I turn the small, almost useless piece of plastic in my hand over. It’s me, all right. The same me whose eyes I catch in the window of a car, or when passing by an office building laced with chrome, or in countless mirrors while brushing my teeth. Too many mirrors; more mirrors than a single person in one lifetime rightly deserves. And now it’s looking at me again, right below the company’s iconic colorful logo. Unflatteringly dorky, in fact… surely I don’t look that bad. How much did this cost to make? Five dollars? One dollar? I hold it up to a scanner. The light on the scanner turns green, and I hear a clicking sound. I stare at the place in between the door and the wall where the bolt retracted. It snaps back.

I flex the card in my hand, and it bends obediently. If I bent it harder, it would snap in half.
Click. Just like that. I’d send someone an email, and get an identical card the next day. Or would it take only hours? I bend the card again, a little further this time. Click, and I’d get another. If I kept doing that, every day, would they keep giving me a new card? How long until they say “no more, you broke too many cards!” And then there would be no way to get in, no way to snap that bolt back into the wall.

I wave the card in front of the scanner again. Again– green light, click. Yeah, it’s me all right. Do I look older in the picture than I expect? I examine it for signs of aging. The bad quality acts as a smoothing filter. No signs of aging here; it’s me, exactly as I’d expect. Or rather, almost exactly… it is a very dorky picture.

Green light- click.

Out of the window I see people walking by. Two or three glance up at the building I’m in, but their faces are too far away for me to see their expressions.

“Can I help you?” I jump and turn around. A man, about my age, with a wide smile.

“No, sorry, there was something across the street.”

As he looks at the card in my hand, his smile slackens and his posture relaxes. There’s a card similar to my own on a lanyard around his neck. He pulls it off, reaches a little too close to me, and holds it to the scanner. He pushes open the door, still looking at me.

“Thanks,” I say, hurrying through.