Short fiction for a JC zine

I submitted this to Margin, the latest downtown-Johnson-City 'zine that's working hard to promote the best part of this town. I don't know if it's much good, but I wrote it in a couple hours.

Prompts/ specifications: 3-500 words on the subject of "identity."

Enjoy.



They Done Give It Back

“You hear how they got a computer now that can carry your whole life around in one em things kindly the size of a damn phone?”

I could hear his whole life, in broad strokes, in that one sentence: white guy in his late fifties; former coal or factory worker; smoker; Wise or Scott County native. A natural skepticism, brought on by hard living, that expressed itself as a disdain for difference and a tendency to vote for Republicans, would be his armor and his cage as he suffered the slings and arrows of modernity. And if he could overhear these thoughts of mine, as I sat with my back to him nursing a beer and a crossword, the best I could hope for would be his contemptuous dismissal.

“Them things stay on the Internet all the time, even when you aint lookin at nothin, tellin some damn body in Langely or Washington where you're at, everything you're buyin, writin it all down in a graph and a formula they just put you in and figure out your whole damn life like doin a sum.” He barely paused to finish off a beer before adding, “Put all your records, all your official papers, in one spot where they can just read it off when they want. In that damn health care bill they make you do it, so they can put all your medical records in there too.”

The bartender had his doubts: “So they can know it every time you take a piss?”

“So they can give you a piss test.” This one was lean with stringy long hair, an ex-con unless I missed my guess. “Forget the cup. Forget the damn lab. Just test you every time you go to the head, beamin it right back to headquarters.” If he wasn't reading Bukowski, he was living it.

I hadn't been home long – just a few months – but I figured it was safe enough to turn around and chime in that the kind of technology they were talking about was still years off, and that even if it were to be perfected, there were laws protecting us against that kind of nonsense. And although they disagreed with me, it was on respectful terms. Which is to say they treated me like they would treat any other man drinking at three in the afternoon in a two-street town.

“They already done it,” said the tough guy, with wounded vindication. “Ol Zeb there got one em new phones six months ago and it wasnt a damn week went by somebody stole his identity.”

I spared the poor bastard a glance; he looked like hell. “Is that true?” I received a slow nod for my efforts. “What happened?”

A glacial pause followed. Then: “They done give it back.” While my mind occupied itself with the logistics of this statement, its factual parameters, old Zeb added, “Didnt have nothin worth stealin.”