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The Bar Code Tattoo
by Suzanne Weyn

In the year 2025, the event that teenagers are eagerly awaiting for is their seventeenth birthday, but it’s not for the reasons you might think. Their seventeenth birthday marks the day that they can get their own bar code tattoo. The tattoo is the epitome of efficiency and convenience. Each bar code is unique to the individual who wears it and it is tattooed, via laser, onto the right arm of the individual. The tattoo has all of your personal information just a scan away.

No need to worry about not having your identification on you in the case of an accident, all the police or doctors need to do is scan your bar code and they’ll know who you are, medical history, status of funds, place of residence – the whole shebang. Even shopping is made easier, as the cashier can scan your bar code at the checkout and computers will automatically withdraw the correct amount from your account; completely making the e-card (the replacement of credit and check cards) look obsolete.

Naturally you have your alarmists, who see conspiracy theories at every turn, speaking out against the tattoo and demanding that folks maintain the right to choose between the tattoo or other means. The tattoo violates the constitutional freedoms guaranteed to all citizens of the United States, argues those against the tattoo, a movement known as Decode. It [the tattoo] allows the government to literally track a person’s every movement and delve into their personal lives. But hey, if you’ve got nothing to hide then there’s no reason not to get the tattoo and conform. Right?

Meet Kayla Marie Reed, a sixteen year old high school student whose only concern is how to get into the art school of her choice when her computer grades, grades she was never informed would be an important deciding factor for art schools, are less than stellar. She’s a talented artist, but in this day and age, all that matters is what you can get a computer to do. Artists like her, who can actually draw, paint, and sculpt are being replaced. Money is tight in her family, ever since her father got tattooed things had been going downhill for them. Her only chance to go to college now is on a scholarship, one she’s told she’ll never get. Kayla firmly believes her life is over and it couldn’t possibly get any worse.

She’s completely wrong of course, over the course of a few months Kayla Reed goes from being an average high school student, to being a member of Decode, and eventually to being a fugitive on the run.

Over the course of the book, it is revealed that there is much more to the bar code tattoo than what the government is willing to disclose. Included in each person’s file is information that could mark one upstanding citizen as desirable and another as undesirable. It’s not some dark and hidden secret of the individual either, it’s something that can’t be helped – their genes. In a time where the world itself is being monopolized by a single company, known as Global, (whose CEO is even the current President of the United States) it’s ultimately up to this corporate power to dictate the future of the world.

Now I seem to recall that, a few years back, the movement that many insurance companies and businesses were taking to better their chances of not having to shell out thousands of dollars each year in medical benefits to employees. It kicked up a lot of fuss as well since, basically, it all boiled down to being denied benefits or job positions due to a choice in lifestyle: smoking. Some businesses and occupations began to deny jobs to those who smoked and began giving current employees the choice to either quit smoking or quit their jobs. Some health care polices refused to cover those who smoked. It was a right mess and raised the issue of infringing on the rights of individuals in order to save a buck.

In The Bar Code Tattoo Weyn takes the idea of a world where everyone citizen is nothing more than a number, where the undesirables are culled from the populace through ostracism, and runs with it. Perfectly good families fall on hard times after having been tattooed for seemingly no reason at all. The Thorn family is a prime example of this. The family was upper middle class, upstanding citizens, and fairly well off. They were in the process of moving into a new house and had sold their own home when something went wrong. The bank handling the purchase of their new home suddenly denied them, when previously all had been well, and no matter where they went, when the Thorn’s bar codes were scanned they were denied again. Soon they were without a home and then finally both parents had lost their jobs. There was something wrong with their bar codes, but what it was, they didn’t know. In the end Kayla’s best friend, Amber Thorn, and her parents were forced to move away to live with a relative in Nevada.

The Thorn family wasn’t the only one seeing things like this. All over the country, folks were rising up in their workplace’s hierarchy while others were finding themselves in hard times, all for seemingly no reason. The truth of the matter is revealed, midway, when Kayla at last views her father’s FBI file and gets her mother to speak out about what she knew from her time as a nurse. In every person’s file a “barcode” of their DNA is taken and analyzed. Those who are not found to be “superior” or have the potential for future health problems are being culled from society. At the same time, steps are being taken to ensure that babies who might have illnesses or problems in their lives never make it home; experiments are being conducted to better individual’s genes during and after birth; and those over eighty, who have the misfortune of being hospitalized, never leave the hospital. It’s all part of a plan to build a superior race of humans, and it’s being hidden from the public’s eyes. Those who speak out are painted as criminals and hunted down.

The Bar Code Tattoo touches upon key arguments that have been raised across the country since ease of access and availability became priorities. Where do the lines of privacy and security blur? Do we have the right to choose how we live or is conformity the only option anymore? While the story takes place in the not-so-distant future, readers will be easily able to draw parallels between the story’s fictional setting and our own very real one. Despite the futuristic slang, changing governmental structure, and advanced technology, Kayla’s world remains very similar to ours and the possibility of a future like Kayla’s is both eerily possible and frightening.

There were several glaring inconsistencies and miscellaneous errors that the author used to move the story along in the direction she intended rather than allowing it to arrive at it’s destination at it’s own pace. For example: rather than taking the time to have Kayla interact with the resistance members and also build on the characters in this group, the author sums up the events and happenings during Kayla’s time with the resistance through a lengthy email that Kayla sends to her friend Amber in chapter twenty-six. Never mind the fact that in chapter eighteen, Kayla had a startling realization that police could track her through her emails, especially if the parents of one of the recipients of her email were to report her. Why then, knowing this, would Kayla compromise the security of the resistance’s hideout to send a message to a friend who has not sent her any return correspondence in months?

Then there is the fact that the resistance’s location was compromised long before that email was even sent, yet Kayla never said a word to anyone about it. On her way to the resistance’s base she is discovered by two former schoolmates, Nedra and Zekeal, who are also members of Tattoo Generation a radical movement to enforce and support the bar code tattoo. Zekeal reveals that he knew to come look for her in this area because he recalled, during his time as a spy in Decode, that Kayla had mentioned meeting Eutonah, the leader of the resistance, and that Eutonah had instructed her to “remember the white face”. Zekeal states that later he realized that the ambiguous statement was a reference to Whiteface Mountain. Although she manages to elude them, it’s fairly obvious that both Nedra and Zekeal know the general location and direction of the base. Kayla never mentions this to Eutonah and everyone continues on as if life is just peachy. I find it very hard to believe that upon barely escaping your pursuers, a person would not mention to their saviors that the reason they were hiding was because the enemy is close and knows the location of their base.

Another detracting factor in this story lies in the flatness of its characters and the complete unbelievability of the romantic relationship between Kayla and Zekeal, and later, Kayla and Mfumbe. Initially Zekeal and Mfumbe were much alike in personality, demeanor, and speech. There were actually points where I was confused as to which was speaking. Likewise, the other members of Decode, Allyson and August, came across more as just flat one dimensional characters meant to fill up background space. With the start of Zekeal and Kayla’s relationship, more defining characteristics became apparent. This development was, however, overshadowed by the fact that Zekeal and Kayla’s budding relationship was flat and about as exciting as a slug crawling on the ground. The interactions between the two lacked any sort of romantic feeling which made instances where the two expressed their feelings for one another laughable. The same trend followed when Kayla and Mfumbe’s relationship began.

Ultimately, The Bar Code Tattoo is a fun and enjoyable read for young adults. More mature audiences will likely cringe at the obvious manipulations of the author to make everything fall perfectly into place for our heroine. Throughout Kayla’s journey the reader never truly fears for her safety. After all, whenever things get tough, she will come across people who also mistrust the tattoo and who are more than willing to save her. They’ll even make sudden appearances out of thin air and save the day just when she needs them. In short, while the premise is definitely intriguing, and the machinations of this story’s antagonists will keep readers biting their nails, the weaknesses of the story are enough to keep this book from ever being more than just “interesting” and “okay”.

Joana’s Rating: (3 out of 5 stars)