Something has always been left inside. Something hidden in a zippered bag. A prohibited item. Before passing through the security gate, this person decides on his own authority that he has removed every prohibited item. He puts his wallet, ID and boarding pass, a bunch of keys, and a tissue crumpled into a Möbius strip in one tray; a laptop and power bank in another. As the rows of trays jam the entrance to the scanner, he proudly pulls both trouser pockets inside out and walks through the gate with them drooping at his sides. To the top of one pocket still cling a series of fragments shed when the tissue became a Möbius strip. With each proud step, they trail to the floor like the tail of a comet.

Good. Now he is standing on the platform. This person raises both hands over his head at an unhurried pace—like a traffic policeman—demonstrating his familiarity with the exhibition of innocence. A female inspector, possibly rather attractive behind her mask according to this person's observations, runs an instrument that emits timed noises up and down his body, her hands all over him, then gives the air around his waist one additional massage. “All right, you can go.” Passage approved.

At that moment, an employee calls him back.

The employee, a woman sweating profusely behind a face covering and visor, stops him and tells him to open his bag. The woman is naturally given to perspiration and is also being baked by her protective equipment. But the immediate cause of her sweating is pressure. Her fluster now threatens the passage of travellers through security at a human rate. A great many trays are blocking the mouth of the scanner because prohibited items keep appearing farther ahead. The abundance of prohibited items farther ahead derives from the extremely expansive recent definition of prohibited items.

A man hunches his shoulders and neck, staring at the security screen and issuing the woman orders. She hurries back and forth carrying one, two, three trays, continually warning, inspecting, and inspecting again. All this makes her the only person in the area sweating in great quantities.

The woman stops this person. She tells him there is a thermometer in his bag. Thermometers cannot be carried onto the plane. This person says, I don't have one. The woman says, perhaps you didn't mean to bring it; perhaps you accidentally left it in your bag earlier. This person says, I have never carried one before either. The woman says, perhaps you didn't put it there this time or previously; perhaps someone else inadvertently put it in your bag. This person says, nothing of the sort happened. By now the continuously sweating woman has grown impatient. She warns this person: Sir, we are certain there is a thermometer inside.

She therefore opens the zip of this person's large bag. Like an anatomist, she first removes several books scattered across the top and lays them out on the counter. The structure of the bag's middle layer is thus clearly exposed to her: some untidily folded clothes and a highly suspicious smaller bag. This person again seizes the opening to stress that he has no thermometer, that he has never in his life used a thermometer. The woman removes the smaller bag and opens its zip. The little scissors and charging cable previously detected by X-ray, blue on the screen, are revealed before her in full, confirming her suspicions.

The woman concentrates on moving this person's disordered clothes and the smaller bag outside, and continues excavating the lower-middle layer. She discovers some photographs, several of which contain another kind of prohibited material unsuitable for public exhibition, and so places them face down on the counter. She also finds some family-planning supplies; small change long buried at the bottom; and several little sculptures whose significance she does not understand but which no reasonable person could consider essential to a packing list.

The discoveries allow this conscientious woman to smell more and more clearly that something is wrong, perhaps even criminal. In fact, by this stage of the excavation, even the person standing beside her with both pockets turned out can no longer assert with complete confidence that he truly has no thermometer. Needless to say, a faint wish has also kindled within him: that the woman will responsibly and thoroughly inspect his baggage.

The woman has now moved every object in the large bag onto the counter. With her fingers, she picks at its corners and other concealed pockets. Her puzzled expression is that of someone delivering a screaming woman in labour only to discover there is nothing underneath. Then she walks briskly to the hunched man beside the screen. Together they carefully scroll back through the previously recorded bags.

At last, she returns to this person and informs him, “Sorry, sir. We were looking at the wrong bag.”