The Patel Protocol

‘Papers, please. If you wouldn’t mind.’ I wondered why they still asked for papers. Whether it was some atavistic memory. I handed him the plastic card. It was the same size as the credit card I used to have.

‘Ewan, that’s an unusual name.’

‘Not especially. It…’

‘Foreign is it?’

And I supposed it was now. It had been the name of an actor long before the ImPol officer was born. My name had been unusual right up until Trainspotting hit the cinemas. Not that this officer had even seen a multiplex. Now there’s just BritStream, which used to be the BBC. They don’t show things like Trainspotting.

‘These cards,’ he held up my chipped existence, ‘they’re being phased out.’ He tapped his ear-piece then put a finger on his wrist monitor. ‘You need to get yourself one of these.’

I shrugged.

‘I mean it. At the very least you need a app on your phone.’ He looked at my clothes. ‘You have a phone, don’t you?’

He gave a tut as I held my 5G antique up to show him.

‘Look. I don’t want to… Your name. It’s not the right kind. You know what I mean.’

And I did. The French used to have a list of acceptable names for children, right up until the noughties. Britannia introduced one thirty years later. Arthur, Henry, John, Richard, Anne Elizabeth, Victoria. There were a few outliers. Boris, Priti, for example, but most names had a regal or at least English ring to them.

‘It’s… Scottish.’

He gave another tut. Waved my ID card at me. ‘According to this you were born in Libya.’

‘My dad was in the RAF, he -’

‘Don’t be stupid. The Royal Air Force is for the defence of the realm. We have no bases outside the sovereign territory of Britannia. Never have.’

I didn’t doubt that was what he’d been taught in zoomschool.

‘Libyan. That could be a problem for you. How come you’re walking round free at all?’

‘I’m British.’ I could see the disbelief in his eyes.

‘You’re going to have to come in for processing.’

Every town had a station, to process the others who had got through before. ImPol had been the Border Force once. They needed a new name once they had spread throughout the country.

I had been lucky so far. I had been processed twice. Three months it had taken the last time. The records showed I was a veteran. That gave me gurkha status at least. No pension or benefits, but a right-to-remain. But that wasn’t extended to "people of Arab origins". What had happened both times before was that someone high-up in ImPol had said "get rid of him, turn him loose". Anomaly was a word bandied about, maybe even in Westminster. One day someone would forget the "turn him loose" part. The cuffs didn’t hurt as much this time.

The ImPol dropped me off at the custody desk for ‘processing’. Before he left he slapped me on the back.

‘90, huh? Happy birthday.’ He said.