DMV, page 26
The Camry swung into the left lane, honking again, and Todd rolled down his window, sticking out his middle finger as the vehicle went by. The two of them were stuck next to each other at the next stoplight, and when he glanced over at the driver, Todd saw a peculiar looking man with a white grinning face.
The other car took off, though the light was still red.
Hadn’t Rosita said that Will Caskey had been driving a black Camry last night?
Dead Will Caskey?
Watching the retreating rear end of the speeding car, Todd thought of that white grinning face.
The light changed, and he pulled forward. He was willing to believe almost anything at this point, and he decided that as soon as Rosita got home from work, the two of them were going to have a long, long talk.
TWENTY SEVEN
Violet had stayed with Zal more than just the one night. She’d slept over for nearly a week. Though they hadn’t shared the same bed, he had gotten used to her being around, and now that she was gone, the house felt empty. He still didn’t know why she had taken refuge with him—she had not volunteered any information and he had not pressed—but whatever the situation was, it had apparently been resolved because she was back at home with her parents.
At least he’d found out that they were compatible. Carpooling to and from work each day, eating lunch together, spending evenings with one another, making breakfast and dinner, sharing a bathroom, they had grown closer rather than getting on each others’ nerves. And it was not as if nothing had gone on. They were now definitely a couple, and the feelings he had for her were undeniably reciprocated.
Still, it felt a little lonely wihout her, and Zal decided that if things kept progressing the way they were on the emotional front, he would muster up the courage to ask her to move in permanantly.
With his next door neighbor gone, parking on the street had become much easier, and it was rare now that Zal wasn’t able to find a spot in front of his house. He glanced next door while walking out to the car. His neighbor’s grass was getting a little long, and he wondered, if the man didn’t return after a few more weeks, whether he should take the initiative and mow it. Maybe he’d ask Mr. Garcia the next time he saw him.
Zal got in the car. Who was he kidding? Howard Lang wouldn’t be coming back in the next few weeks.
He’d been taken care of.
Zal was still unsure what that vague statement meant. Did it mean that Lang would be released and return home once Zal’s work for the DMV was over? Or had he been “taken care of” permanently?
As always, he pushed the thought away.
Violet was waiting for him in the parking lot when he arrived at work. They greeted each other with a kiss, then walked together toward the building.
“I assume your neighbor’s still MIA?”
Zal nodded. “No sign of him. Not that anyone’s complaining.”
“It’s weird, though.”
“And creepy.” He held the door open for her. “So how are things at home? Better?”
“Is that your tricky way of asking if I miss you? Because I do. I even miss your ugly green refrigerator.”
Zal smiled. It made him feel good to hear that. “Miss you, too,” he said as they parted ways.
At his workstation, Zal frowned as he turned on his computer. He was leery these days of checking his email, afraid of receiving another message from the “Ombudsman” of the Department of Motor Vehicles—
we have taken care of Mr. Lang
—but luckily the only messages were from other members of the project team and concerned technical details involving specific programs. There was also an email from Gary the freelancer, and he opened it to find a blank page.
That was weird.
Bernard walked past on the way to his cubicle. “Another day in paradise.”
Zal unscrewed the top of the water bottle he’d brought with him, took a big drink and started working. Yesterday afternoon, he’d begun coding a new online path in order to request what the DMV was calling “Special” license plates from the registration page. There’d been a total of seven different background designs, but this morning he discovered that three new ones had been added. He accessed the first, so he could add it to the new selection menu, and was shocked to see that it was not a scenic landscape or endangered animal or any of the other types of designs meant to demonstrate a driver’s interest in a cause or subject matter. It was a brightly colored painting of a lynched African American man.
What were the other two?
Zal brought them up on his screen. One was a closeup photo of a dead puppy being stepped on by a woman’s foot in stiletto heels. The other was a simplistic line drawing of male and female genitalia.
“What the hell…?” Bernard said.
It was exactly what he’d been about to say himself, and Zal looked over the edge of the divider. “What is it?”
Bernard was shaking his head. “The protocols on this system…” He pointed to his monitor. “They make no sense whatsoever, some of them. They’re not just out of date, it’s like they were imported from some other century. I mean, look at this. ‘Modifications may only be made by a land-owning male over thirty-five years of age…’ What the what? Can you believe this horseshit?”
“Yes I can.” Now that he was delving more deeply into the old system, Zal was finding a lot of unsettling incongruities. Like those new license plate designs. “I’ve unpacked quite a few eyebrow raisers myself.”
Bernard pressed his Print Screen key, and his printer went into action, shooting out a page seconds later. “We need to document this. From now on, when you come across something screwy, mark it and print it out.”
“Oh, I will,” Zal promised.
He sat back down. Now that he’d been “initiated” and theoretically had unlimited access to all parts of the system, maybe it was time to delve a little deeper and see what he could find before finishing the request routine.
On a mission, Zal dug into not just the modules to which he’d been assigned, but others outside the scope of his responsibility, and it did not take him long to encounter what might be termed irregularities. He found that handicapped placards could be issued not merely for physical disabilities but for alcoholism, ugliness, sexual dysfunction and murderous tendencies. He discovered that, purely at the discretion of the user, presumably a DMV clerk, restrictions could be placed on individual drivers, issuing licenses that limited driving to certain hours of the day, or to specific cities or counties. The authorized justifications for such limitations were: Mental, Visual or Other.
Exploring further, he located a list of five thousand different types of driver’s licenses that were offered by the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Five thousand!
It was almost impossible to believe, but he believed it. Stunned, he scrolled down the register. There was a license that allowed young children to drive, there was a getaway driver’s license, there were licenses for drivers who were blind, deformed or mentally incompetent...
There was a hit-and-run license.
Zal paused in his scrolling. This was crazy. According to the description, a driver issued such a license was permitted to, without penalty, “hit, run over or run into pedestrians, bicyclists or other motorized vehicles, including but not limited to cars, trucks or motorcycles,” and to “leave the scene of the accident without identifying himself/herself or offering any assistance to the victim(s) of the incident.”
He found himself thinking about the manner in which his parents had been killed. Could their deaths have been…sanctioned? He didn’t want it to be true, but he knew now that it was possible, and the idea that the DMV could be protecting the killer of his mom and dad made him sick to his stomach.
Zal called Bernard over to show him what he had found, both of them marveling not only at the bizarre and byzantine anomalies hidden within the DMV’s computerized system, but at the extent to which the agency was able to affect individuals’ lives. In return, Bernard shared with him what he had discovered, including drivers who had been placed on various “watch lists” based not on their driving habits or anything else the DMV might logically track, but on their reading preferences or the content of their internet searches or their credit scores or even the color of their eyes.
There were so many ways to cross-reference a name it was ridiculous, and Bernard showed how he had tracked his own name through the system using a host of increasingly detailed and personal search parameters.
“Damn,” Zal said. “That’s frightening.”
“They know more about me than my wife does.”
“Do we…tell anyone?”
“Not yet,” Bernard said.
Zal returned to his cubicle. He stared for a moment at the screen in front of him. It was wrong, he knew, but since he had access…
He looked up Violet.
She had a regular driver’s license that authorized her to drive a standard car or pickup truck but not a limousine. It was due to expire on her birthday in two years. He had accessed her information by name, but pulling out to view her on a directory arranged by sequential license numbers, he saw that the DMV had her license flagged. There was an asterisk next to her number, and clicking on that asterisk brought him to a list that Bernard had just shown him moments before, a list of unmarried drivers who were neither homeowners nor renters, but lived with another family member.
Here there was a red dot next to her name, and Zal frowned. What could that mean? “Hey,” he called out to Bernard, “do you know what it means when there’s a red dot next to a name on the unmarried living-with-family list? That’s module six, page twenty.”
“Let me check.” There was the sound of clicking keys. “It means she’s marked for termination.”
“Ha ha. Very funny.”
“I’m serious. Look.”
Zal peeked over the divider, and Bernard swung his monitor around so that the screen was visible. Sure enough, the interior appendix defining the meanings of symbols used on certain listings indicated that a red dot denoted “termination.”
“What does ‘termination’ mean?” Zal asked. “Her license is going to be taken away?”
“Maybe.”
They were both thinking something far more ominous, though neither of them said so, as as if ignoring the obvious might keep it from being true.
He sat back down, looking at the red dot by Violet’s name.
Could his parents have been marked for termination, too?
Zal’s head hurt. None of this made any sense. He was about to continue his deep dive into DMV programs when Murdoch announced, “Attention everyone!” Zal stood. Above the cubicle partitions, other heads were popping up. All of them turned toward the project manager, who was standing in front of his office doorway. “We have a problem,” he said. “Conference room. Now.”
Murdoch was pulling down the screen at the front of the room when Zal filed in. The project manager moved over to a table on which he’d placed a laptop and started typing as he waited for everyone to arrive. When they were all settled, he said simply, “The DMV’s issued a press release,” and pointed.
On the screen, a smiling female spokesperson was standing in front of a bar graph projected on the white space behind her. “Welcome,” she said. “The Department of Motor Vehicles is pleased to announce the rollout of its new online registration system. Members of the public will now be able to access online all of the services provided by the DMV. Rather than make appointments weeks or even months ahead of time, rather than take time off work to wait in endless lines at a Department of Motor Vehicles office, individuals will be able to request or renew driver’s licenses and ID cards, as well as take advantage of all of the other amenities the department provides, in a location and at a time that is convenient for them.” She went on to enumerate the benefits of online versus in-person transactions before signing off with, “And we thank you for your continued support of the Department of Motor Vehicles.”
“She didn’t mention a release date,” Judi pointed out when the announcement ended.
“I think she’s implying that it’s available now,” Hu suggested.
Murdoch nodded glumly. “That’s how I read it, too.”
“I thought we were going to have some time,” Bernard said. “What’s it been, a month or two?”
“I was assured that we would have all the time we needed, that they didn’t want a rush job,” Murdoch told them. He gestured toward the screen. “Then I saw that this morning and called my contact at the department, told him that we didn’t appreciate being undermined and left out of the loop…”
“And?” Judi prompted.
“It’s no longer a comprehensive system overhaul. It seems that now they want us to just install patches and updates as we complete them. The department wants to put what he called a ‘full stop’ to in-person registration, so they can shut down all remote offices as part of a cost-cutting deal. They want everything online by the end of next month.”
The room erupted in complaints.
Murdoch held up his hands. “I know, I know. But they’ll take it away from us if we balk. Just like they did with the freelancers.”
“Are we the only ones working on this?” Bernard asked.
The project manager sighed. “God knows. I thought we were, but it’s possible that they’re hedging their bets and have some other teams doubling up. I’m sure we’ll find out more in the next few days.”
“If the offices are all going to be closed, how will people take the driving test?” Ken wondered.
“I don’t know,” Murdoch said. “And, frankly, that’s not our concern. We just have to deliver those updates. We need to show results. And fast.” He looked around the conference room. “So whatever big plans you had for revamping entire programs or adding modules, set them aside. You were all given a preliminary list of specific changes to implement, in addition to major architectural revisions. I want you to work on those. And make sure you run them by me. I don’t care if it’s adding a whole new sequence or revising the number of characters allowed in a specific field. I want to see everything before it goes out.”
Usually there would be more questions, and even if there weren’t, Murdoch would often extend the meeting just because he liked to hear himself talk. This time, however, he sent them immediately back to work.
As they walked back to their cubicles, Zal thought about the weird shit he and Bernard had discovered this morning. Should they mention any of it to Murdoch?
“What do you think we should do?” he asked his friend.
“What we’re told,” Bernard said, and sat down in front of his computer.
****
“I heard about the DMV,” Violet said at lunch. “Everyone’s abuzz.”
Zal couldn’t help smiling. “Abuzz?”
“Abuzz.”
The break room was empty save for Bernard. Zal caught his friend’s eye, saw the small encouraging nod. He cleared his throat. “Yeah. I was wondering if I could talk to you about that. About the DMV, I mean.”
“What ?”
He tried to think of the best way to bring up what he wanted to say. “I was looking things up, testing the system, and I typed in your name. It wasn’t an invasion of privacy thing. I mean, I wasn’t trying to snoop. I was just—”
She smiled. “You were trying to snoop. But that’s okay. You think I haven’t looked things up about you? I am in research.”
“Really?” he said. “What’d you find?”
“Don’t worry. It’s all good. Get back to your point. You were looking me up…”
“And on a general directory of licenses, there was an asterisk next to your name. When I clicked on it, it took me to a list of unmarried drivers who lived with their families.”
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s a little personal. They keep track of that information?”
“Apparently so. On this list, there was a red dot next to your name. Do you have any idea what that might be about? Do you have a lot of tickets or accidents or…”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You haven’t done anything that might—”
Violet’s cell phone rang.
“Hold on a sec.” She pulled her phone out of her purse, touched the screen. “Hello?”
Zal watched her expression change from curiosity to confusion. Frowning, she handed the phone to him. “It’s for you.”
Someone was calling him on Violet’s phone?
“Hello?” he said.
“Mr. Tombasian? This is Al, from the Department of Motor Vehicles. How are you doing?”
What the hell was this?
“Fine,” Zal said cautiously.
“That’s great, that’s great. I’m calling to ask why you are eating your lunch in Data Initiatives’ break room rather than at your desk. I thought we had made it clear with today’s announcement that our timetable for completion of the project has been moved up considerably.”
“I’m entitled to a lunch,” Zal said defensively.
“Of course! No one’s saying you aren’t. But you’ve been initiated into the DMV family, which means that we’re going to be expecting a little more from you from here on in. Could you pass the phone to Mr. Benkhert, please?”
Numbly, Zal handed Violet’s phone to Bernard, who listened to the man on the other end for a moment, calmly said, “Eat shit and die,” then switched the phone off and handed it back to Violet. “It’s all yours,” he said, taking a bite of his turkey sandwich.
“What was that about?” she asked.
Zal was still thrown off balance. “How could he know where we were and what we were doing?”
Bernard touched his neck directly below his Adam’s apple, where the bee had stung him during their initiation. Zal thought about the insect that had stung the back of his own neck.
