Buying Oneself

“Hi there,” said a small mousey man. He was so short that he could barely see over the countertop. “Hello. Hi.”

Behind the desk a dower woman sat on a high stool. Behind her were reams and reams of binders. Thousands of them. Each one a life. She wore glasses around her neck on a chain. She had a face used to saying no. She might even have relished it. The little man’s greeting was discarded just as with all the entireties and tears.

“Um. I would like to buy myself,” the man squeaked.

She quirked an eyebrow but said nothing. It was a look she always gave at the first request. The first layer of defense, and one which few passed. “Name?”

“Yeshy Brier.”

The quirked eyebrow raised higher, threatening her hairline. She began to search for the name on the computer, an ancient machine whose wheezing whir droned through the empty hall. She pressed the keys one by one; the clack a slow gunfire meant to massacre the enthusiasm of any applicant. The computer answered the query with the familiar emptiness.

“Your name was not found,” she said with frigid relish. She looked from the computer screen at the small man. “If you are not in the database, you can’t buy yourself. You still owe the government, and thus…” She shut her mouth with a snap, leaving the rest unsaid.

“Did you spell my name right? Yeshy is tricky. It has two Ys.”

Her distain for him was plain, but she looked back to her computer. Two clicks sounded through the empty marble hall. Two clicks that signaled a capitulation. Perhaps even a defeat.

“There you are,” she said. She gave no further word, but stared at the man, waiting to see if he knew what to do.

Yeshy squeaked with relief when she spoke. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. “Thank you. Um…I would like to go through with the transaction. I have enough, you see.”

But bureaucracy was not defeated so simply. Her raised a finger and he fell silent. “Do you have the proper forms? I cannot allow the sale without the forms.”

“Oh. Yes. Sorry. I think I have them all.” He picked up his suitcase and placed it on the desk. He unbuckled it  and opened the flap. He looked at her, expectant.

A single look from her made it clear that she would not lift a further finger to help him, so he pulled out the documents and laid them out for her. The endless, tedious, government triplicate had all been filled out. Even she had to admit that he had done everything that had been expected from him, and never explained.

Many people who could buy themselves didn’t, because the number of hoops, visible or hidden, were too many for them to track. It was designed that way. Designed to break men seeking freedom from the system.

With a learned slowness, she reviewed his documents. Every number, every letter that he wrote on that paper was studied. Studied in the hope that a single mistake would damn the application. A smudge turning one figure into another was enough to deny.

She searched for an error. One page free of error, then another. She ran her fingers over the ink, trying to smudge it over, but the ink remained fast to the page. Scowling, she read on. And on, until she was on the last page.

No mistakes. The documents were perfect. Her training materials were worse than his writing. She scowled and looked up at the expectant face of Yeshy.

“Is everything in order?” he squeaked.

Her lips thinned to a line. “It is,” she said, defeated.

“Oh, eh, great.” He rocked on his heels. His hands clapped together, the sound like a crack through the frozen marble of the hall. The woman winced. “So what now?”

Her hand returned to the keyboard. With one tap of the keyboard, she signaled her capitulation. Beneath the desk a printer coughed to life, unused to work. It coughed, sputtered, then fell silent again. Without bending, she plucked the page from the tray and placed it on the desk.

“Sign here,” she said, still surprised that the great walls of bureaucracy had been breached.

Yeshy reached into his pockets, then froze. He patted around, searching every pocket, then the folds of his clothes. At last he withdrew them, sheepish, and looked up at the hawkish woman behind the desk, whose thin lips curled into a merciless smile as she watched him. “I don’t suppose that you have a pen I could borrow?”

She sneered. “Of course not. We can’t afford you using all our ink. We can’t afford the waste.” Her voice echoed through the empty marble hall.

“Can it take the paper out to the ⸻”

“No!” she cut across him.

“Just for a moment.”

“Absolutely not.”

“So…” Yeshy said, his confidence withering.

The woman grinned, seizing victory from the jaws of defeat. “So you will have to wait until next year to buy yourself.”