eddy and handed my card to the agent, who swiped it in a card reader and matched it against my boarding pass. Who knows what could have changed between the first TSA agent and the second one, but they weren’t going to be taking any chances this morning, I guess. Satisfied that Maggie Rider matched Maggie Rider, he motioned me on.

  Eddy put his hands up like he was under arrest. “I don’t have my health card because I didn’t think I’d need it since I’m returning before the eighteenth.”

  “Then I need to see some more ID.”

  Eddy pulled out his wallet and showed his driver’s license, which the TSA agent matched against his ticket. He waved Eddy on but said, “Don’t try to fly after the eighteenth without it. You’ll be stuck at the airport and won’t get a refund on your ticket. It’s not the airline’s fault if you can’t meet the government’s deadline.”

  “Yes, sir,” Eddy said. Fortunately, the agent didn’t recognize Eddy’s “you’re an idiot” tone and let him pass.

  We reached the gate as the plane for Denver was boarding, my gate anxiety pattern forever ratcheted up to gate angst. I felt slightly nauseous as I thought about how much longer my travel days had just become.

  We settled into our seats. I grabbed one of the three remaining blankets on the plane, stowed my computer bag under the seat, put my noise-canceling headphones on, took out my Kindle to read, and started sinking into my zone, forgetting for the moment that Eddy was in the seat beside me.

  He picked up my hand and kissed it. I looked at him and took off my headphones.

  He smiled. “You have the drill down, don’t you?”

  “It’s how I survive.”

  He nodded. He leaned in closer to me and talked, not exactly in a whisper, but low enough that the people in front and behind couldn’t hear him. It’s the distinguisher between business travelers and tourists. I was proud of him that he knew it instinctively. “So how are you going to survive security from now on?”

  “I don’t know. That was quite the ordeal. Maybe it was just because too many people didn’t have health cards yet and they’re pointlessly grilling them.”

  “Ya’ think?”

  I sighed and shook my head. “No.”

  “If they’re that tough before the regulation goes into effect, what will they do afterwards?”

  “Did you see all those people in the extra security line? All but two or three were there because they didn’t have your charm.”

  “Really?” He really did sound surprised.

  “I know it. There are three people max standing in that line on any Monday, and that assumes the other lines are as full as they were today. That little show was nothing but sheer retribution. Jasmine didn’t like someone? She waved them to the right. It didn’t matter if the person deserved to be a little righteously indignant. They said a cross word to her, they were banished to an extra-thorough search and would miss their plane. It’s the ultimate power trip: control by fear and back it up with punishment.”

  “And that’s being multiplied times ten thousand at all the airports across America this morning.”

  “And the lesson is?”

  “Get your health card, ma’am, and we’ll make your life easy.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  FINALLY THE NATION TALKED BACK. It was one thing to ask so much invasive information for the vaccination, require the vaccination for domestic travel by a certain date, and even to start checking health cards to make sure the new system would work. It was another thing entirely for the TSA to respond to legitimate frustration by banishing people to more thorough security. Nearly twenty thousand people had missed their flights that Monday morning, an unheard-of number, although the White House claimed it was closer to two thousand people and poked at the media for blowing it all out of proportion. The airlines, which got totally snarled from trying to rebook all the angry people—whether it was two thousand or ten times that—even timidly protested.

  It led the news reports and dominated talk radio, which I tuned into for a change on my drive from Lincoln to NBP. As the day wore on, the discussion veered closer and closer to a common theme: why is the government collecting so much information about us?

  The White House responded late Tuesday when the administration apparently finally figured out this wasn’t going to just blow over. The president’s press secretary read a statement but wouldn’t take any questions.

  CNN
kept running snippets of the footage and then summarizing, although in my opinion, “summarizing” a five-minute statement changes the meaning of the word. In short, the White House blamed an over-zealous Transportation Security Administration directive that instructed TSA agents to begin careful scrutiny of health cards as a dry run for January eighteenth. The administration regretted the inconvenience to all the people who were delayed and would look into where the directive might have been misinterpreted. Disciplinary action would be taken if necessary.

  In other words, since this administration only saw actual responsibility in the trenches where the message played out, down the road we could expect someone to get fired over their rude mishandling of so many travelers. But the guy at the top would be ignored since it couldn’t be his fault if his directive got twisted as it traveled down through the ranks.

  It was another annoying moment in American history. That explanation seemed to settle people down and the mini insurrection disappeared before the first person could stand on a downtown Colorado Springs street corner and publicly shred her health card.

  Of course, there were those lonely souls on the Internet wilderness that kept raising dissenting voices. The mainstream media ignored them though. After all, anyone can build a website or post a blog and say it’s the truth.

  I stopped by Scott Leinbach’s office on Thursday to say goodbye and once again compliment him on his flawless execution of the project.

  He modestly blushed and shrugged his shoulders. “I keep telling you, it really wasn’t that tough. I had a good team of people who were willing to work hard. Our biggest headache the whole time was with the shipping. Once Zaan figured out that the shipping problem wasn’t because of what NBP was trying to do but was a bug in the interface between Zaan and FindIt, it got resolved within a week.”

  “FindIt?” Hello. “The tracking software.”

  “Yeah. Our supplier for the RFID. Zaan ended up changing some of the coding in the software, and that fixed everything.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “I guess your tracking system is pretty critical.”

  Scott nodded. “It means we can track everything—pallets, boxes of meat, even individual packages. It’s pretty cool, really.” He opened a bottom desk drawer and rummaged around until he found a manila envelope that contained a square Styrofoam meat packaging tray and some labels. I was glad his attention was somewhere else for the moment. I truly worried I might faint from all the blood rushing to my head.

  “Take a look at this.” He handed the Styrofoam tray to me. “See anything?”

  “It’s just a square plate like the ones my meat comes on at the grocery store.” I sat on the corner of his desk. It was far more personal than I ever get with clients, but the two other chairs in the room had stacks of loose papers on them. I had to sit.

  “Exactly. Now hold it up to the light.”

  I did. I knew what I was looking for.

  “See anything?”

  “The little spot at the center where the mold release dot is. Looks like there’s a dot with thin lines coming out of the center on both sides.”

  “You’ve got good eyes.”

  Or a sufficient imagination—I wasn’t sure myself.

  “That’s the RFID. Every single one is different, so we can track right down to the individual package if we want. Here’s another example.” He handed me three labels. “Can you find it on these?”

  Two labels had RFIDs that jumped out at me because they were the size of a dime, and I knew to look for something with tendrils, even if the tendrils wound around the center in a pattern. I couldn’t find it on the third one.

  “You won’t see it on that one. It’s embedded within the ink on the label, even the copper antenna.”

  “Amazing.” The word had more meaning than Scott could ever know.

  “It is, isn’t it? It’s the coolest new tool for business. You start putting these IDs into your packaging, and poof, you can track losses right down to the individual package. We can tell if our employees are helping themselves to a package of sirloins a couple times a week or which route a carrier is having so much loss on. Stores love it because some day soon it’ll stop shoplifting entirely.”

  “Really?”

  “The technology is there already, they just have to install it. You know how the big box stores like Sam’s and Costco have someone who looks at your receipt and your cart before you walk out the door? Eventually, they’ll have a receipt reader and an RFID reader at the door. You feed in your receipt, and the RFID reader will scan the contents of the cart. If they match up, the doors open and you’re on your way. They don’t match up, the RFID reader lists what hasn’t been paid for and adds that on to your bill.”

  “What if I’m wearing a sweater I bought there yesterday? Do I get charged for it a second time?”

  “Details, details.” Scott laughed and waved his hand. “It should show up that you bought it the day before.”

  “But if I’m wearing a shoplifted sweater that’s identical to the one I bought, the reader would catch it.”

  “Exactly. Because it’s not showing up as paid for in the database. Every single item has a different ID. If you’re trying to track losses, it’s a pretty effortless way to do that.”

  “Isn’t that a little creepy, too?” I asked.

  The question seemed to take him by surprise. “In what way?” He furrowed his heavy brows. “Maybe. I guess if you’re the shoplifter. I don’t see how it would be intrusive otherwise.”

  I had no intention of picking a fight with Scott. He was about as nice of a client as I’d ever worked with, but it was all I could do not to pull up my shirt sleeve and ask him if he thought it was okay to track people like NBP tracked a package of meat.

  He clearly loved the RFID concept because he kept right on talking. “It’s an amazing way for a store to track inventory. They run a report every night—hell, every hour if that’s what they want. It tells them exactly what’s been sold in a day, what items are or aren’t turning over, what items are dated and need to be pulled, and then it all hits their purchasing system and triggers the purchasing process in the suppliers’ systems. Walmart’s already pretty sophisticated with this kind of purchasing process. It just takes it to the next level and requires even fewer people to do it.”

  “And what happens when people get their purchases home? What happens to the RFID?”

  Scott shrugged his shoulders and waved his hand casually again. “Who cares? I suppose down the road there’ll be technology to tap into that, too. New refrigerators have RFID readers in them. Someday soon your refrigerator will tell you everything you have in it, that your ketchup is outdated, how close your milk is to the expiration date.” He brightened and laughed. “Maybe we can get your refrigerator to signal that you’re out of filet mignons and the local store is having a sale on them.”

  I smiled, but I’m not sure it looked very sincere.

  CHAPTER

  21

  PETE AND TINA INVITED US FOR DINNER ON THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY. The chance to have a real social life made me a little giddy all week. I double-checked with Eddy to see if they wanted us to bring stuffing, but he said he was pretty sure it was just the two of us and not four hundred others.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised about the dinner invite. After all, we were good enough friends to eat Christmas dinner together. It’s just that they, like Eddy and me, lived frantically busy lives. They juggled a complicated childcare schedule from Pete’s first marriage and intense jobs—Tina had a busy family practice and Pete owned an auto body shop with high maintenance employees. Where weekends were merely sacred to us, they were nearly nonexistent for Pete and Tina.

  So I knew this was about more than having a social evening.

  Eddy and Pete had been friends ever since my first fender-bender with the Porsche, so we knew his ex-wife Barb, who was a shrew and a half. Tina, even though she had to have plenty of Type A in her, was bright, funny, and
sweet.

  Tina met us at the door, leaving Pete to unpack dinner from a local gourmet deli. The four of us small-talked through some wine and munchies, which was pleasant but not dynamic enough for me to figure out why we were together again only three weeks after Christmas. Unfortunately, that was probably more a reflection on my Type A personality: I needed a purpose, an agenda, and action items or the evening should get written up on someone’s performance review.

  A grip on reality is really what I needed.

  Failing that, I let Eddy pour me a second glass of wine while he launched into a funny story about how the TSA only hires people whose names start with J, like Jasmine and Jimmy, and then trains them to make life miserable for people who have names that start with other letters, like E.

  It was even funny to me, and I hadn’t laughed at all the day we traveled together.

  “So does that mean you’re going to get your smallpox vaccination and health card so you can travel more easily?” Pete asked. He said it to Eddy but glanced at Tina, who glanced at me. I was watching Eddy. Now we’d gotten to the agenda.

  “Well, probably not.” Eddy looked at me, then back at his friend. “Are you going to get one, Pete?”

  “Nope,” he said and shook his head. “Not now. Not ever.”

  “What about for your boys?” I asked.

  Tina studied the bottom of her wine glass.

  “I say absolutely not. But Barb says we gotta do it if they’re going to stay in school. After Christmas, they came home with a paper saying if they didn’t have the vaccine by February first, they wouldn’t be allowed back.”

  “So what do you say, Tina?” I thought I knew based on what she said at Christmas, but I wanted to know what she knew now.

  Pete chewed on his lower lip but waited for her to answer. She swirled the last of the wine in her glass. Finally, Pete stroked her upper arm with the back of his fingers. “Show ‘em what you did, Tina.”