“Non-digital, if possible.”
“Ah,” Tsai says. “I understand.” He withdraws his arm and reaches down to the bag at his feet. Some of his colleagues don’t mind, but Cheng abhors the ID tags in the traveller’s wrists. It feels too much like branding cattle, like reducing humanity to a herd of tracked animals. He remembers looking at the animals at the Taipei Zoo once with his father, at the red pandas and the bears and the penguins. They looked larger than life to him, then; powerful creatures of fangs and fur and claws. But then he’d noticed the tags in their ears, the bands on their legs, marks of stolen power and domestication. Pulled fangs. He’s never liked the idea since.
Tsai unzips the bag and produces a passport, sliding it across the desk where it catches on the corners of Cheng’s p
