I'm Not Who I Was.

So here's my third post about the place I work (I'm counting the password one) and my second post that has to do with logging in to things (I'm counting the password one... again. Obviously.)

When I go to work everyday, I have to clock in, as many people with part-time jobs must. So I walk over to a little computer terminal, enter in my four digit Employee Identification Number, and then walk over to my desk to get down to work.
That's a lie. First I have to pretend I am James Bond and scan my fingerprint so that the computer will accept that I am who I am. My number isn't good enough for the computer, it needs some real hard evidence.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. "The future is here! Finally, my dreams of working in a place where I get to use television-like science can be combined with my reality of working a middle-class job where I sit at a desk all day!"
And I will admit, the idea of scanning my fingerprint every day to clock in and clock out was novel at first. It doesn't take more than a second, and really what do I care? So they have my print on file and can probably frame me for an assassination attempt, I at least get to say that I worked in a place with such high security that they needed me to scan my fingerprint to get in.

Then... then I started to look down while scanning my print.
You see there's this readout on the digital screen that happens to tell me how well my print matches the original print I gave them when I first began working here. It's like giving my fingerprint a report card based on its ability to be exactly the goddamned same.

What was unsettling, then, was my finger's seeming inability to score above a 72.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my finger is a C student at being itself. Every time I have to scan it I try something new. More pressure, less pressure, tilted to the right, the left, up, down, freshly cut with a razor blade. No matter what I do to try to help him along, my poor right index finger just can't get a B.
For a while this didn't bother me, except that for the past week or two something even more fiendishly bizarre had been happening.

My finger has actually been failing the test.

Instead of the reassuring Beep of success (or at least not sucking too badly) my fingerprint has been getting the unholy BeepBeep of failure.
It's like if Babe Ruth not only failed to hit a home run, but walked up to the plate with a loaf of French bread instead of a baseball bat.

Now this all links in with the first post I ever made, about the Existential Crisis that comes from working in a cubicle.
I've watched enough X-Files and Law and Order and Homicide to know that fingerprints are pretty much one and done. I have mine, you have yours, and you can always tell who I am by my fingerprint.
So what happens when my fingerprint ceases to be able to perform its sole task of being itself. Perhaps this little terminal with its fingerprint reader is some sort of Mexican Magical Realism device. Maybe its not reading my fingerprint, but my own self.
For instance, maybe I am really only 72% of who I was when I first got this job. Maybe my fundamental personality has shifted, and less than three thirds of my original characteristics are still in place.

This then raises an interesting question. Is it a good or a bad thing that I seem to be losing rather than gaining compatibility with my old self?
Maybe I was a terrible human being back then, and now I am slowly redeeming myself. Maybe back then I was suicidal and depressed, but now I am coming back into the light.

Maybe they just need to dust that damn thing so it will finally get a true reading and I can stop thinking about it.

Only time will tell.