The Debt Collectors War

Chapter 18

Once Ellie was satisfied with their equipment, they went and got their visas. Měi-guó was still America. It might have collapsed into chaos and bankruptcy, but they still insisted you carry a visa in-country, and would try and deport you if they didn’t find one.

Ellie had almost decided not to worry, and that they didn’t have time to waste, but Jackson told her the local authority over the wall was quite pedantic, and had just enough tech to use facial recognition and make a nuisance of itself, and it really wasn’t worth the firefight they’d need to get rid of the border guards if they were seen.

Ellie was irritated, but let Jackson convince her. He said it wouldn’t take long and it really was best just to get it done.

“Fuck it,” Ellie said. “Fine. Let’s just go.”

“Go pretend to care what legacy governments think,” Sameh said, and Jackson grinned at her, like he agreed with that too.

The visa office was a shed in a corner of the debt-recovery base, between the incinerator and a pile of rusting broken-down vehicles. They all went inside, and Jackson explained what he wanted, and the clerk said that was no problem, all polite and friendly, and asked for their papers and said he’d help them one at a time.

Ellie couldn’t imagine how else he planned to issue government paperwork, but she didn’t say anything so rude. She just nodded, and held out her identity cards, and didn’t make a fuss. The clerk looked at her cards and then printed her a tag. He told her to keep it on her at all times, preferably on the outside of her clothing.

It all seemed fairly routine.

Then Sameh went over, and said she needed a visa too, and the clerk asked for her citizenship documents, and Sameh just shrugged and said she didn’t have any.

That caused a fuss.

Ellie blamed herself. She really should have remembered. It always caused a fuss, Sameh not having papers and dealing with tinpot little governments like these, but actual government contact happened so rarely that it slipped Ellie’s mind between crises like this one.

Sameh was technically still stateless, like half the world was stateless. She was stateless because she’d never had the chance to become an actual citizen of an actual state when she was young, before all the countries began to disappear. She had company identification, confirming she was who she said she was, and her corporate secure-ID was more trustworthy than Ellie’s old passport card anyway. In fact, the clerk had used Ellie’s secure-ID to verify who she was, and then just glanced at her Australian passport card to make sure she had something which looked like one.

That glance meant a lot. That glance meant it was pride, not security, that they cared about here. It meant they didn’t care what you showed them, and didn’t care if it was real, and that even a bad forgery would do, as long as you showed them something. It was about being part of the club of national citizens, not about who you actually were.

It was stupid, Ellie thought. Passports and citizenship didn’t matter anywhere in the world except here, but Měi-guó America was an aging empire and its traditions counted terribly to itself. They still insisted everyone spoke English here, too.

After some fuss, and veiled threats from Jackson, the clerk called a supervisor, who must have been the only other person who could fit in the small office. The supervisor listened, and saw Jackson’s expression, and gave in quite quickly and issued Sameh a visa. They would have probably made her wait another day without Jackson’s intervention, just to show the entire debt-recovery world that they weren’t going to be pushed around by a mere business enterprise.

With Jackson there, it was just done. Sameh’s visa was issued. Jackson could probably have their canteen privileges revoked or something, and that wasn’t a risk they thought worth taking.

Ellie waited, trying to be patient, and let Jackson sort it out. She carefully took Sameh’s hand, though, to make sure Sameh stayed patient too. There were times, Ellie thought, when she sympathised quite deeply with the corporate leaders who wanted to just have done with it and abolish states altogether.