Monday, 20 October 2008

The discovery

I've just written a story about a blogger who, over the years, introduces occasional fictions into his posts. They accumulate, and gradually begin to dominate. Anticipating that the time will come when his integrity starts to flake, he sets out to duplicate his own identity.

Straightforward enough. Dates, address, passport number, bank account details, dates of employment and major embarassment, phonecalls and journeys made, places frequented, minor achievements, a selection of emails sent. Soon enough there's plenty on which to build some sort of personality, and he begins to plan how to substitute the new identity for the old one.

He starts by turning up at a meeting that he himself would have gone to, using an immaculate copy of the email invitation. The effect seems seamless and he makes the commitment. A week later he even makes a comment from the floor at a debate, claiming to be his former self, and goes comfortably unchallenged.

But the issue of reputation crackles in the background. A couple of over-confident anonymous enquiries to test the new identity result in problematic silences, when contacts who should have been guarantors of good character appear not to know anything about him. How can this be? He blunders on, clumsily detaching reputation from self as he overlays detail on its own image, searching now for something factual to blog about. But the real world won't be seen by fictioned eyes, it does not exist, he has discovered a bankruptcy of social capital.

I know, it needs a bit of work. The final text is here.

20 Oct 2008 08:54:02 | Vignettes

1 Comment

Unless I'm missing a joke, your link points back to the same posting.

Posted by: ian | Monday, 20 October 2008 at 16:58

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