Watchers

Dyne at the computers, where the young men were working happily. Nora watched them accessing the supposedly secure computers of the California Department of Motor Vehicles and the Social Security Administration, as well as those of other federal, state, and local government agencies.
    “When I told Mr. Van Dyne that I wanted ID with ‘full backup,’ “Travis explained, “I meant the driver’s licenses must be able to stand up to inspection
    if we’re ever stopped by a highway patrolman who runs a check on them. The licenses we’re getting are indistinguishable from the real thing. These guys are inserting our new names into the DMV’s files, actually creating computer records of these licenses in the state’s data banks.”
    Van Dyne said, “The addresses are phony, of course. But when you settle down somewhere, under your new names, you just apply to the DMV for a change of address like the law requires, and then you’ll be perfectly legit. We’re setting these up to expire in about a year, at which time you’ll go into a DMV office, take the usual test, and get brand-new licenses because your new names are in their files.”
    “What’re our new names?” Nora wondered.
    “You see,” Van Dyne said, speaking with the quiet assurance and patience of a stockbroker explaining the market to a new investor, “we have to start with birth certificates. We keep computer files of infant deaths all over the western United States, going back at least fifty years. We’ve already searched those lists for the years each of you was born, trying to find babies who died with your hair and eye colors—and with your first names, too, just because it’s easier for you not to have to change both first and last. We found a little girl, Nora Jean Aimes, born October twelfth of the year you were born and who died one month later, right here in San Francisco. We have a laser printer with virtually an infinite choice of type styles and sizes, with which we’ve already produced a facsimile of the kind of birth certificate that was in use in San Francisco at that time, and it bears Nora Jean’s name, vital statistics. We’ll make two Xeroxes of it, and you’ll receive both. Next, we tapped into the Social Security files and appropriated a number for Nora Jean Aimes, who never was given one, and we also created a history of Social Security tax payments.” He smiled. “You’ve already paid in enough quarters to qualify you for a pension when you retire. Likewise, the IRS now has computer records that show you’ve worked as a waitress in half a dozen cities and that you’ve faithfully paid your taxes every year.”
    Travis said, “With a birth certificate and legitimate Social Security number, they were then able to get a driver’s license that would have real ID behind it.”
    “So I’m Nora Jean Aimes? But if her birth certificate’s on record, so is her death certificate. If someone wanted to check—”
    Van Dyne shook his head. “In those days, both birth and death certificates were strictly paper documents, no computer files. And because it squanders more money that it spends wisely, the government has never had the funds to transfer records of the precomputer era into electronic data banks. So if someone gets suspicious about you, they can’t just search out the death records On computer and learn the truth in two minutes flat. They’d have to go to the courthouse, dig back through the coroner's files for that year, and find Nora Jean’s death certificate. But that won’t happen because part of our service involves having Nora Jean’s certificate removed from public records and destroyed now that you’ve bought her identity.”
    “We’re into TRW, the credit-reporting agency,” one of the twin Spielberg look-alikes said with obvious delight.
    Nora saw data flickering across the green screens, but none of it had any meaning for her.
    “They’re creating solid credit histories for our new identities,” Travis told her. “By the time we do settle down somewhere and put in a change of address with the DMV and TRW, our mailbox will be flooded with offers for credit cards—Visa, MasterCard, probably even American Express and Carte Blanche.”
    ‘Nora Jean Aimes,” she said numbly, trying to grasp how quickly and thoroughly her new life was being built.
    Because they could locate no infant who had died in the year of Travis’s birth with his first name, he had to settle for being Samuel Spencer