Chapter 24: There are now four of me.

When the light went off, she told me to go through the door and follow the directions I inside.

Behind the door, I found an older woman at a desk, looking at big folders full of papers. She opened one envelope, before looking between that folder, and me many times. Finally, she told me to stand inside a box on the floor with my back to the wall. She used a digital camera hooked to her computer to take a couple of quick photos. When she told me to take a seat by her desk, I saw that she was cropping them to be a specific size before emailing them to someone. In a few minutes, a man came in with a stack of pictures printed as photographs. She checked them carefully before putting them into a big envelope that went into the folder.

She picked up the phone and then two men came in quickly. One had a metal box sealed with yellow tamperproof-tape all over it. The other took a key from inside a sealed envelope and handed it to me. I was told to make sure the key unlocked the box, but not to open it all the way. The tape around where it unsealed changed color to red. The rest was still yellow. Once the lady got them to sign on the form inside my folder, they left the way they had come in.

Soon after, a man came in that said he was here to take me to where my driver was waiting to take me to the next place. As we walked, he told me that my driver would explain all the things I needed to know about what was to happen now. Once he verified the woman verified a man in a dark grey business suit was the correct driver for me, she wished me good luck, and I left.

The woman told me that protocol dictated that they wait until we were away from this facility before they could explain things.

We soon left the underground parking lot before driving the long way around this city. I had not seen much from the ambulance, but I was sure I had never been to this town before. I am not even sure I would be able to recognize it again if I did come back here someday.

According to the clock in the car, we had been driving for exactly thirty minutes when she started to say, “Before departing you received many essential items. Inside the envelope, you will find a series of passport photos, each a bit different than the others. You will need to take these into the passport office that we will be arriving shortly. Inside the locked case, you will find three envelopes marked passports. Each contains the completed passport forms and the fee required. You will be going through the process three times to obtain the paperwork for each of your new identities. It also contains packets with everything you need to know about each unique name. They hold social security cards, school records from grades five through eight, and any additional documents the company that produced them believes will be needed. I don’t have the details of the full process. What I do know is there is a company that creates each new name packet based on sex and an age range. Another company randomly sorts them in with packages from other companies. A third company adds three random identities into the prepared metal box. Inside you will also find a large envelope containing ten-thousand US dollars in a mixture of hundreds, the fifties, twenties, tens, and fives. There is another envelope with pre-paid debit cards holding ten thousand dollars each. You will use these to pay for the plane tickets on hold under the names of each new id. The remainder is to cover the costs of items you require at your chosen destination.”

During the drive, I pulled out everything in the box. First, I checked each passport envelope to make sure that it had the required form with a completed passport that was missing the picture. I double-checked each document against the corresponding passport book. From the instructions, I place one of the nearly identical photos in each envelope. The driver told me to find each social-security card, to prove my identity, and the other papers I would need. He provided me a backpack to put my re-locked security box inside and told me to go to office one-seventy-eight. I needed to ask for Nancy.

The building looked like the inside of any other office building I had been in before. When I got to office number one-seventy-eight, the lady at the desk asked me who I was waiting to see. Shortly, a lady named Nancy came to take me to a waiting area. In front of me were lots of cubicles with red and green lights over them. She told me to wait until I saw a green light. Just then a green light came on by one of the offices, so Nancy told me to go over there.

A balding man sat behind a plain metal desk. On top of it, he had a monitor, keyboard, mouse, some large metal squeeze type stamps, paperclips, a stapler, and a pen holder full of red and black pens. Behind the man, I saw an old phone with no buttons or dial. Not even looking up at me, he asked for my passport paperwork, processing fee, and proof of identity. I gave him one of the passport packages I completed in the car. He opened it to look at a birth certificate, social security card, money for the passport, and then the already filled out passport jacket that needed the photo added. He left with my birth certificate and some of the papers. When he got back, he had held three copies each and gave me back the originals.

“Can you tell me why you are coming to this processing facility when you are not a resident of the state,” he asked me as he kept reviewing the paperwork.

There was a packet with the story to tell for each possible question I might get asked here. I passed the balding man a brown envelope marked C.S.I.V. I explained how I was here visiting my aunt when I got accepted to be an exchange student. I had to leave at the end of next week. I pulled out a paper with the addresses of all of the express passport centers listed, the costs and how to get one done in person. Not believing me, he picked up the phone and asked for an extension. I didn’t hear what all he said, but I did make out C.S.I.V, kid, and rush.

Of course, this man didn’t typically handle these types of passports.

He left with the stacks of my papers. While I waited, I looked through the rest of my documents for this new name. I saw school papers that looked like those I got from school at home. The grades were mostly Cs with a few Bs. Supposedly I had a sister, and we lived in various random towns where my parents found work. Soon the balding man returned to finished filling in some boxes, using the metal squeeze stamps, using a press to cut out the picture, and placing it in the required spot. He covered each page with a clear plastic sleeve before putting it into a machine behind him. A few minutes later, he handed me the completed passport.

The paper with answers to questions that may come up said to find a different waiting area so where I could be sure I didn’t run into anyone who processed one of my other passports. It took a long time to get the others finished.

I think the area I’m leaving it the only one with green lights now.

When I got back to the front office, the receptionist told me I had a man named Mike waiting for me.

He called out one of my new fake names before leading me down a hallway, up a flight of stairs, and into another office. He didn’t say much as he took three pairs of jeans, swim trunks, two long-sleeved shirts, two-short sleeved shirts, a tank top, underwear, socks, new sneakers, and some sandals. I game to be a large backpack to put my clothes inside. He then handed me a plastic pouch with a soap holder, toothbrush, and toothpaste. In the next room, I saw shelves full of cell phones, tablets, and laptops. I needed to get an item from each bin before choosing three pre-paid online game cards.

“Don’t turn on the cell phone or laptop until you land at your chosen destination,” he explained.

Finally, he handed me a locked bag with a key. It was a unique, scan-proof bag that had some way to make the scanners at the airport displayed it as something different than what was inside. I needed to pick a passport and take out nine-hundred-dollars and two of the pre-paid debit cards. Everything else from the metal box went into the bag. As we left through a door, in the back of the office, he had me put my empty metal box onto the pile outside the door.

At least two girls came through here already.

He led me to an elevator requiring a card to open the doors. He handed me that card. The elevator would take me to a specific floor. The card would open a door at the end of the hallway, and never work again. He suggested I discard it at the airport, but not close to this building.

This card looks like a regular business card.

Outside the door, I found a black car with tinted windows waiting for me with gates blocking the vehicle in. No other automobiles could await passengers in this spot at the same time. When I opened the door, I was surprised to see Paula wait on the other side. She was happy to see me too. I jumped in quickly and leaned over to kiss her. She pulled me into a big hug.

Once we cleared the parking area under the building, the window between the front and back lowered down. I saw Steve was driving. Paula went to a processing area in another state. He had to fly her here to meet me. I found out a lot more about the ID papers.

“Specialized companies have been around since the sixties that employ people all around the world. Each team composes a random set of commonly used infant names for that region. Birth certificates and social security care requests establish the paper trail for an infant born at a particular hospital. Most show the mother paid cash, but some appear to have used insurance to disrupt attempts of someone analyzing the records from finding a pattern. Clerks verify the hospital records made the signed birth certificate before forwarding them to the city, county, and state vital records department. All that is missing is the mother or infant, who the hospital discharged before the paperwork finished processing. When the people first started seeding the birth records with ghost infants, the office staff had little time to track down the new mothers, and their infants, to verify the papers,” Steve explained. “People request certified copies of records from the vital records departments. Companies sell them in batches to various groups. Those groups begin maintaining a full back-story for each infant. Their files include the infant’s social security card, school, medical, dental, and immunization records through high school. Once the name in their documents reaches the appropriate age for employment, fake job histories are created that show taxes always pain in full. Each child appears on tax returns for ghosted parents, foster caregivers, or adoptive parents. Another set of companies purchases identities, for a range of ages and genders, they place inside the lockboxes. Each identity’s family frequently relocate so that school records only show brief, though regular, school attendance. How many kids did you see for only part of a school year? Can you remember their names or anything about them?”

He stopped talking to pay attention to something going on in front of us.

Paula explained the rest of the process.

“Each time there is a need to provide a lockbox, such as a replacement for the one you tool, they request a hundred packets for boys between twelve and fourteen. A group of processing agents picks a single envelope at random from a large pile of packages they collected over the years. They place it a bin that takes them to another processing center as a group of one hundred replacements. Before any identity pack arrives at the location, putting them into the lockboxes, it traversed a minimum of fifteen processing locations. To further randomize the process, half of the id packs return to the company who purchases the birth certificate and obtains the Social Security Card. A final company buys the remaining ID packets. They use half for the lockboxes and Witness Protection Agencies. Those unused packets are processed to indicate that identity is deceased,” Paul told me as she bounced around excitedly in her seat.

I should have expected something like this, but didn’t.

Steve had connections inside ever one of the companies, so Paula was able to hand-pick the identities placed in the lockboxes, which were waiting for the two of us. The lockboxes looked the same to anyone who examined them. What she chose to do was to set us up as brother and sister, ensuring our medical and dental records existed for each fake name. Paula began putting this all in motion when she heard I woke from my coma, just in case I did want to help Steve’s off-the-books businesses. It was purely coincidental that our involvement in the child sex slaver bust resulted in us going through the identity change program.

Our three fake identities were Antonio Robert and Susan Paulina Gibson, Jacob David, and Muriel Marie Smith, and finally Skylar Blue and Sapphire Breeze Long.

“David,” Paula said, “I did a lot of digging into possible situations that we may encounter on different missions to ensure our alternate identities would not be out of place. My work was carefully reviewed by experts to ensure that we would be able to appear as a brother and sister anywhere we may travel. Once we have returned to the area around the clinic, I will have dad get someone to show you secure places to put your papers. We will both need to be able to get to them quickly while not having them found accidentally.”

Out of the blue, the car started swerving. Paula looked very worried until her dad muttered something about “fucking living dead snowbird tourists.” She laughed at him after he apologized about his evasive maneuvers. I had no idea what he meant, so Paula explained about the old retired people over seventy who drive down from up north to the Southern states for the winter. Most of them either drive so fast they will run you off the road. Others drive five to ten miles under the speed limit. Both are accidents waiting to happen. Steve commented that it was the speed demons that almost slammed into him and he was driving ten over the speed limit.