On The Ontology of Records

It's a balmy Sunday in June. Fernando has just opened the store and is sorting the assorted returns in the box when a silver minivan pulls up. Out pile three teenage children and their adult male handler. Fernando's never seen any of them before. They fan out through the store and browse as Fernando continues his sorting.

About five minutes later, they approach the counter, each bearing a movie case with a rental tag attached to it. But Fernando and anyone who has ever rented here before (or even anyone who reads his Chronicles half-regularly) knows this is not the system Fernando has in place.

“Can I get your name?” Fernando asks, pen hovering over the rental slip.

“Maokai R.”

“Do you have an account here?”

“Yes,” he responds without missing a beat. Man's a good liar, Fernando must at least admit.

Fernando turns and meanders over to his computer. Mr. Maokai asks, “What are you doing?”

“I'm checking to see if you're in my system, is all.”

“You don't need to do that.”

But Fernando has already opened the file and scrolled the the R's and, surprise, failed to find Mr. Maokai. “It seems you actually are not in the system. That's quite strange considering you claim to have an account.”

“Maybe you didn't put it in the computer.”

“Could be, could be,” Fernando admits. “Hold on a second.”

And Fernando heads to his file cabinet, where the hard copies of all membership applications are kept. It is possible for someone not to be in the computer, if he or she hadn't rented in years. It's impossible for someone to not be in the file cabinet and yet have an account. So again Fernando searches the R's and again he fails to find an R., Maokai.

“You're not in there, either,” Fernando says, returning to the counter. “It would seem your claim to have an account here lacks evidence backing it up.”

“Maybe you threw it out?” the man says, uncertainty creeping into his voice for the first time. One of his offspring, meanwhile, has opened the sodey pop fridge and closed the door again. Fernando keeps an eye on that one.

“Doubtful. I have cards in there from over a decade ago, people who have possibly since died or moved away or been put on the ban list. Now, it's a small matter for someone to create an account, but you've already attempted to mislead me once today. You'll forgive me if I'm somewhat hesitant to rent to you now.”

That sets him off. “Then we won't rent! Come on,” he orders his brood as they filter out the door. Fernando watches as they leave, then checks his fridge.

Turns out the one kid didn't try to steal a sodey pop from Fernando, else this story would have turned out even better.