“You don’t seem to understand, I don’t want to go to prison,” he said. He winced as the handcuffs were snapped tight across his wrists. His chest was painfully pressed against the door of the police car parked outside his apartment. It had been there when he walked out his door to meet his friends at the bar down the street.
“No, I don’t think you understand, you don’t have a choice in the matter,” she replied. Her black leather boots squeaked against the tires of her patrol car. It had rained lightly throughout that evening, so there was a slight sheen of water that coated the tires of her patrol car and made the street lights reflect down the dark city street.
“That doesn’t make sense, prison is for people who have done something wrong, and I haven’t done anything wrong.” He tried as hard he could to find some possible explanation for this incident.
“Your barcode says otherwise.”
He looked down at the black barcode that covered his left forearm. This wasn’t the first time his barcode had gotten him into trouble. It seemed like everybody had agreed that his barcode wasn’t good for some reason. “The barcode doesn’t mean anything!”
“The barcodes are the only way we have to identify ourselves. If the barcode says you did something when we scan it, that means you did something.” She said it matter-of-factly; this was a speech she was accustomed to giving often. Her job was to round up the people whose morning scans had come up with a criminal reading. The only reason the scans would give that kind of reading is if those people had done something wrong. For some reason, though, all the people she ever picked up seemed genuinely shocked that they had been identified as criminals.
“I’ve never done anything! Why does the barcode suddenly say I’ve done something now?”
“You must have done something, I guess.”
“What did I do then? What did I do that was so wrong?” He thought it was fair to ask for an explanation for his arrest.
The truth was, she didn’t know exactly what he had done that had made his barcode scan negatively that morning. She just knew that it had, and that was all that mattered. “Doesn’t matter, you’ve got a barcode that says you’re guilty.”
“What makes my barcode so different from yours? We were both born with one, why doesn’t yours make you a criminal?” He looked back down at his forearm, and glanced at hers. He could just see the black lines of her barcode poking out from under the sleeve of her dark blue police uniform.
“I don’t know. That’s just how it works.” She had never really given it much thought. It didn’t really matter though, the system seemed to work just fine as it was. She did her job every day like she was supposed to, she went home and provided for her family, she worked hard and was happy with her life. That’s why her barcode never scanned negatively.

They had been riding in the car for quite a while. He had been sitting uncomfortably in the plastic back seat of the patrol car with his hands cuffed behind his back. He looked out the window and watched as the streaks of rain distorted the neon in the shopfronts passing by. He had calmed down slightly, and, starting idle conversation, he asked of the officer, “Where did you go to school?”
“The Academy. You?” Her tone was businesslike. Not unfriendly, but not at all warm. He hesitated in his response.
“West Side.”
She turned slightly to look back at him strangely, as if she had been expecting his answer. “There’s your problem, that place is bad news. You probably started getting into all sorts of illicit stuff there. That’s probably why your barcode says you should be here now.”
“My barcode wouldn’t scan me into the Academy. I could only get into West Side.” They reached the police station, and she pulled into a parking spot outside the front door of the gray-brick building. She got out of the car and opened the back door, pulling him out of the car by his handcuffs, perhaps slightly more roughly than she had to. She walked him up the slick stairs to the front door of the station, holding onto him by the arm and not looking him in the eye.
After several moments contemplating his last statement, she finally gave her response, slightly annoyed he was trying to make himself the victim when he had clearly done something wrong. “That’s the way it goes I guess.”
She had taken long enough to respond that he briefly forgot what he had said beforehand. Realizing what she said, he jerked out of her grasp as they entered the building. “That’s not fair!” He shouted at her, “It’s not fair!”
It had been a long day for her, and she was in no mood to deal with this kind of insolence. She just wanted to be done with this guy and go home to her family. As he continued to shout nonsense at her, she calmly drew her nine-millimeter pistol and shot him in the chest.
The whole station heard the shot and rushed into the hallway to see what was going on. The captain made his way to the front of the gathering crowd of policemen and women, and surveyed the scene. He made eye contact with her and nodded. He pointed at one of the men standing closest to the body, “Why don’t you take that downstairs. I’ll file the report for him,” gesturing towards the body. Looking back at her, he continued, “You’ve done a lot of really good work today, take the rest of the evening off, you’ve deserved it.”
“Thank you,” she said. She turned and left the building without looking back at the man she had shot and killed. She went home and spent a quiet evening with her family.