I’d like to clear up some misconceptions about the Deep State Department of Motor Vehicles. Myth No. 1: It’s impossible to find. Not so. You know when you wake up to pee in the middle of the night and walk back down the hall to your bedroom and your partner is sprawled right in the middle of the bed? The next time that happens, walk to the window. Open it. There will be a burner phone on your fire escape, registered under an alias that’s a combination of the names of former Presidents (“Martin Van Nixon”). Turn it on.
Next misconception: It’s impossible to make an appointment at the Deep State D.M.V. We’re always telling people: Download the app. It’s so much easier than going online, and the application is available in your burner phone’s app store. All the other app options surveil you. This one also surveils you. Just choose a convenient time slot from the drop-down menu, and that’s it! Appointment made.
Another misconception: The wait is short. On the day of your appointment, maintain your normal routine. Within four hours of the chosen time, a plainclothes or non-plainclothes person will approach you and, without making eye contact, say, “Which way do you park on a hill—with your wheels angled toward the curb, or away?” At this point, you should respond, “What?” Then you’ll black out.
You’ll wake up in an underground bunker. The floor will be linoleum, the lights fluorescent. You’ll be sitting in a no-frills black chair in a row of other black chairs. You’ll look around and, with your eyes, ask the two or three other people sitting there what’s going on. You won’t be able to remember an identifying physical feature of any of them, so don’t try.
You’ll hear someone call out a number. You won’t know if it corresponds to one of the people waiting—were you given a number? Were you supposed to ask for one? Is there a check-in desk somewhere? It will be a high number, expressed in scientific notation, for security purposes. It will be yours. Rise.
“Martin Van Nixon?” a soft voice will say behind you. For a second, you’ll forget the alias on your burner phone. You’ll turn around and see Princess Diana, wearing a purple skirt suit and looking fresh and gorgeous for her nearly sixty years.
“Are you here to get a new D.S. license or to merely renew?” she’ll ask in a posh lilt. You won’t be able to answer.
“Did you bring one hundred pieces of identification?” she will ask.
“They were . . . in a folder in my work bag,” you will stammer. “But I didn’t have time to get it. I met the contact in the bathroom of the poke-bowl place where I was eating lunch.”
“Splendid. We’ll review that now.”
You will nod, tears filling your eyes, remembering how you mourned this woman although you didn’t know her personally, and barely knew her impersonally.
“Smile!” she’ll say, holding up a black object the size of a matchbook and snapping a photo that will define you for years. A flash will blind you, and you will lose consciousness. Then you will wake up leaning against your office building, thick Nuts 4 Nuts smoke from a street vender filling your nostrils and making your eyes water.
“How long was I out?” you’ll ask the vender. “Who brought me here?” He will shrug, of course, keeping an eye on his portable stove.
Do you need a Deep State driver’s license? The question misses the mark. First of all, there is no “license,” per se, merely an ever-changing security code on your burner phone that you can flash to any member of law enforcement who asks to see your I.D. This will trigger a narcoleptic response. You may want to keep your regular state driver’s license, to show to bouncers and bartenders.
Does the Deep State offer practice tests, for young people preparing to take their written driver exam? Any underage person we’ve recruited will have already received a manila folder under his or her bedroom door, full of information (about, for example, the meanings of various colors of paint on curbs). They are to memorize the information and then burn the documents in the sink of a locked bathroom, dividing the ashes between five different trash receptacles.
People accuse us at the Deep State D.M.V. of maintaining our power by orchestrating everything from sham road tests to bus-driver assassinations. These are conspiracy theories. Do you know how many articles of the Geneva Convention we’d violate by secretly developing the so-called “leg-paralysis virus” that prevents people from walking? We’re guessing . . . five?
Can you opt out of your Deep State driver’s license after you receive one? What a sweet question! The answer is no. While you’re unconscious, we’ll plant security chips in your vertebrae with your license number and the year and model of the vehicle you drive, and, every time you think you’ve gotten away with double parking, you haven’t. What we’ll do with this information we can’t reveal. But know that it’s in the hands of people with bodies so classified that they can’t even check the organ-donation box. ♦
