It was all fun and games.

It was the New DMV.

In the New DMV, when the shit hits the fan, it is, more often than not, REAL shit hitting REAL fans.

Today it was most likely the guy at the photo/fingerprint window who'd brought it in and then tossed it up when no one was looking and finally flipped the fan switch to "ON".

For the most part, the Hit(Fan, Shit) proposition behaved according to statistical models worked out at MIT over the course of the last few decades by Professor Dean Moriarity, and the post fan-blade shit splattered harmlessly on walls and windows, rarely hitting faces and therefore even more rarely going directly into mouths and, rarer still, down throats and through digestive systems to be reverse-engineered and ultimately excreted as food.

I walked to the information window as people were rising up from their duck-and-cover crouches and applauding themselves and feeling all elated over having avoided all that air born fecal matter, unaware that the hated "statistics" had really done all the heavy lifting of saving them from being just another shit-faced statistic.

I flashed my MetroPass.

"What's that?" the information window person said, cheerily, like it was a dead canary and we were children.

"It's my MetroPass," I said, just a touch of incredulity in my voice.

According to Schrodinger's equation, Freedom = Entertainment = Emotion and, according to the Constitution, Schrodinger's Equation is everybody's absolute natural born inalienable right, with or completely without regard to circumstance.

"What's a MetroPass?" she said. "There's no such thing. I'm afraid the DMV does not issue or honor MetroPasses."

I started getting impatient. "It's something you flash," I said. "Characters in science fiction stories have them all the time. They walk up to people or windows or whatever and flash their MetroCard or MetroPass or OmniTicket. It goes by a lot of different names depending on the story. But they're all the same."

"This isn't a story, sir. This is the DMV. Are you here for a driving test?"

"The DMV IS a story!" I corrected her. "The DMV is a STORY in MEATSPACE!" I explained. "What's a driving test?"

"So you can get or renew a drivers' license."

"What's a drivers' license? Is that like a MetroPass?" I asked.

"So you can legally drive a car in the state of California," she said, not getting impatient at all -- but that's because everybody was so fucking hang loose at the New DMV.

"Why the FUCK," I said, really beyond all reconciliation with time at this point, "Why the FUCK would I want to drive a fucking car in the state of California!!? -- and even if I DID (want to drive a fucking car in the state of California) -- Why the DOUBLE FUCK would I want to do it LEGALLY??!!"

The New DMV was designed on the theory that there is something higher than thought, and we just need to get our brains to do it.

So the New DMV workers were invited to let it all hang out. Be all pranksterish and fun-loving one minute and then all desperate and despairing the next, and then all calm and mellow, the next.

(Meanwhile, the patrons of the New DMV, unbeknownst to themselves, had been secretly invited to be all melodramatic and self-righteous one minute, then all gracious and obsequious the next.)

Eventually, though, the workers would have to confront the theory that rivaled the theory that the new DMV was based on.

This rival theory, contrary to claiming that there is something higher than thought and we just need to get our brains to DO it -- instead claimed that, really, there is something lower than life and we just need to get our bodies and spirits to ENDURE it.

Fortunately, however, neither theory impinged enough on the final product to obliterate its fundamental feature (not a bug!) -- and so everyone with business at the New DMV had to go through the lines with their clothes 100% off -- in the interest of everybody else's safety.

Unfortunately, since they weren't responding appropriately to my MetroPass, I would have to (go through the lines with my fucking clothes off) too.

"Do you KNOW WHO I AM!!!" I screamed as the armed matron started removing my clothes so I could be processed.

"I'm Professor Buck Hardrod, Ph.D.," I screamed as I took my place at the back of the line for window 17 and started filling out my form, "I'm the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award winning discoverer of the idea that there is something more central than emotion, and we just need to get our insula and/or cingulate cortex to shut the fuck up and start ACTING LIKE it!"

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