Security

Brian Stephen Ellis

Hamish lived on the opposite side of the country from his family, but he had never been on an airplane, he had moved by train. He was a romantic, but this time, there was urgency; his grandfather had died. So Hamish called the airplane company to purchase a ticket which he was told would be at the counter when he went. The airport was so much bigger than Hamish knew.

He did not realize how many people were able to take the airplane and couldn’t think of what all their reasons could be. The building was a great warehouse of concrete and glass and carpet, all those bodies flowing into and out of those sliding doors, bodies picked up and dropped off by taxis and the subway and the coach.

Hamish followed the great mass of bodies, because he was a body too.

He had to wait a great while in a line set up by zig-zag dividers to get to the counter, which he did and when he arrived at the counter the airline representative measured his suitcase and gave him a ticket, Hamish offered his backpack, but the airline representative only wanted his hard-shell, they told him he could take his backpack on the plane.

Hamish left the counter and went to stand in another line. This was for airport security which Hamish felt embarrassed about, of course there was so much security surrounding such an expensive and rare device as an airplane. Hamish was embarrassed at not realizing, not thinking of it himself. Hamish was the type of guy who liked to follow the rules, he liked to be prompt and courteous in all his dealings, never a fuss to be made over. Hamish was astounded at the amount of ritual adhered to in the security ceremony: the people ahead of him were taking off their shoes so he took off his shoes, and then they took their electronics out of their backpacks, but Hamish didn’t have any electronics and for that he was glad. And then the people ahead of him took off their coats and sweaters, so Hamish did too.

All of their belongings went inside of gray plastic bins on a conveyor belt, and the conveyor belt moved slowly and steadily inside of a dark metal box that reminded Hamish of the magnetic device at the library that kept the books from setting off the door alarm. It was a little upsetting watching all of his possessions going into this strange machine, but the people ahead of Hamish didn’t have a problem with it, so he didn’t have a problem with it.

The next step was to go inside a similar machine but for people. It was less of a box than an upright tube, the size of an elevator, but it didn’t go anywhere.

There were police all around this area, specialized police not even for the overall airport, but only for the ritual of security. They wore black and white uniforms and had big belts loaded with various utensils, including handheld guns. The guns seemed excessive and dangerous to Hamish; he would not want one of those devices to be fired in case they penetrated an airplane, which depends upon buoyancy to remain aloft.

The police, of which there were many, all seemed to be in a bad mood. They were either grim and silent, or barking orders. There were two supervising the conveyor belt, one waving passengers into the tube with a scary looking flashlight, and a fourth on the other side of the tube to catch the passengers as they emerged.

The passengers, shorn and separated from their belongings, waited on a short carpet for the flashlight wielding police to shout, and then they would know it was their time to enter the upright tube. The upright tube whooshed with an arm built within its curved glass, and the passenger was deemed worthy of further travel. Three passengers ahead of Hamish, the passenger in the tube was whooshed once, and the tube deemed them unworthy. The passenger was required to back-up and re-enter the tube. The tube deemed them unworthy a second time, and then a fifth officer appeared, to take this passenger somewhere else.

Hamish was scared of being deemed unworthy. He did not want to be taken somewhere else by the security police. There were rumors of sectarian organizations who promoted violence in the rural areas. The police were all the time on the lookout for these sectarians, and Hamish did not want to be mis-identified.

The other passengers ahead of Hamish traversed the tube with no problem. It was Hamish’s turn. He stood on the carpet in his stocking feet. The police with the large scary looking flashlight shouted at Hamish and waved the butt of the flashlight towards the tube. Hamish had been waiting for this moment, but then when the moment came, he was confused, and it took him a second to move. Then he stepped into the tube. The sound was different inside, the world further away. A wordless, featureless diagram of a human being holding up their arms was inside the tube. Hamish figured the diagram was designed to be legible no matter what language you understood. The arm inside of the glass said, “whoosh, whoosh” and then, “ding!”

Hamish was worthy. He stepped to the other side. He was searched by the police, as was customary, who ran their dead feeling hands up and down Hamish’s limbs, getting awfully close to Hamish’s genitals, he thought. The personal search revealing nothing, Hamish stepped over to the further end of the conveyor belt, where the other passengers were retrieving their belongings.

There was a gray plastic bin with Hamish’s shoes, sweater, and jacket. Hamish re-donned his clothing, and then waited for his backpack. Around him, the other passengers were putting themselves together after the ordeal of security, while Hamish continued to wait.

He noticed that there were some who had entered the tube after him that had already collected their bins.

A voice called out from behind some metal tables, “Whose bag is this?!”

There were two more police officers, the sixth and seventh. A man and a woman, and they had the bin with Hamish’s backpack in it, set out on one of the examining tables. It was the woman who had yelled out. She was holding one of the backpack’s straps in one of her plastic gloved hands. Hamish didn’t want to answer. The police asking about your bag was almost as bad as being taken away by them, seemed to be a half-step towards that unfortunate turn.

But there was no getting around it. Hamish raised his arm to identify himself.

The man police, who stood next to the woman police who shouted, waved silently to Hamish, flapping his fingers, his hands still. Hamish came closer to the tables, stood with the edge of one metal table against the front of his thighs. These two officers were barricaded off in a corral where they seized and searched possessions.

“Would you like to declare anything before I open this carry-on?” the female police officer said, loud. She spoke not to Hamish directly but with her voice dispersing in each direction in the air. This performance was for all the passengers moving across this bridge. Hamish could not think of anything he wanted to say, besides, please do not go through my things. He remained silent. The woman zipped open his backpack and reached a plastic gloved hand inside. She grabbed the first thing she touched. It was Hamish’s water bottle. It was a metal screw-top bottle, painted pink and coral with images of birds.

The woman held the metal water bottle in the air, high above her head. “Would you like us to throw this away or will you exit the gate to dispose of its contents?” she shouted, her face pointing a little over Hamish’s shoulder. It was disconcerting how he wasn’t being spoken to directly. Neither option seemed very good to him. He loved that bottle; his little sister had given it to him. Dumping it out was simply a waste of water, and technically they were in the middle of a drought.

“My little sister gave that to me” was Hamish’s reply.

The two sighed and shook their heads. The man said, “Liquid contents can be ingredients in improvised explosive devices,” he said.

The woman picked up Hamish backpack, and holding the backpack in one hand, the metal water bottle in the other, she began moving towards Hamish. He ground his teeth.

Hamish did not want to be taken away. The woman shimmied between the metal tables and then led Hamish away, cutting horizontally across the security lines. Hamish followed behind, looking down at his feet. They entered a glass hallway, and then to Hamish’s surprise they arrived not at some interrogation room, but back out at the beginning of the security line.

The woman held out Hamish’s possessions to take. Their fingers brushed, Hamish thin hands touching the plastic of her gloves. The woman police said, “Dispose of the offending articles and re-enter the checkpoint.” She pointed at a trash can nearby, which seemed like a bad place to dump out water, as it would just make a mess in the bottom of the can. Hamish did it anyway, opening the screw top lid of his metal water bottle and pouring it out. He was relieved he wasn’t in an interrogation room but was confused as to why he had to begin the security ceremony all over again. Hamish’s confusion seemed to infuriate this woman police, but she stifled her anger, saying nothing else and left Hamish there.

He began the security process all over. He had arrived at the airport very early because he was unfamiliar with the process, and so he still had plenty of time to catch his plane. This time when he entered the security line, he knew what he was doing. His annoyance at having to do this all over again faded under the comfort of familiarity. He was no longer a neophyte, but instead, others were watching him to see what to do. He quickly and efficiently took off his coat, sweater and shoes, placed his backpack in a bin, waited in his socks on the carpet to enter the vertical tube. The police with a flashlight no longer seemed as scary, simply bored. Hamish entered the tube, the arm inside the glass said, “whoosh, whoosh” and he was again deemed worthy. The pat-down on the other side was fast. Hamish was retrieving his belongings from the far side of the conveyor belt, smiling a little and shaking his head to himself, he was imagining telling the story of going through security twice to his mother, father, and sister, when it happened again.

“Whose bag is this?!”

Hamish looked up to see who else was going to be harassed by the duo, but when he looked over at the female officer, who, a few minutes earlier, had led him out to the beginning of the security gate. She was once again holding up his, Hamish’s, backpack.

Hamish blinked. He didn’t understand how this was happening again, or why this was happening again. The woman police was holding his backpack up with one hand, just above the gray plastic bin. Hamish couldn’t figure out, at the very least, why the woman didn’t recognize his bag.

“It’s mine,” Hamish said this time. He raised his voice above the hubbub of the gate. He came forward and stood at the edge of one of the metal tables.

“Would you like to declare anything before I open this carry-on?” the woman asked, as if it was new information, as if Hamish had not just done this moments ago. Hamish felt dislodged in time. He couldn’t process what was happening. He felt as if some essential piece of information about the universe was being kept hidden from him. He shook his head. The head shake had more to do with the universe than anything else, but the woman police took the head shake as a go-ahead.

She opened his bag and reached in with her plastic gloved hand. She took out the first thing she touched. It was a bar of soap. The woman police held the bar of soap up in the air next to her face, which she scrunched and twisted. Her eyebrows pressed down, her mouth twisting wide, eyes big. This woman police was aghast at Hamish’s stupidity; why he would think it was okay to have a bar of soap in his bag?

“It’s not liquid,” Hamish said.

The male officer’s face became red, and he screamed, “This is not a joke, sir! You are not being funny! Contents such as bars of soap have been known to be ingredients in improvised explosive devices!”

The woman was already speed walking towards Hamish. She scooted between two metal tables and led him away again. Hamish followed behind her, trying to think of something to say. She had his possessions, his backpack in one hand and the bar of soap in the other.

While they walked down the glass hallway back out to the outside of the security checkpoint, Hamish considered trying to grab his things from her, grabbing his things and making a break for his plane. But Hamish knew he would not. Partially it was the guns each of the police officer carried; he knew they would not hesitate to shoot, harming him or one of the other passengers or an airplane. There was another part of it, too, which is that Hamish believed in the rules, he believed in doing what’s right. He wanted to do the right thing all the time and believed the universe worked on a principle of correct action.

Hamish and the woman police were back out by the trash can where Hamish had dumped out his water a little while ago. The woman said, “Dispose of the offending articles and re-enter the checkpoint.” There remained the mystery of whether this person remembered Hamish from dumping out said water. Back inside the checkpoint, Hamish had assumed they were putting him on, or it was some kind of protocol, but standing here now, this woman police appeared to be experiencing this with Hamish for the first time, and not just a loop of the experience with the water bottle. He took back his backpack and bar of soap and deposited the soap in the trash. The woman went off in a huff.

Hamish began the security ceremony for a third time. He was languid about it this time. He had moved from being a novice, to an acolyte, now to a heretic. The third time around he could not muster the same efficiency when taking off his jacket, sweater and shoes. He flopped his backpack into a gray plastic bin with as much doubt as he could display. He had also gone from being very early, to merely early, to now, he might not make his plane on time. Lateness usually sent Hamish into a panic, but his attitude had completely shifted.

His possessions went into the metal box on the conveyor belt and he once again stood on the carpet in his stocking feet, and he entered the vertical tube that said, “whoosh, whoosh,” and then, “ding!” The officer on the other side of the tube was rough with his genitals once again.

Hamish went to the conveyor belt as before and collected his shoes, jacket and sweater as before, and then, on schedule, it happened again.

When the woman police called out, “Whose bag is this?!” Hamish twisted his lips, his mouth suddenly full of saliva. He wanted to spit. There was an angry pleasure swirling around his torso and limbs. Hamish approached the metal tables.

He raised his hand and called out to the woman police, “That’s mine,” he said, loud and firm. Hamish was ready to play their game. If they were going to pretend to have no memory of him, he was going to do the same to them. “Would you like to declare anything before I open this carry on?” the woman police repeated. Very good, Hamish thought, let’s keep going. He put his hands in the pockets of his pants, and rocked on his heels. An angry bemusement took over him. “I would not,” Hamish told her, stretching his neck forward. He could not think what she could possibly find in there now, but everything so far had been improbable to Hamish.

The woman police zipped open the bag and reached a plastic gloved hand into the bag. She came back out again with a book, a book that Hamish had been planning to read on the long flight.

Seeing the book brought Hamish back to himself, he felt his anger drain. This wasn’t him, this angry cynical passenger. Hamish tried to approach the world with an open mind. The book that the woman police had pulled out of Hamish’s bag was a gift. It was a simple political tract by his friend Gorvin. Gorvin used to be a poet but he had run out of life experiences to write about, so he turned to politics, which was pretty boring. Hamish liked Gorvin’s love poems better. He thought the book might help him sleep on the plane.

The woman held out the book, cover first, to Hamish, in the air next to her head, once again making that face, eyebrows pressed down, eyes big, mouth warped wide. She could not believe Hamish would dare to bring this book through the security checkpoint. The man, standing over her, shook his head, his face stiff and grim.

“Terrorist propaganda,” the man grumbled.

Hamish sucked in a breath, sharp. While this was his first time at an airport, he knew the word terrorist was not a word spoken there. He wondered if this was it, if he was about to be taken away.

The woman continued to hold the book in the air. Her free hand moved slowly upwards, both of her plastic gloved hands converging on the book. She held Hamish’s gaze.

Keeping the hand holding the book firmly in place, with her other hand she opened the cardboard cover, and then pinching the corner of the very first page of the book, pulled down. The first page twisted, and then tore, and the page ripped, straight down, with the woman police staring into Hamish’s eyes the entire time.

She let the hand with the torn book-page drop to her side, and then she dropped the paper on the floor.

“Exit and re-enter the checkpoint,” the woman police said to Hamish.

Hamish gasped and took a step back. There was no offer to hand back the book, or lead Hamish out and around. There was no choice presented around depositing the book in a receptacle. They were keeping the book. They wanted Hamish to go out and around on his own.

Hamish tried to formulate something to say. He licked his lips and blinked rapidly.

“Exit and re-enter the checkpoint!” the man screamed.

Hamish shoulders jolted, and he turned, having a hard time looking away from the two police. He knew the way. He cut horizontally through the lines and went into the glass hall. Hewent back out to the beginning of the security line. He was surely going to miss his flight now. His family lived in a small industrial port town called Ballort on the Azdynrck coast. The flight to the coast from the big cities of the interior where Hamish lived was six hours.

Hamish re-entered the security checkpoint in a daze, beginning the ceremony all over again. He went through the motions automatically, not quite thinking. He emerged on the other side of the vertical tube, was patted down, and he returned to the corral with the metal tables where the two police appeared to be waiting for him.

The woman was still holding Hamish’s book in the air. She had been holding it aloft this entire time. She waited until Hamish was standing with his thighs at the edge of the metal table, and then, as before, she reached her hand up and slowly tore a single page out of the book written by Hamish’s friend Gorvin, dropping the page on the floor.

The woman maintained eye contact the entire time.

“Exit and re-enter the checkpoint,” the woman said to Hamish.

Hamish did as he was told. His body felt sluggish but also it was impossible to stop. A slow terrible inertia had taken control of him. He went out through the glass hallway and returned to the outside of the checkpoint again. This wasn’t even about getting to his plane anymore. It wasn’t about the airport. Hamish’s life had been reduced to going through security again and again. He emerged from the vertical tube and was patted down and went back to the tables. The woman police tore a third page from the book. Hamish didn’t need to be told this time. Before she had dropped the page on the floor, Hamish had turned, beginning his loop, exiting and re-entering security.

The loop became faster as the other passengers petered out over the course of the day. The sun set, and the airport became less busy. Hamish kept going through security, and the woman kept ripping pages out of the book. The last plane took off for the day, the airport closed, and there Hamish remained, going through security again and again, the police tearing one more page out of the book each time.

There was a civil war eighteen months later. First the state media began complaining about crime rates, and then the number of police in the cities quadrupled. The academics that tried to report that crime rates had not changed were rounded up and executed. Next the artists were killed. But Hamish did get out of that airport eventually, before the large cities of the interior were razed.

Hamish made it to the coast to see his family, before the end. He took the train.