1.

The day of the mag­ni­fi­cent rally, a man that con­si­de­red him­self Anony­mous was quite ent­hu­sias­tic about having been cho­sen from the crowd to give an impro­vi­sed speech. It wasn’t pro­ba­bly the most ins­pi­red moment of the event but, nonet­he­less, it see­med to fit appro­pia­tely with the spon­ta­neus cha­rac­ter of a group that would resist defi­ning itself as such.

In retros­pect, though, the man was going to regret enjo­ying that brief taste of sin­gu­la­rity. For, not being very aware of the dif­fe­rence bet­ween free­dom and anony­mity, by the end of that day he had already asso­cia­ted his face­less side with the poten­tial of dri­ving his whole life to success.

It is said that a healthy social life requi­res being able to enjoy the occa­sio­nal mas­que ball; but that, when one wakes up the next mor­ning, the mask has to be already sto­red and locked away. Trying to mix the rules of both games is risky at best, and com­ple­tely excu­sed only for artists, talen­ted come­dians and millionaires.

Unfor­tu­na­tely, this man was so proud of his new­found capa­bi­lity to stand in the spotlight that he deli­be­ra­tely for­got to do so. By break­fast, his family was stun­ned to dis­co­ver he was still wal­king in his anony­mous self.

“Is that you?”, asked Bet­hany, his wife, won­de­ring if she was the vic­tim of a prank.

“I am every­body and nobody. And… some things may be dif­fe­rent around here from now on, so you bet­ter get used to it.”

As he picked a few waf­fles, jam and somew­hat cold cof­fee, and sat with a fai­led attempt of non­cha­lance, his teen daugh­ter took hers and stood up. Alt­hough she had expe­rien­ced anony­mity already, she thought it was tas­te­less to share it with the family.

“I will finish it in my room”, said she, anno­yed. “Are you going to change before it’s time to go to school?”

After a pause, he answered:

“No.”

“Then I will call Nat. I don’t want anyone to see my fat­her acting like a dork.”

“What? Am I too old to be Anony­mous? Is that it?”

“It’s not like that. It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“It’s wrong. You are doing it wrong, dad. You don’t… for­get it. I don’t want to have this conversation.”

She left the kit­chen. An Anony­mous indi­vi­dual wasn’t sup­po­sed to have rela­ti­ves, save as part of some men­tal exer­cise, and, in any case, it was fri­vo­lous to pre­tend one had no iden­tity among the peo­ple they lived with.

He shrug­ged and said to Bethany:

“What did I do? I should be able to do what I want wit­hout… wit­hout being cen­so­red by my own daughter.”

“It’s… it’s just a bit sud­den”, said Bet­hany. “I don’t even know what you are trying to do, J…”

“Silence! I don’t have a name.”

“Lis­ten. I unders­tand that the Anony­mous rally the other day was impor­tant to you, but in the end I think you are mis­sing the point.”

“The point is, it’s about time every­body reali­zes that being Anony­mous is the way it should be. Having a name is… what do they call it? Like an acci­dent of how we are rai­sed… an act-de-art.”

“An arti­fact. Do you really plan to go to work like this?”

“Sure. They will have to deal with it.”

“Then you won’t mind if I spend some time with my friend. She’s about to give birth to her first child but she is still uneasy about the whole pro­cess. She’s old fas­hio­ned like that.”

“Do you want to hear some jokes about babies?”

“Oh, I’ve had enough of this.”

He smi­led in a con­tor­ted, snee­ring way.

“I’ll be wor­king in the stu­dio today”, added Bet­hany. “And I don’t want to receive any emba­rras­sing mes­sage because of you, so try not to do anyt­hing stu­pid, like…”

“Like what?”

“Telling jokes about babies to a client, for one thing.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“If they see someone sit­ting at your desk, in your office, tal­king with your clients, who do you think they are going to expect you to be? That kind of thing may hurt later your karma.”

“Well, fuck karma. I’m done with that. And as long as I’m Anony­mous, they can’t do anyt­hing about it.”

“This may sur­prise you, but they didn’t hire a ran­dom per­son to do your job.”

“It will sur­prise them, that’s for sure.”

“Wha­te­ver. It’s late. If there is any bit of sense left in that head of you this mor­ning, con­si­der lea­ving for a while too. The chil­dren will pro­ba­bly be bet­ter alone.”

Little J was still sit­ting at the table, mostly igno­red. He was too young to unders­tand what was going on, except that sud­denly a stran­ger he had never seen was having break­fast with them.

“There is no point in hiding what being Anony­mous means to little J. He’s expo­sed already to enough brain­wa­shing. That little, squishy brain of you. Huh, Little J?”

The boy star­ted to cry. Bet­hany took him.

“I will leave him tonight at the kin­der­gar­ten. That bet­ter be the only call I make today.”

“You will unders­tand, when you see what we can do.”

“I’m saying this seriously. Every­body knows where is the line, and you are cros­sing it.”

“There is no line. The line is a lie.”

 

2.

In what cons­ti­tu­ted a remar­ka­ble feat in his lar­gely inde­ci­sive life, J… kept his deter­mi­na­tion throughout that mor­ning. He drove to work secretly wis­hing that a road con­trol would stop him, which he inten­ded to follow with an epic rant against cops and their lost link to human­kind. But all he found was a high­way full of dri­vers with the same mor­ning face, somet­hing he might have noti­ced ear­lier if he hadn’t been so obli­vious about the exis­tence of other people.

He wasn’t stop­ped eit­her when he arri­ved to the office buil­ding. The gate­kee­per didn’t look at him, and the gate was happy enough regis­te­ring the ID of his car, which only him was assu­med to be able to drive. He had took off the mask ear­lier just to start it, but he hadn’t reali­zed how much anony­mity that action already had given away.

“I guess it’s time to use the public trans­port”, he told to him­self, with a bit of a con­flic­ted fee­ling, for, des­pite his rebe­llious atti­tude, he was still quite fond of his old middle-class lifestyle.

To his relief, he fina­lly mana­ged to cause some con­fu­sion when he ente­red the buil­ding. After all, it was not unk­nown for shoo­ters or home­brew terro­rists to dis­guise as Anony­mous to per­form their cri­mes, even though they never were as suc­cess­ful as back in the day, when peo­ple were invi­si­ble just by the nature of our mas­si­fied societies.

“Sir, I don’t think you are aut­ho­ri­zed to enter this buil­ding”, said one of the guards. “Please iden­tify your­self or leave at once.”

“Pro­blem, Mr. Guard? Buil­dings are meant to be open.”

“For secu­rity reasons, only iden­ti­fied per­son­nel is allo­wed in this buil­ding. May I accom­pany you to the exit?”

“Stop! I’m not some cri­mi­nal scum! I’m pos­ting this on YouTube!”

The guards, who the most action they had ever seen was some hot cof­fee spi­lled, stood away, startled by the sud­den out­burst. J… drew his mobile and wiel­ded it, camera for­ward, like a fic­tion cha­rac­ter fen­cing vam­pi­res with a reli­gious sym­bol. Luckily for them, the clea­ning ser­vice ―an old man and a tired woman carr­ying the tools of their job―, step­ped in to res­tore the order.

“Oi, what’s up?”, said she, anno­yed by the non­sense of the situation.

“Please, don’t inter­fere. We are dea­ling with this issue”, asked one of the guards, to no effect.

“Who’s that? What’s going on?”, insis­ted her. “You, say somet­hing”, she orde­red J…

J… wasn’t used to being bos­sed by ordi­nary peo­ple. He con­si­de­red, as an edu­ca­ted and reaso­na­ble assum­ption, that the group he knew as the com­mon peo­ple would auto­ma­ti­ca­lly side with him in his per­so­nal fight. Hence his sur­prise, for not only the woman was inte­rro­ga­ting him, but she was using such a reprehen­sive tone he almost couldn’t help but look down and coope­rate with anyt­hing she said.

“Who…? Why you… I don’t…”, bab­bled he.

The old man, who had been paying atten­tion all that time, snap­ped his fin­gers as he mana­ged to recog­nize some subtle speech mannerism:

“I know who you are… What was it? J… J-something…”

“Oh yeah. It’s him”, agreed the woman.

“Can you iden­tify this man?”, asked one of the guards.

“Sure”, said she. “That’s cubi­cle 43. I don’t know what’s this about, but you could, you know, just put him in front of his com­pu­ter. ‘cos he has to login to use it.”

Both guards rela­xed imme­dia­tely. They smi­led softly at J… and made him an indi­ca­tion to follow them to his desk. J… was about to start a rant about his pri­vacy, but since he had already plan­ned to walk to cubi­cle 43, sit and login in front of as many dumb­foun­ded eye­wit­nes­ses as pos­si­ble, he didn’t have the pro­per words ready for it.

As J… wal­ked past her, the woman from the clea­ning ser­vice mumbled:

“I should have applied at the zoo. Ani­mals are less messy than these office people.”

 

3.

A while later, des­pite the overw­hel­ming absence of any man­made sound, all the client could do was stare at him, too polite to express his con­fu­sion. At first J… was exul­tant, lea­ning back in the chair, hands in the pockets, but then he star­ted to hesi­tate, and fina­lly he became outright sca­red by the abys­mal stran­ge­ness in the expres­sion of his client. J… had expec­ted to play the situa­tion like a boss, but now it was so awk­ward for both that he actua­lly wis­hed to be left alone for the rest of the day.

In the end, it was the client who spoke first:

“I… err… hum, was inter­es­ted in… meeting…”

“I’m not somet­hing to be sca­red about, you know?”

“Sorry?”

“This is busi­ness. We don’t need to know each other. Do I care about who you are? Do you care about who I am, what I eat for break­fast, what sites I visit, what size of tits I like? You should worry only about get­ting things done. We are big, aren’t we? We are… there’s many of us. We can make what you need.”

It took a while for the client to find an answer.

“Excuse me. I didn’t mean to offend you. But we really, if you don’t mind, we really would like to meet your deve­lo­pers. This is a com­plex pro­ject… we would like to make sure that your team feels com­for­ta­ble with it. Cer­tainly, you are aware about the con­se­quen­ces of any mis­take, given the precedents.”

“The con­se­quen­ces will never be the same. I’m sure we can build it. We have the technology.”

“Look. I wouldn’t like to be impo­lite but… may I talk with someone else? Per­haps we can save time if I can meet directly with an engineer.”

J… felt angry at the atti­tude of the client. He was angry too at the clea­ning ser­vice woman, and at his wife, and at his own daugh­ter, and he sud­denly reali­zed he hadn’t found a sui­ta­ble tar­get for all that anger with until then.

“Why this now? What’s your pro­blem? Yeah, I’m asking you. What have they done to you? How did you let them turn you into a sheep, all worried about Anony­mous peo­ple. I know, of course, they ask you and you say, sure, you are ok with it, it’s very res­pec­ta­ble, every­body is free to live their way. But inside your head you are hating it. Oh yeah, don’t look at me like that. I know it. You are thin­king it’s somet­hing that will go away. Like a fas­hion. Or somet­hing. You go to the net, when the kids are slee­ping, and post anony­mously in the forums, and you like it. Damn, you like it! But you wouldn’t ever take the next step. In the mor­ning you are Mis­ter 84357… some ID num­ber. You are born with the num­ber in your head, and you will die with the num­ber in your head. Because you can’t pick your own name. Because you let the sys­tem tell you who you are.”

The client stood up and picked up his jacket.

“I will leave now. Thanks for your time.”

J… poin­ted at him over the desk and follo­wed him, spe­lling let­ters like bullets.

“Wake up! This is the truth! The truth is A. N. O. Y… onymous!”

The client sped up across the lines of cubli­cles. J…, deran­ged, shouted:

“Hey, Mis­ter Num­ber! Did you know why did the todd­ler drop it’s lollipop?”

 

4.

It was the first time in as long as he could remem­ber that J… found him­self in the street at mid-morning, and it was a cold and dull day. It didn’t help that, even though there were some legal pro­tec­tions for peo­ple wor­king under anony­mity, he already belie­ved to be out of job.

There was a part of him that found that situa­tion appro­piate. Now he had a legi­ti­mate story to tell. That would make peo­ple side with him, even try to cause enough may­hem to force the hand of the stu­dio. Things like that had hap­pe­ned before. Ran­dom nobo­dies became heroes wit­hout a name, all wrong­doing was res­to­red, and jus­tice was ser­ved to those that belie­ved to be above them.

But, no mat­ter how much he tried to think like that, the gray pros­pect of losing his stan­dard of life and beco­ming one of the least favou­red Anony­mous ―or, as he ima­gi­ned them, over­weight jobless base­ment dwe­llers cop­ying and pas­ting badly drawn comics―, cree­ped in his guts and cho­ked his throat trying to kill all the spi­rit he woke with that morning.

It was a fami­liar fee­ling. Before his soul was suc­ces­fu­lly crus­hed by the 9–5 rou­tine, he used to be haun­ted by the same devil, and back then he knew only one way to fence it.

“Vlads, Rickro­lls, Cats­plo­sion”, was saying the cor­ner guy. “Vlads, Rickro­lls, Cats­plo­sion”, he repea­ted again.

J… stood near him for a while, but the cor­ner guy didn’t seem inter­es­ted in ack­no­wled­ging his pre­sence. Alt­hough J… was still wea­ring the mask, he knew it was nor­mal for drug fiends to be Anony­mous, even to the point of for­get­ting their own name.

“Hey…”

The cor­ner guy see­med anno­yed, but he still didn’t look at him.

“Hey, I would like some… some of that.”, insis­ted J…

“Go home, man. We ain’t selling what you need.”

“Come on. I’m a cus­to­mer. I can pay.”

“You have pro­blem writ­ten all over you.”

“That isn’t true. You can’t tell who or what I am.”

“Right. Lis­ten, you ain’t get­ting not­hing in the cor­ners like this. Get some cred first then we see. Every­body knows each other here.”

“This isn’t fair. I could be anyone.”

Even though the cor­ner boy was six­teen at most, J… felt he was star­ting to com­plain like a child that had disap­poin­ted his father.

“You want to be nobody”, said the cor­ner boy, “unplug your­self, shut your mouth and hide at home, so nobody gives a shit about you. Everyt­hing you do says: I’m a loser, I don’t know bet­ter, I’m gonna cause trou­ble. If you screw us and we have to find your name we gonna be real pis­sed for all the trou­ble. You come with your own face, you know you don’t want to cause trou­ble, we deal with you. You come wit­hout face, you think we can’t find you and make you pay, all for not­hing. ‘cos you think you are worth the trou­ble, but you ain’t. Repu­tation is everyt­hing, even for a fiend. The streets are wat­ching. Everywhere.”

“That’s bulls­hit!”

“Fuck off.”

“This is idio­tic! The game has rules!”

J… didn’t finish, because the cor­ner guy was ready to skin him off his Anony­mous self and hang the remains to dry.

Luckily for J…, some­body came out of now­here and pulled his elbow.

“I take care of him”, said the voice of an elder woman.

 

5.

Somehow, the old woman, des­pite having all the wrin­kles of her age, still had the looks of a young artist girl that had elo­ped to lead an alter­na­tive lifestyle.

She gui­ded him to the nea­rest park, where they sat on the grass. Busy peo­ple was pas­sing by the side­walks and a few elders were enjo­ying a walk. They com­po­sed a quite odd por­trait: and old woman that loo­ked like a girl and an evi­dently stun­ned middle-aged man wea­ring not­hing but the Anony­mous mask. Even stray dogs couldn’t decide if they wan­ted to inves­ti­gate, bark at them or run away.

“So…”, said J…

“So, yeah. What were you doing there?”, asked the girl.

“I think that’s obvious.”

“I don’t think so. Unless you really wan­ted to get your­self killed.”

J… loo­ked away, with a pinch of hurt pride.

“Correct me if I’m wrong”, added she, “but you don’t seem very com­for­ta­ble being Anony­mous. Is this your first time? How old are you?”

“Why would I tell you?”

She for­med a cir­cle with her hands, as if trying to be mystic.

“Gra­ti­tude. Give somet­hing to get somet­hing. Give somet­hing when you get somet­hing. That’s what keeps the world spin­ning around.”

“I could have mana­ged the situa­tion alone, thanks.”

“At a grea­ter risk of being bea­ten, though.”

“That can’t be known.”

“Karma is a stream, not an up or down switch. Most peo­ple that wait for com­ple­tion to share never do so.”

“What are you tal­king about?”

“Repu­tation is coope­ra­tion. If you are never defi­ned you become indis­tin­guis­ha­ble from noise. An always-defensive atti­tude is subop­ti­mal for a inde­fi­na­tely ite­ra­ted game of the Prisoner’s Dilemma.”

“What?”

“Do you know why Anony­mous has good reputation?”

“It doesn’t have good reputation.”

“It does. That’s why you wear it, isn’t it? Because it feels good. But it feels good because many Anony­mous actua­lly did somet­hing great. All the great things done that way add up, so whe­ne­ver you say you are part of it, you imme­dia­tely enjoy your share of recog­ni­tion. Of course, some­body could wear the anony­mous mask like a brand and get extra karma for free. But… it’s actua­lly very hard to hide the fact that you didn’t contribute.”

“Bulls­hit. Iden­tity is sla­very. Peo­ple has to be freed from it.”

“You have to risk being someone. Anony­mity is a safety net for your affir­ma­tive action. If you don’t balance your anony­mity with action, then the pro­blems of iden­tity are never sol­ved, not­hing cool ever hap­pens, and every­body beco­mes slave of every­body else’s fear.”

J… gave her a blank stare.

“Look: it’s like peo­ple living in resi­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods ―nobody knows each other, nobody coope­ra­tes with each other, and nobody faces other lifestyle than their own. Their per­fectly ave­rage homes are their Anony­mous mask. But, actua­lly, everybody’s iden­tity is chai­ned and jai­led inside, and if it ever made a step into the street, if it ever expo­sed itself under the sun­light, it wouldn’t be unders­tood, and it would be auto­ma­ti­ca­lly down­vo­ted by their neigh­bors. So, because that anony­mity isn’t there as a mean for any great action, only as a defen­sive mea­sure, everybody’s iden­tity pales and rots and beco­mes bad karma, while they pre­tend it isn’t so by kee­ping it always inside. Or, to explain it in a few words, you must not be Anony­mous, but act Anonymous.”

“I’ve been acting…”

“And what was the great thing you were trying to make happen?”

“Free­dom from…”

“Oh, really.” She stood up, remo­ving some dry grass from her pants. “Did you notice that peo­ple that con­tri­bute to great things are already pro­tec­ting their iden­tity against abuse? Because they learn to express a cool atti­tude, the safety of their own iden­tity, inclu­ding their abi­lity to qui­ckly engage peo­ple in its pro­tec­tion, can depend on them­sel­ves rat­her than on yet anot­her face­less exter­nal force. This is what I’m doing now ―I’m tea­ching you to get invol­ved in somet­hing great, so when you need to defend your iden­tity you don’t get boun­ced around by every­body, even the peo­ple with the worst reputation.”

The old girl offe­red her hand to help him stand up. J… won­de­red if he wouldn’t be too heavy for the old girl.

“And who are you to pre­tend you know anyt­hing? This is more com­pli­ca­ted than that”, said J…

“I’m nobody. I’m using an Anony­mous mask, too. Alt­hough it has already grown an iden­tity, which, to a great extent, is also my own.”

 

6.

J… sat in the living room, tired and won­de­ring how to pre­tend the next mor­ning not­hing hap­pe­ned at his job. He hadn’t remo­ved the mask yet. Little J was pla­ying in front of the sofa. His son han­ded him a toy pot.

“Hey papa. Open it.”

J… ope­ned it. There was a plas­tic lion inside.

“It’s a trap!”, shou­ted Little J, cra­cking up.

J… spent a while loo­king at the pot, until he sud­dently realized:

“Wait. How did you know I’m papa?”

“Huh?”

“How did you know I’m papa?”

Little J loo­ked at him, puzzled.

“‘cos you look like papa.”

“Is that so? Then… lis­ten. Then why were you sca­red this mor­ning? Do you remem­ber that?”

“Yeah.”

“Why were you sca­red of me?”

“‘cos you didn’t look like papa. But you look like papa now.”

 

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Note: Big thanks to Staticage13 for many edi­ting sug­ges­tions at the Wri­ters­Group thread.