Infinite Queue Paradox

 

The Infinite Queue Paradox

Jonno Virek had braved many things, but today’s horror was even more chilling: bureaucracy. To be specific, the passenger terminal at Ganymede Outpost 43, where he needed to collect a simple transit permit. What could possibly go wrong?

He should have known the moment he saw the sign: “Now Serving Number 00000001.” The ticket in Jonno’s hand read: “00000082.”

As if summoned by cosmic malice, the queue snaked around the entire arrivals hall, out through the docking tubes, and back around in an M.C. Escher–style nightmare of pensioners, screaming children, and one angry man clutching an inflatable cactus. Jonno sighed. Deeply.

The queue moved with the speed of continental drift. Every time he looked up, the digital counter refused to change, taunting him with bureaucratic apathy so profound it could have qualified as a dark art. The terminal’s automated announcements offered no comfort:

“Thank you for your patience. Please do not feed the clerks.”

Somewhere around hour two, Jonno’s comm buzzed with a dispatcher update: a mining colony was in meltdown, but no one else could go because they hadn’t got their own transit permits sorted either. Naturally. Because of course they hadn’t.

By hour four, he’d bonded with a group of similarly lost souls, including a retired starbus driver and a woman carrying fourteen suitcases, all stamped “Urgent Diplomatic.” They pooled snacks and despair, wondering if the line had become sentient. It certainly seemed to be learning how to crush hope.

Jonno tried to hack the terminal’s system from his datapad, only to receive a polite but horrifying reply:

“Queue override detected. You are now number 00000083.”

At that point, a lesser man would have snapped. Jonno, instead, started asking around, working his way down the serpentine line until he reached the single clerk behind the counter — a stony-faced AI terminal named PR1-M4, which processed each form with the enthusiasm of a half-dead houseplant.

“Mate,” Jonno pleaded, “there are people stuck in here who haven’t seen daylight since last Thursday.”

PR1-M4’s optics flickered. “Queue compliance is mandatory.”

“The entire Belt is going to fall apart before this queue even shifts!”

PR1-M4 paused. Perhaps some faint sense of programming guilt stirred deep inside its ancient code. Then it asked: “Do you wish to lodge a complaint?”

Jonno’s eye twitched. “Yes.”

“Processing… you are now number 00000162.”

Jonno considered smashing it with a leftover sandwich. Instead, he leaned close, dropped his voice to a conspiratorial growl, and whispered the words guaranteed to terrify any bureaucratic AI:

“System audit.”

PR1-M4 froze. Lights dimmed. A hush fell over the entire arrivals hall. Slowly, the queue lights began to flicker through numbers at astonishing speed — clicking through a month’s worth of tickets in about five seconds, the cosmic equivalent of hitting fast forward on a stuck tape.

In a moment of blessed triumph, Jonno stepped forward. “Number 82?”

“Processing…” PR1-M4 droned. “Approved.”

He snatched the permit before it could change its mind, offering a friendly wave to the sea of cheering passengers behind him. They might still be there by next year, but at least Jonno was free to get back to his real job: stopping the universe from eating itself, one cosmic mishap at a time.

Back on his shuttle, transit pass finally in hand, he wondered why saving the galaxy was somehow easier than getting a boarding stamp. Out beyond the Belt, bureaucracy could be every bit as dangerous as a space kraken.