TSA in 2015
 

As we approach Sacramento Airport in my dad's minvan at ten o'clock, a uniformed TSA officer with a military gun in his hand stops the car. "Citizen, I need to check your Verified Real (VRID) and registration." My dad hands the TSA officer his ID/registration, and the officer runs it in his database. "Congratulations, Mr. Andy1369's father. You're not a terrorist. However, please pay that speeding ticket you got in Auburn by November 7. I see you're dropping your son off for travel today to travel on American Flight #9101 to Washington Reagan. Citizen, you have precisely five minutes to drive up to the designated drop-off point. If you're not out of airport premises by five minutes, you will be charged a $50 airport extended drop-off fee. Andrew, have your VRID ready. Being at the airport four hours prior to departure is mandatory. Your airline will be prohibited from checking you in if you're not at the airport within that time frame. Have a nice day and a nice travel." He pushes a button, and the gate preventing people from passing the officer "check" slides open. Dad drops me off, we share a terse goodbye, and I stand on the sidewalk, waiting for the tram that would take me to the airport (dropping people off at the curb right next to the airport entrance was eliminated in 2010, due to a bomb threat, so designated drop off areas are 300 feet away from the airport). Another TSA officer, armed to the teeth and wearing a helmet, approaches me with a taser gun one hand, a X-RAY detector wand in her other hand. Without a word, she quickly beams the X-RAY detector wand over me, and walks away without any comment. The entire "waiting space" has two officers standing, with military guns in their hands. The tram arrives, and as I am the only one standing there, the boarding process is quick. The tram takes me to the airport entrance, where there is a line already formed.

The bottleneck is due to a TSA officer scanning VRIDs and airport approval passes (printed online from the TSA, using a code given to me by American). Without a word, my ID and airport approved pass is scanned, and the airport door slides open once the green light buzzes. (A visitor? Allowed, only with 48-hour advance permission and background check.) I check in, then head to the actual security checkpoint. The usher at the head of security wand me quickly, then I wait in the 1-hour line. Halfway into the line, I am handed a robe, then escorted to a changing room, where I unpack my clothes and put them in the plastic bag handed to me. After that, I go through the body imaging machine, and am handed a cup to pee in to be drug-checked. While I wait for my test results to be given to me (30 minutes), a TSA officer with a nightstick and shotgun sits down and interviews me. "Andrew, where are you traveling today?" "Washington DC." "Why are you traveling to the District?" "Going to school." "May I see your university ID?" I hand him my University ID, and he scans it in the system. "I see you owe The University $1456.78. Do you plan to get a loan?" I nod. "I see here that you're majoring in Communication Studies. Citizen, communication studies is considered to be a mild threat, due to the possibility that you could be handing terrorist information through other means of communication. I also see here that you downloaded a copy of Microsoft Office 2003 back in 2004 illegal. Your file also says you attempted suicide in 2005. You are not a clean citizen, so why should we allow you to fly?" I have no answer. Just then, my drug test arrives. "You're clean, citizen. Your credit score shows that you pay on time. However, the porn you watched last night on your HP laptop, along with that pizza you ordered from Round Table Pizza, indicates that you're not conforming to the new laws regarding obesity and chastity. As a result, I have added you on the Suspicious Travelers' List. In the future, you will be required to arrive to the airport six hours in advance before travel, and will be given an in-depth drug test and be interviewed by the FBI. Today, you are free to go on to your departing gate and board your flight. Please pay the $225.00 government Suspicious Traveler's fee, or you will be arrested for a lack of compliance to the TSA. I will also have you be tasered, for giving me that dubious look. Officer Hiltered, please come and taser this citizen." I get a painful tasering, then am pulled on the floor towards my gate, dumped on a waiting seat, and am given my plastic bag of clothes, which I would put back on once I arrive to Washington Reagan and am cleared through TSA Domestic Customs.

"Security is such a pain," the woman sitting next to me mutters. Five armed TSA officers run towards the woman, handcuff and taser her two times, then carry her away. "You have committed the crime of slandering the TSA through libelous means. You will be added to the Prohibited Travelers List, Sharon Goodyear." the head TSA officer says coldly and in a monotone. Sharon is dragged away, sobbing. On my flight, I try to artfully avoid the glare of the camera mounted on the back of the seat in front of me, and read 1984 without being caught by the TSA officer roving the plane each now and then. Upon arrival to DCA, on the jetway, I give the TSA officer my ID and approved airport pass to be scanned. "Suspicious traveler, stat," the officer exclaims, and pushes a button. The door opens with the green light, and I am escorted by a TSA officer to baggage claim, where I grab my baggage and walk outside to the tram, where I am taken back to the real world.

Written by: me! (feeling creative today)

Read, discuss, analyze, worry, feel relieved... ;)

No rectal?

I write too, so I can appreciate a good short story.

Overall, I liked it...

This one particular part stood out at me, however. Maybe instead of merely a bomb threat, it would be more plausible to have actually had a car-bombing at one of the major hub airports at the curbside drop-off/pick-up.

The TSA doesn't need a real threat in order to make up dumb rules. On the contrary, the more inane the source of the rule, more authentic the story will sound. I think the source for this inane rule should be kids found with butter knives near the terminal. :eek:

LOL, 2015!, America!!
Buddy, by 2015 most of us will be trying to break through the fences that Mexico and Canada will have put up. Those of us lucky enough will have been able to stowaway on a freighter carrying cheap plastic toys to India where we will be able to get jobs making chapatti's or cleaning out the turds from the sewage system. I reckon if I can cut people's lawns in Juarez all summer, I could sneak back over the fence and spend christmas at home w/ the family, then go back again every March or April. Yeah, TSA will be the least of our problems.

Up to this point, I thought the entire thing was credible.

^

I don't know whether to laugh or cry...:(

Yeah me too. I can't imagine that the fee will be a cent less than $500.;)

Well played. :cool:

well done Andy! i submit, in an entirely non-Godwinian way, that TSA would have changed their name to merely SA to reflect their mission creep beyond merely transportation as they are combined with other security forces deployed by DHS.

Originally written by Andy1369
Written and posted with his permission


The sun wasn't quite up to the highest point in the sky yet, and I reached forward to pull the visor down as we turned onto the road leading up to the airport. I didn't want to wake up this early, but dad tells me that I have to be in compliance with the rules. Five hundred feet of roadway, and it takes us nearly a half-hour to get down to the other end by the airport because of the x-ray machine. It looks like some kind of enormous metal arch spanning the road, and the cars and trucks and vans approaching the airport all have to drive through it at somewhat less than the speed you'd go while the car was idling. We sit in the car waiting for the line to move forward, and a woman in a blue uniform and a helmet approaches the car. Others, in the same uniform, were leaning down to speak to other drivers.

"Citizen," she started; she had a lovely voice, but it was hard and cold. She might have even been attractive if I could see her face. The visor on the helmet concealed her eyes and the top half of her face though, so I couldn't quite make her appearance out. She continued, "do you know the procedures for the vee-bee-exx?"

The father nodded, his lips pressed together into a tight, thin line. The VBX was the short-hand name for the arch up ahead of us. The vehicle-bourne x-ray device was something that was supposedly intended for the TSA to help screen maritime traffic, but 2013 saw its implementation at all but the smallest of airports around the country.

Without another word, the female agent turned sharply on her heel and moved down to the next car in the line behind us.

"Hey, dad," I said, "did she have a gun?"

I could see my father's eyes shift to the left into his side mirror, and he gave a single, slow nod.

Half-an-hour later, we had just passed the VBX device and approached the barricades at the front of the airport. Another, newer road was constructed off to the left, and the original road that led up to the entrance of the terminal itself was blocked. Another TSA agent, this time a man shouldering an assault rifle, moved toward our minivan. Three more officers still stood by the roadblock, talking amongst themselves.

"Citizen, I need to check your VRID and registration." Prepared for this, my dad handed the TSA officer his vehicle registration and his Verified Real-ID. In the officer's hand was some kind of black box with a couple of lights on it and the green ambient glow of a screen. The card was swiped down the left side of the box, and the officer pushed a button on the screen.

"Congratulations, Mr. Smith," he said, his tone one of sarcasm, "you are not a terrorist. However, I would remind you to pay the speeding ticket you were issued on the sixteenth no later than seven-November. You're registered today to drop your son—" his chin bobbed up briefly before dropping back to his screen. I couldn't see his eyes, but I know he was looking at me, "—off for travel on American Airlines flight nine-one-oh-one to Reagan-National. Citizen, you have exactly five minutes to drive to the designated drop-off point. If you're not out of the lot and back on the egress in that time, you will be levied a fifty-dollar extended-time drop-off fee.

"Andrew," the man's voice gripped my spine, and his saying my name made me jerk. The officer hesitated before speaking again when he saw this, then pressed two more buttons on his black box and continued, "have your VRID ready when you get dropped off. Being at the airport four hours prior to departure is mandatory. Your airline will be prohibited from checking you in if you're not inside the terminal building within that time frame. Do you understand?"

I nod, pulling my wallet out of my jacket pocket.

He passed my father's VRID back to him, and leaned up out of the window. "Good. Have a nice day."

There was some sense of irony in his last words, and I couldn't help but feel as if we had interrupted his day or something in our driving up. He turned, reshouldering the sling of his rifle, and moved away to the gate. The agent swiped some kind of ID badge hanging on the front of his shirt through a reader, then pushed a series of buttons on the keypad of the reader. A light turned from red to green, and the gate rolled noisily up.

It takes two minutes for us to get to the designated drop-off area, so my dad and I couldn't have more than a terse goodbye and a quick hug before he had to leave to avoid the fifty-dollar fee. I could see the terminal building from the sidewalk, but I and the other passengers stood in a small cluster waiting for the tram to arrive to take us to the airport itself. At one point in time, we used to be able to be dropped off right next to the airport, but that was eliminated back in 2012 as a result of a car bomb detonating beside LaGuardia's main terminal entrance. Supposedly, according to some websites I've read, it was just an industrial accident involving some propane tanks and not an act of terrorism, but I guess it's something we'll never really know. On the far side of the waiting area, two more TSA agents stand chatting with each other, occasionally glancing in our direction, occasionally adjusting the shoulder straps on their rifles. After a few minutes of awkwardly standing there in the cold, the tram finally arrives and all get on. Another TSA agent, this time with his rifle unslung and in his hands, stood stoically at the front of the tram and looked over our heads for the duration of the trip. There was a baby crying somewhere on the tram, and nobody was wanting to talk to one another because you never know who was actually a TSA agent in plainclothes. Eventually, the tram came to a stop at the front of the terminal where a line was already formed out the door.

It took about ten minutes, but I discovered that the bottleneck is due to another TSA agent scanning VRIDs with another black box, as well as the AEAs - the airport-entry approval passes. They're printed online from the TSA, using a code given to the passenger by their air carrier. Without a word, my VRID and AEA are scanned and the airport door slides open with a dull hiss once the TSA agent hits the 'accepted' button and the green light clicks on. As I go into the building, the guy behind me was already being turned away—apparently, his background check wasn't completed because he didn't have the forty-eight-hour advance notice for the TSA to apply for the AEA. "But my son is coming back from Iran today on leave, and I..."

The door hissed shut behind me.

Thirty minutes later, I'm still waiting in line at the American airlines desk, waiting my turn to check in. Another TSA agent, this one without a helmet or an assault rifle, but with a pistol belted around her waist, made her way down the line and was handing everyone something that looked like two-gallon-sized transparent plastic garbage bags and a hospital gown. Once I checked in, I headed over to the bathroom and changed clothes, folding everything of mine up and putting it into the plastic bag. I change into the robe, a flat, uninteresting thing in solid gray, and slip the medical booties on over my feet. My jeans, shirt, jacket, shoes and socks have all been put into the bag, and I present it to the TSA agent standing in the bathroom for an inspection and for him to seal the bag shut. I look at the tag he placed on my garbage bag of clothes—'Inspected by: 98731'—and get the image of some kid in a third-world country making a pair of tennis shoes. Since all carry-on baggage was prohibited in 2010, the only thing I have left to carry is my bag, and I'm not allowed to open it until I reach my destination airport. Inside, I can hear my cell phone start ringing, and a few minutes later, the chime telling me that I have voice mail.

I took a deep breath. It was time for me to head through the security checkpoint.

If we go strictly by the experiences in this forum. I can't imagine they'll do anything less than snipe people in the head while trying to enter the airport.

HSVTSO Dean and Andy1369, it looks like you guys have a good base for a story. It still needs some fleshing out.

If you would like hit me up on my blog and I will host it.

oh and it needs to be a bomb scare not an explosion that changes the drop off point. We know the TSA is more likely to react to rumored or nonexistent dangers than actual security issues.

See, TK, I was going from the standpoint of deliberate misinformation over a "whoops" incident that had nothing at all to do with terrorism (bloating a story about an accidentally-detonated propane tank as a "car bomb.") I figured it'd be better suited to how most people view the TSA :P

Though I did, originally, think about going with a bomb threat.

Just wait for the rest of it. It gets even better. Dubya is still President. :D

Now that is a change we can believe in.

BTW you may want to hurry Obama is in the White House, I got employee of the month and a black man is head of the Republican party. If I read my Bible right all this adds up to Jesus coming next week.