Of course, if any passenger was heading out of the AZ, by law they had to stop at the Columbia checkpoint and get papers. And on any bus that stopped or took on passengers outside the Amish Zone, the Plain People had to have their papers with them at all times. If not, things would get bad for them.
* * *
Columbia was just like Jed remembered it. The hustle and bustle was disconcerting, and the city buzzed with a strange mixture of Plain People and the English. It was a place where two cultures met, and it was the last checkpoint for anyone traveling into or out of the Amish Zone.
The Transport station at Columbia ran smoothly and efficiently. Travel had been streamlined a lot since the wars. In general, people were more docile. Most of them were on the drug Quadrille and stayed online anytime they weren’t actually standing in front of a government official; and those who weren’t on the new drug, and who weren’t online, had learned that resistance and misbehavior didn’t pay. No one wanted to get sent to Oklahoma, and that was exactly what would happen to you if you got out of line anytime during transport.
The Amish travel advisor had warned Jed numerous times not to “mess up” during transport. Private transport had been almost uniformly outlawed since the end of the wars, and transport law was now rigid, inflexible, and merciless. The Transport Police were feared like no one else in the society.
Jed got in line for his papers, and there were only a dozen or so other Plain People in front of him. The English all had implanted TRIDs, and they just flowed through ticketing and security without having to stop at all.
When he reached the front of the line, Jed presented his emigration papers without saying a word. The customs worker, a pretty young woman, glanced through them with disinterest before stamping each of them with a transport code. Next, the woman smiled at him as she reached over and yanked out a few strands of his hair—without warning him—and placed them into a small glass tube, which she then filled with a bluish liquid. She asked him to roll up his sleeve, and she took a skin sample by scraping the dry skin on his elbow with a sharp tool. She caught the flakes of skin in a second tube which was also filled with a blue liquid. He was asked to look into some kind of eye machine, and there was a flash. Whatever the eye thing was (she didn’t explain), Jed knew that Transport was permitted to take material from the Plain People, but they couldn’t implant anything. No invasive procedures were allowed. The Richmond Ruling was ironclad and court-tested, and the Plain People had won their right, on the basis of their sincerely held religious beliefs, not to be implanted with any identifying devices or markers. Jed figured that the eye scan was some way of identifying him biometrically, much like the hair and skin samples. No one messed with fingerprints anymore. Those had become too easy to fake.
Other than politely barked instructions, the pretty customs lady made no idle chit-chat. A couple of times she looked up with just her eyes, as if she was sizing him up, but other than that she was going through her checklist almost robotically. She slid the two blue tubes and something in the form of a small plastic chip into a hard rubberized band and slid the band over Jed’s left hand, securing it on his wrist. Then she forced his hand into another machine, and he felt the band tighten on his wrist in a way that made it seem like it had been permanently attached, even while he could still feel that it didn’t hinder the flow of blood to his hand. Strange.
“Unilets?” the woman said with a smile. Not really a question, more of a statement. She stepped out from behind the computer desk for a moment, and as she did he saw her name tag. Dawn.
It took Jed a moment to understand what Dawn was asking. Money. The English now paid one another in unis, and his money had been converted for him when he’d picked up his approval papers. Unilets were originally designed to be a fair representation of time worked. Back when they were first introduced, after the wars, there was some computer algorithm that supposedly determined the value of unis day by day. Eventually, the original idea of unilets as a form of straight trade or barter of human work hours had been dropped, as everyone knew they would be co-opted by governments and banks.
Jed knew a lot about unis because the Plain People had considered accepting the currency early on, back when the new money system was just called LETS. The LETS were initially designed to be a local trade and barter system, and that was something Jed’s community could really appreciate. But the “wait and see” attitude of the Plain People had paid off once again. It didn’t take long before LETS were changed to unilets, and the Plain People chose not to participate in the system. Unilets were not accepted as money anywhere in the AZs.
Jed pulled the plastic card from the front pocket of his vest and handed it to the customs woman. She thanked him and waved the card in front of the monitor on her computer, and then she looked back and forth between his face and whatever now appeared on the screen. She sat staring at the computer for several minutes as if she were frozen in place. She didn’t press any keys, and her eyes didn’t scan back and forth like she was reading. She just stared blankly for a very long time.
Jed wondered if Dawn was on the Internet in her head. He didn’t know what else to call it. He wasn’t even really sure what an “Internet” was, except that it was how the English did everything on computers. Now they had some way to get this Internet in their head, and he’d seen the far-off, blank gaze in the faces of tourists before.
After what seemed to be an interminable wait, the customs woman stuck his plastic card into a slot and did some procedure on the computer, typing furiously for a few seconds. Satisfied at last that everything was good and ready to go, she again grabbed his wrist—the one with the black band on it—and flipped it over so it was facing her. She took the card out of the computer and touched it against the armband. A light blinked on the band, which apparently convinced the woman that his unilets were now resident on his band. She then let his wrist down onto the desktop and stared at the computer for a few more seconds.
“Yep,” she said. “You’re good to go now. Do you know how to use the band to buy things?
“Not really, ma’am.”
She smiled, and for the first time it was like a light went on in her mind that indicated to her that she was dealing with a real human. He smiled back, and he noticed that she even blushed a little. Maybe he did, too.
“Okay, well, the band has your unis in it,” she said. “Place the wrist portion against or near a charging station and the amount indicated on the charging window will be deducted from your total… got it?”
“I think so.”
“Any other questions?”
“Well… yes. Couldn’t somebody steal this plastic band and make off with all of my money… or, er… um… my unilets?”
“Nothing to worry about, sir. We’ve solved those problems long ago. The band can only be used when it’s touching your body, and only while you’re alive.” She nodded like this last part should make him feel more comfortable about carrying all of his money on his wrist. “The unique identifiers are digitized now, and the charging stations will scan your eyes and other biometric identifiers automatically to make sure it’s you that’s making the purchase and that you’re not under duress. So it’s totally safe. You have nothing to be concerned about, okay?”
“Okay.” It was all Jed could think of to say.
“Anything else?”
“Just… well… thank you, Dawn. Thank you very much, and… where do I catch the airbus for the next leg of the trip to New Pennsylvania?”