If it is, I dip my stamp in green ink and send them on their way. I check the entrant's weight, their height, and if everything is in order. I check the issuing city of the passport, consulting my rulebook to make sure it's an authorized location. I'm always on the lookout for forgeries or missing documentation.
My only view of the world outside my booth is a never-dwindling line of 8-bit entrants waiting for their chance at my window, and a wall where I hang a painting from my son that I have to hide when supervisors are around. Somedays, it's any foreigner - some days, it's a wanted criminal. I'm a glorified clerk at the border to this USSR proxy, and it's my job to keep out anybody the bosses don't want in. And Papers, Please has made it the mundane tip of a very dull spear.Īfter walking to work, I check the bulletin for whatever new rules the leaders of Arstotzka have cooked up. I could send her away, but I've got a family to feed.Īs she fights the guards I've called over, and the butt of one of their guns knocks her unconscious, I wonder if the five credits I earned will be enough to buy my niece the medicine she needs. That's a crime, and I've got a partner who gives me a kickback for every would-be immigrant that I detain. I consider sending her away, but the documents could be falsified. She assures me it's a typo, begs me to let her through the border checkpoint. Finally I uncover what I'm looking for: A small discrepancy in the spelling of her name. I check her height, her weight, her gender, cross-referencing each field against all the documents.
I've done what comes next so many times, it's practically instinctual at this point. She slides her passport, her access permit, her polio vaccination through the window and then tedium begins. Another haggard, hopeful face hangs in front of my window, my tenth of the day. I've asked so many times I hear it in my sleep.
0 kommentar(er)
