“Name?” asks the female Kiwichippewan customs officer.
I stand in line at the customs counter in the sole airport on the tiny Caribbean island nation of Kiwichippewa. I’ve been waiting for a good hour. Kiwichippewa is known for its thorough and lengthy customs procedures. There’s a lineup behind me, and I can tell that people are getting tired of waiting — lots of shuffling and picking at scabs going on. It’s tiring just standing in line.
In Kiwichippewa, they conduct primary and secondary investigations at the border, making it one of the hardest countries in the world to enter. They’re scared of anything deviating from their norms, not just the usual threat of terrorists or criminals flowing into their tiny nation. You’ve got to be on the straight and narrow to be able to enter Kiwichippewa and remain there.
In front of me is a small female Kiwichippewan in uniform, wearing reindeer antlers. Kiwichippewans are goofy that way. They value their creativity and ability to deviate from the norm — whatever norms Western society likes to impose. She is hovering behind a computer terminal with her brain scanner — resembling a ray gun from a fifties B movie — lying on the desk beside her. I’m nervous. If you’ve ever done anything untoward ever in your life, anything a Kiwichippewan might consider weird (even though they are weird themselves), you are bound to get sent back to wherever you just came from, with a permanent record of your transgressions entered into the Kiwichippewan computer network. Try coming back again with a record, and you are bound to arrested and put in a small room with dozens of tiny Kiwichippewans lashing you with glow sticks. That’s in addition to forcing you to watch Ishtar fifty times in a row before they throw you on a plane with nothing but the clothes on your back.
I’m afraid of the brain scanner, mostly. It picks up all of your truths and lies. I hope to heck that the customs agent doesn’t decide to use it on me.
I wanted to enter Kiwichippewa for pleasure, for their premier annual event: the Kiwichippewan Hula Hoop Convention. All sorts of exhibitors from around the globe would be showcasing their wares in this city state, fourteen miles wide and six miles long. There would be all sorts of other things going on: Elvis impersonators (in particular, skinny Elvis impersonators, from his heyday in the fifties — none of that Fat Elvis stuff), hula-hoop demonstrations, people walking around in fifties poodle skirts and leather jackets, and all sorts of panel discussions on the importance and relevance of hula-hooping into the twenty-first century. I wasn’t a huge hula-hoop connoisseur. I just wanted a Caribbean holiday in a particularly strange part of the world, and planned to check out the convention for the heck of it. Also, Kiwichippewa is known for two things: their baffling yet sophisticated technology, like the brain scanner, and their candy. Lots and lots of candy. The island was practically built on candy. A volcano that didn’t shoot out magma or lava had formed it; it shot out loads and loads of sugar — sugar that could be transformed into mouth-watering, delicious candy.
“Name?” the female Kiwichippewan customs officer asks again, this time a little more insistently. I’m thankful she at least speaks fluent English. Kiwichippewans are known to speak in their own dialect, which resembles chipmunks nattering on speed.
“Oh, um, Reg,” I say. “Reginald.”
The customs officer, who barely comes up to my chest, types my name into her computer. I think of it as a redundant question, as my passport is already open on her desk. I figure that maybe she’s just testing to see if I somehow match up my answer to what’s already there.
“Last name?” she asks.
“Simple,” I said. “My full name is Reginald Simple.”
More typing.
“Date of birth?”
“January 24, 1974.”
“Reason for staying?”
“The Kiwichippewan Hula Hoop Convention.”
“Length of stay?”
“Five days.”
More typing on the computer. Those were the easy questions. And I knew it. The hard ones were yet to come.
The customs agent looks up at me and asks, “Have you ever been charged with a crime that involved the use of elephants?”
That was a doozy. I’d worked in a zoo once, cleaning up the poop of elephants in their exhibition area. But I’d never been involved in a crime with elephants — at least none that I’d been aware of.
“No,” I say emphatically.
“No?” the customs agent replies, reaching for her scanner.
“I’ve never been involved in a crime concerning elephants,” I say.
This seems to put the customs agent at ease. Her hand moves away from the scanner.
“Have you ever hopped down a sidewalk with one leg raised?” the agent asks.
I’d been warned about this type of question. Kiwichippewans are a fun-loving race who generally pride themselves on being goofy. They are known to do cartwheels and handstands in the middle of the street, blocking traffic. This customs agent was probably testing me on my goofiness, whether I’d be able to fit in as a visitor.
“Well,” I say. “I might have done such a thing as a child.”
Which was the truth.
“But never as an adult?” the agent asks.
“I don’t know. But I might be willing to enter a three-legged race at a company barbecue or some such thing.”
“You’d be willing?” the agent says excitedly.
“Sure,” I say. It was the truth.
More clattering at the customs agent’s keyboard follows this. She then proceeds to ask the next question.
“Have you ever had sex with someone dressed up as a clown?”
Well, this was getting a little personal. I did have an ex-girlfriend who had a penchant for dressing up as a clown at Halloween, but I never had sex with her dressed up in the get-up.
“No,” I say, wondering if this is another trick question. A smattering of typing ensues, and suddenly the agent is frowning.
“Mind if I check your bag?” she says, referring to my carry-on stuffed with clothes.
“Go right ahead,” I say, putting my bag on the counter. I have nothing to hide.
She unzips the bag and riffles through it, ostensibly looking for some kind of contraband. She’ll find nothing. All I’ve got are enough socks, underwear, shirts and pants to last me five days. Well, there’s a camera too. But it’s a film camera, not digital, so she can’t go zipping through the contents of that. It’s unloaded, and I’ve brought a couple of canisters of film for when I clear this godforsaken border. Strangely enough, the camera is the first thing she zeroes in on.
“Any pictures on this?” she asks.
“It’s empty,” I say.
“No pictures of anyone manhandling snakes?”
“No. I can show you, if you want. It’s empty.”
The agent thinks about this for a few seconds and then tells me, “That will be fine.”
She stuffs everything back into place and zips up the bag. More typing on her keyboard, longer than before. I can feel the people in the lineup behind me growing more impatient.
“I have one more question for you,” she says when she’s finished typing. “It’s probably the most important one I have. Have you ever dreamt of a purple giraffe?”
I suck in my breath. How on earth could she know? I have had recurring dreams of a purple giraffe, usually right before I wake up in night sweats. It comes to me out of nowhere. I could be shopping for vinyl records in my dream, which is something I love to do in real life, so it’s weird that I’d actually dream it, and there — out of the blue — comes the purple giraffe to browse through the records beside me. And here’s the weird thing: the giraffe will always turn to me and moo like a cow.
I have no idea where the purple giraffe sits on the Kiwichippewan index of creativity, if it’s a good or bad thing to dream of the giraffe. So I decide to do the one thing that comes most naturally to me.
I decide to lie.
“Uh, no,” I say.
“No?” she asks. I see her reach for the brain scanner. My heart leaps in my chest.
“No,” I say again, this time more emphatically.
“No, eh?” she says, scratching her chin.
A flurry of typing. I can only hope I’ve given her the correct response. I really want to go to that hula-hoop convention. I really, really do.
Her eyes shift from the computer screen to look squarely at me. Then, with a burst of enthusiasm, she says the words I so dearly want to hear: “Welcome to Kiwichippewa. Enjoy your stay.”
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