My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

Digital image of my thumb, to be sent to Sacramento to see if I’m gonna turn into a suspect in any crimes. It’s part of obtaining a business license in the City of San Francisco. No way around it. “It’s a police state,” I say to the gentleman rolling my finger over the glass lens. He squirts water from a bottle to help the pattern in the fingertip pronounce. “Yes it is. It’s a police country.” He doesn’t seem to care either way. He speaks with an Indian accent, I’m tempted to ask if he’s Gujrati, like my friend Chiraag’s parents. I decide that is irrelevant.

“There’s no problem with my real name,” I hear a woman saying to the officer we’ve all talked to at window 10. He routes everyone through to the proper channel in the Police department. “Is that because when you get arrested you don’t give your real name?” he asks. “Yes,” she answers. The man laughs. He is built like an off duty cop, I wonder if he got busted to this paperwork nightmare for beating someone important up in a holding tank. He was doing a crossword when I came up to the window. He wasn’t thrilled to see me.

I had just come from another office where I put out my index finger, dipped it in ink and stamped it on a piece of paper.

“Take this paper down the hall, turn right and take a number. They’re gonna fingerprint you there.”

I needed to be fingerprinted to be fingerprinted. “Is this ink on my fingertip gonna mess up the scanner?” I ask the grey mustached Indian man. “Not a problem,” he answered.

I go before a board for a hearing in a few weeks, and they will decide if I am qualified to be licensed by The City to haul junk. If so, then I am issued a metal badge. Basically I’m deputized as an independent garbage man. Then it’s on.