✅ The Last New Start [NaNoWriMo2021]

84. Not How I Expected

Inside the interview room, there was a desk with a glass screen across it. The only time Tess had seen something like that before was on a TV show when someone's visiting a family member in jail. She'd never seen something like that in person before; it seemed weird.

The interview itself wasn't that bad. They asked the same questions she would have been asked at the customs desk; about where she was coming from and where she was going. She had to explain again that her parents were travelling on business, and that she'd decided to stay so that she wasn't transferring to a new school in the middle of the year. The guy asking the questions seemed sceptical about that; and she knew that she would have been too. He was surprised that her parents would have let her stay, and when she said that they'd initially been really nervous about the idea, a whole rush of emotions came to the surface. She didn't even know why she was crying; maybe peeing her pants had put her partly into the headspace again, despite the recent modifications to the trigger. It was a childish action, after all.

She could tell that she was feeling like a little kid; scared and confused. And she tried to act more grown up, but that was easier thought than done when her emotions were running away from her. She didn't know if she should be worried about the situation or not. Normally she would have told herself that she hadn't done anything wrong, and waited to see what they asked. But her current embarrassment was making it hard to bring back her adult thoughts; and she knew that a child in an office like this would have been terrified.

The customs official behind the desk seemed to take this into account. They could see her passport, and they knew how old she was, but they were still treating her like a little kid. That made her angry, but she held back from saying anything about it. Maybe if they could see her embarrassment, they might be a little less strict with this.

They wanted to search her as well. That was a surprise. The second person she had to speak to was a tall woman in a white coat, who led her through to another room. Apparently the metal detectors in San Lorenzo had been upgraded to some kind of advanced scanner, and some kind of AI had flagged her as someone who might be worth searching when she disembarked at the other end. It was the first time Tess had heard about anything like that, but it sounded like something they might reasonably do. Weapons or something, they needed to find before someone got on a plane. But most kinds of smugglers would be harder to recognise, the system would be less certain, and it made more sense to search people when they arrived at their destination rather than delay a flight for every possibility.

She tried not to think about it. The search was more embarrassing than she could ever have imagined, but only because the official very quickly noticed that she was wearing a diaper.

"It's not a..." she protested, not quite sure what she was trying to say. "It's just in case, it's years since I... But I didn't know if I'd fall asleep on the plane, and all the time zones make it weird, and I thought..."

"Don't worry, you don't need to explain. It's not unheard of to have problems around your age. Just relax, and we'll get this over with quickly."

She checked Tess's pockets, and quickly checked that she wasn't concealing anything illegal on her person. She said that it was possible these new sensors that were supposed to detect hidden drugs might have thought a diaper looked like an attempt to conceal something, so that could have been the reason for the inspection. But they had to go through the process anyway.

Tess could understand. This time she was talking to someone who seemed to feel bad about her discomfort, and she knew that she just had to put up with it for a little longer. Then she was allowed to use the bathroom. The diaper was soaked, and she threw that away, but thankfully it hadn't leaked. Tess checked all her clothes carefully, and looked in the mirror, but there was no sign to tell anyone she'd had an accident. She could get back to normal now; go home and maybe get some rest.