|
Moody Millie ran up and down the street emo-ing loudly about her loss of internet anonymity. It had disappeared cleanly and unexpectedly only hours before, like the honor of the Supreme Court after "Bush v Gore".
Yet the morning had started well enough. After quaffing several mugs of French-vanilla hazelnut coffee and watching the Today show with it's satisfying emotional roller coaster of segments -- a terrorist attack here, a diet contest there, and finally, with more solemnity than the former and less than the latter, a story about the moral turpitude of a beloved celebrity -- she felt ready enough to again do battle on the internet boards, armed only with a dedicated Google News window and studiously mindful of the slight stylistic differences in the prose of the various sock-puppet personalities she had created. "I wonder," she thought, "if any of my old nemeses have posted anything yet." She searched the topic list with relish. One thread condemned the celebrity who was featured on the Today Show only moments earlier. Another condemned the condemners. A third took issue with the act of condemnation itself. A fourth had provided more details, and at great length. A fifth lampooned the story with photoshopped pictures. A sixth condemned the lampooning. And so it went, with a familiarity she found more comforting than a hot, brimming mug of French-vanilla hazelnut coffee.
But when she opened that first thread, she was shocked at what she saw. The thread had been started by her buddy TrackRat, a sly and witty, devil-may-care young socialist racecar driver, with whom she had once entertained a notion of a relationship "IRL". Below the poster's name, in place of his usual Formula 1 avatar, was the photo of a world-weary, disheveled old man with coke-bottle spectacles and facial eczema. One click on his profile and all was revealed. He was a 56-year-old postal clerk in East Shushan, Indiana, and he lived with his aged aunt in a ramshackle bungalow next to the train tracks. It noted that he had saved every one of his own nail clippings since the age of 23.
Still reeling from the revelation, she looked further down the thread. Every poster that replied had been similarly compromised. Their avatars, which had been variously sprightly, decadent, culturally stirring, or coolly enigmatic, were now replaced with actual photos of the human being behind their messages. Their profiles were just as complete as TrackRat's, revealing locations, occupations, arrest records, medical problems, poor life choices -- in fact all the ordinary shame and banal suffering of their existences on this constantly rotating blue orb.
It wasn't long before Millie's shock was replaced with deliciously evil delight as the French-vanilla hazelnut lubricated gears of her brain whirred into action. She could have a lot of fun with this, she thought. She decided to log on as "Davros", who was ostensibly a former Czech partisan that had escaped over the Berlin Wall and now spent his days hosting literary soirees in a severely modern Manhattan apartment.
"In the country of my birth," she posted as Davros, "We would not countenance such barbarism as this film actor has engage in!!!" And then she pointed her cursor at the "submit" button and left-clicked her mouse.
"Davros," someone posted in reply almost immediately. "You're a... woman?" And then she noticed, to her horror, that "Davros' " abstract art avatar was now replaced with the same 37-year-old puffy face, crooked nose, and semi-permanent near-sneer that greeted her in the bathroom mirror every morning.
One day earlier inside the gleaming black marble walls of the cavernous command center an aged plutocrat was screening the performance of his last project deliverable on a 50-inch plasma screen.
"What in the name of Satan is that?" he had roared at a pale, stooped young man in a lab coat.
"It is, sir, I'm afraid, a glitch" the technician responded.
On screen, the android designated "GB-1" had been running back and forth across the studio floor, weeping, screaming, laughing and feverishly writing non-sequitor accusations against the sitting U.S. president on a standalone blackboard. Then he suddenly froze and small sparks started to fly from his ears.
"We were worried this might happen, sir. We did rush him out without sufficient betatesting. Not that it matters, though. The reports indicate his influence was waning anyway."
"Scrap that piece of junk!" The plutocrat bellowed. "I had great hopes for that lumbering clod of simulated humanity. Now my dreams of suppressing rational discourse in this country are as fried as his transistors." The old man was practically in tears but not completely, having lost that ability through lack of practice or inspiration.
"Sir, there is something else, though. There's something in the pipeline that's good to go. All we need are a few more weeks of impact analysis."
"What the fuck is that?" the plutocrat looked up.
"Project Glass Houses, sir," the technician replied.
"Glass Houses, eh..." He was now smiling, at least on one side of his stern, lipless mouth. "Tell me more."
"Well, sir, 'Glass Houses' is the fruit of our tunneling into the NSA data repository that you so cleverly ensured when you had... er... control. We have detailed records and photographs of everyone in the U.S. and we can link them to their online personas. The idea behind 'Glass Houses' is that once the real personality of every Internet denizen is revealed, people would be less frank and forthright in their discussions about politics, culture and social mores. It would have a freezing effect on such discourse and liberalism would eventually whither away. People would feel less free after losing their anonymity and therefore be less of a threat to the plutocracy."
"Hmmm." the plutocrat thought for a second. "How soon did you say it could go online?"
"Well it's fully operational, sir. But we still need to finish the impact..."
"The hell with that" he blustered. "Fire it up! Fire it up tomorrow after the Today Show."
The effect of Project Glass Houses was immediate and sweeping. Internet posters quickly restrained themselves from engaging in their favorite excesses. Gratuitous outrage no longer ruled the day and small-town theatre groups enjoyed resurgence as throngs of patrons sought them out for the drama that was no longer available on their board threads. Several youth-oriented forums were shut down when it was discovered that a majority of their registrants were portly middle-aged men, many of whom were named "Bob". People no longer had awkward encounters with strangers on buses, at supermarket checkouts or while dining, or nursing an infant even, at an ersatz trattoria, because they no longer had any desire to discuss, at length, the few biased details they would report about the event. As they interacted with others in what they had dismissively referred to as the "IRL", there was more physical contact: the friendly punch, the pat on the back, the handshake, the hug, and the kiss. When people spoke, they could catch the tone of voice of the speaker and the emotions etched across his face. And poor spellers became indistinguishable from good ones. Poor grammar was too fleeting to even raise much criticism.
The regular posters of a conservative forum quickly abandoned it when they were discovered to be adolescents instead of war veterans or corporate vice presidents or astronauts. These youths ventured out into the daylight again and the "thwack" of bat against ball was now a common sound, along with the clatter of bicycle gears, the footfalls of strolling couples, and the laughter of several people simultaneously responding to the same joke, on once-quiet suburban neighborhoods.
Without the safety of their anonymity, the formerly passive no longer vented their rage on the internet but took to the streets in peaceful protest, forcing real change and turning the United States into the middle- and working-class paradise it always thought it was.
The revelation of one poster was particularly striking. This creature from beyond the stars had gone unnoticed for years even though once it was learned that his screen name ended in a repeated letter because of his initial awkwardness at typing on a computer keyboard with a tentacle, it seemed, in retrospect, to have been obvious, especially, as he went out for the paper every morning, to his neighbors.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
