View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
For the city that hosts the congress of nations, Deqla looks surprisingly uncrowded to the eye. The streets are all relatively wide, letting in plenty of sunlight and allowing sufficient of room for bicyclists and pedestrians to coexist with public transport and delivery trucks, while only a handful of buildings cap out over ten stories tall. It was a city that was designed by people who knew what the future would look like, and had plenty of budget to make whatever was needed to further Aramaia's status on the world stage to visiting diplomats and dignitaries happen. Further away from the congress and the local universities, the work is rather less extravagantly maintained, but even the side streets are well lit and relatively clean to help keep crime statistics down. What they don't have is a lot of people in them on early weekday afternoons, which makes the fact that her appearance is completely unobserved a bit less unusual.
After about 20 minutes from her climbing aboard, the bus driver calls out the stop for 3rd street by northwest, which the bus route informs her is about two blocks off from international avenue and as close as her bus gets to the congress. She can wait another 5 minutes for a transfer to take her closer, but it's a short enough distance that it shouldn't be too hard to make it to any of the embassies she desires by walking.
Yeah, she's going to get off here.
Now, to pick an embassy that's appropriate... She sure wouldn't want to walk into a Chinese or Russian embassy back home holding expensive secret technology, for all that they would be major embassies. Stateless persons weren't treated so well at home, either...
She will examine her map. There is a conference hall with diplomats and so on here, yes? Presumably this is a major nation if it hosts a world conference of this sort. She has no idea what the local laws are, though. She could be in the local equivalent of China.
Ideally she would have time to make a well reasoned and thoughtful decision about this, but right now she is in a corner against being literally homeless, stateless and broke. Which would tend to lead to "deported" at home. She could try and blend in and stay illegally but that frankly sounds like a nightmare. She will take a small chance of being disappeared or stabbed with a polonium umbrella for a much greater chance of being able to live a legal, aboveboard and first-world-standard life rather than being deported to otherworld Mexico or what have you.
She will go to the conference center and ask the desk clerk which embassy she should try.
I don't want to have to work odd illegal jobs for the rest of my life, no. We need papers.
"Hello there! If you're here for the tours, that's actually at the other desk over there; the receptionist can help make sure you get to see whatever catches your interest."
"Hello, actually I have a bit more of a serious matter. I recognize this might be above your pay grade as a desk clerk, but I'm recently arrived here from a place called Canada which I don't believe anyone has heard of before. I have ID and some currency from that state but I don't believe it to be internationally recognized here, and it's my only legal identity, which I believe makes me legally stateless. What embassy or office should I try in order to arrange for a legal identity here?"
"Did someone put you up to this as a prank? There isn't any nation called Canada, recognized or not, and there anywhere on Garenhuld unexplored where you could fit another country. Unless it usually goes by another name?"
"No, I'm afraid I'm very serious. I recognize this probably seems like some form of hoax. Give me a moment and I'll show you what proof of identity I have."
She reaches into her bag and extracts her wallet, from which she extracts two Canadian 20$ bills and two Canadian 5$ bills, all four printed in plastic with transparent foil maple leaf watermarks and clear left sections with holograms of Queen Elizabeth and Big Ben. They're signed and have registry numbers on them, as well as many anti-counterfeiting marks and microfine printing. The five dollar bill has a picture of the Canadaarm and a space-suited astronaut on the reverse of the face side; the twenty has a picture of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial and several pictures of poppies.
Also from the wallet comes her British Columbia driver's licence with its watermark, ID photo, and hologram, including a picture of her own face in hologram over the shape of the province. Aside that she places her British Columbia health card, her University of Vancouver student ID, her Canadian small watercraft liscense, her Vancouver public library card, and her Petro Points card. She also has a debit and credit card each with her name - Liath Amara - written on it, matching her British Columbia driver's liscence.
When she sees the money come out, she's still confident this is a hoax. A surprisingly thorough one, of course; when she looks at the bills, it really does seem quite impressively manufactured. When the evidence keeps coming, though, she gets steadily more and more nervous. Probably you wouldn't ever fake all of that, right? Which means she is dealing with something Unknown, and probably even dangerous. It's a struggle to keep her face professional even though she's in public and the rational part of her is telling her this is almost certainly some kind of test that she's failing.
"I'll, er, get you someone else to talk to?"
The last bit comes out as something of a panicked squeak despite her best efforts, and she hurries unseemly quickly through the door behind her desk.
Well, they've gone and done it now.
She will just have to stand here awkwardly with all her ID out on the counter. God save her from bureaucrats.
Let's just really hope that whoever they bring has some actual sense to them.
Quiet down, you two. I've got a part to play here and I don't need the pair of you kibitzing.
Once away from the desk and the terrifying mystery, she feels more than a little foolish. What is she going to tell her boss, there's someone there claiming to be from a made up country and she needs him to go deal with it? Not only would that probably involve her having to go back, she's not sure how she could say it without getting disbelieved or lying. She spends a bit wandering almost aimlessly, vaguely in the direction of management.
"You look pretty stressed out, are you doing okay? Maybe you should see about calling in early today."
For a brief moment, she experiences a spark of hope before it sputters and dies at the realization that this is a political intern with the congress and not part of the venue staff, and therefore not someone who can authorize her clocking out and making this someone else's problem.
"I've had better days. Had a visitor at the desk do something unusual, didn't take it too well."
"Do you need a hand? It's not really my area but we're just cooling our heels waiting for the secretary to get back from a meeting right now, and I'm pretty good at talking with people."
If she could be just a little less pathetically grateful about that it would be awesome. Technically speaking she's not supposed to get assistance from anyone outside the staff with this kind of thing but nobody's going to get mad at her for wasting an intern's time like they would a bigshot politician and compared to the idea of speaking with her boss in this state the offer sounds incredibly compelling.
"If you could, I would appreciate it a lot. Thanks."
So when the secretary returns, it's with a bit more poise than she left with and accompanied by another young woman, though this one isn't in a uniform and seems a lot less skittish.
"Hello there, sorry for the wait. You were having an issue here?"
"Yes, I've just arrived from a foreign nation no-one has ever heard of and the sum total of what I own is what's on the desk there and the contents of this purse. I recognize that this seems absurd but it's the truth. This is a problem for me because I believe it means I have no recognized legal identity, much less anywhere to stay for the night."
Karen glances down at the assembled evidence. Plastic, it looks like, and not one of the kinds that Garenhulders have mastered yet. There might be a few labs that could do this kind of thing, but none that would choose this as a way to reveal it, which means that either one of her cousins has a particularly poor taste in jokes or this girl really is from another planet.
"Certainly. I think for this we want a form IAR-71-C; Annete, do you remember which drawer you keep those in?"
"That's the idea, certainly, but since we don't recognize them the legislation doesn't specify directly. I doubt it would hold up if someone makes a stink about it, but it's not politically acrimonious enough that anyone will. We can fill that out right here and get it filed; turnaround on that is usually a couple of weeks, but while the application for residence is pending it's legal to stay in the country as long as you're not drawing a paycheck. Looks like we need your name, date of birth, where you were born - just put the town, probably - who your reference is - put me down, I'll fill out the corresponding bit and attach it - and then some facts about your vaccinations, education and any criminal history."