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Chapter 6

I fell down a ventilation shaft... or what seemed reasonably like one. I was screaming in panic... At a last moment, I grasped on to a tiny little ledge on the wall, trying by all means not to drop... The fall was still long, and the last thing I would have wanted to know is where it ended.

As the Providence would have it, just like in the Fables of Samaniego, I made an unendingly tremendously coincidental discovery... I was hanging right next to a grate. Indeed, these were some kind of ventilation shafts. I heard through the grate somebody talking to themselves, seemed like an Anon. He also seemed to know of me, as he constantly mentioned "the furfag". I soon thought of another plan. It was time to fool another one of the very "Internet Hate Machine" again...

"Hey!" I yelled for him to hear. "I'm here... outside your wall, believe it or not!"

He seemed to get near the small grate. He asked: "Who is this? What are you doing there?"

"You're not gonna believe this, pal, but it's me, Ognimod. You know... the furfag. Yeah, the furfag. That's me. I'm here, because I wanted to say, well, I... I surrender. Yeah, that, I give up. Uh... you have a way of opening this grate? I'd like to go in and surrender myself, but I'm hanging from the wall, and I'm getting this slight notion that I can't... what do you think?"

"Alright, wait here while I look for my tools," he said. After a while he was back and unscrewed the grate while I hung on to the ledge as hard as I could. How, I don't know, because it was a very thin ledge and I should have slipped off a while ago. Finally, the Anon helped me get into his room (with some difficulty, since I am fat).

"Thanks," I said. "Hey, where do I go to give myself in?"

He opened the door to his room, and while facing away from me, started giving me directions. "Well, down that corridor, left, a little bit beyond-- AARGH!" I had just hit him with the flamethrower. I shut the door immediately.

I received more signals on the intercommunicator. I listened to them...

"What do you mean he's alive? WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE'S ALIVE? What kind of trolls are you?" yelled the Leader, whose location was still a mystery to me. "Listen, we understand that nobody is perfect, not even us. But it can't be possible that you're armed with super-flamethrowers and you're still not able to kill a fox! A FOX, I tell you! A wild, inferior animal! Where is he now?

"We don't know, Leader Anonymous, and we've already lurked everywhere."

"Rule 33: 'Lurk more - it's never enough'. And now that we're discussing the rules... if you'll allow me, it is time to coin a new rule, to compliment the forty-seven we already have. It will say: 'Rule 48: CAPTURE THAT FOX AND KILL HIM! KILL HIM!'"

"i think it's clear that I'm this movie's good guy, Leader, so I don't think I'm dying anytime soon," I mocked. The Leader burst into rage. And now another moment for me to speculate how the Leader berated his goons, just because I want to =D

"It's incredible. Never has something like this been seen... How does he do it? How does he survive the very 'Hate Machine' which Fox News called 'hackers on steroids'? It makes no sense. One furfag couldn't have made it this far. None of his ilk has been so competent... none of his ilk has BEEN competent, ever."

"Maybe... maybe none of this is serious. Rule 20, sir: 'Nothing is to be taken seriously'..."

"Doubtful. NO ONE should have survived the Bear... But no matter. He'll never find the control room. We'll keep sending him more and more threats and obstacles in compliance with Rule 36: 'There will always be even more fucked up shit than what you just saw'. We'll finish him... and the mission will be accomplished. We've waited too long for a newfag like him to thwart our plans so quickly. The rules will be uphelf... 'We are Anonymous. Anonymous is legion. Anonymous never forgives. Anonymous can be a horrible, senseless, uncaring monster... Anonymous is still able to deliver'. Now, find the fox. Finish him off!"

All obeyed the command at once. Seeing himself alone, he muttered to himself: "Damn fox... When I get him, I'll hang him by his eyes with barbed wire. I'll have my revenge--"

He stopped himself. Nervous, as if he had said something embarrassing, he cleared his throat to hide his slip.

The place I was in now was quite compact, and curiously better lit than the rest of the complex. There was no furniture other than a bed and... a desk with a computer on it. Gee... Would it have information? Would I be able to use it to find Ivory's location or Anonymous' plans? I sat down to use it.

I skimmed through a folder full of useless documents I don't want to describe right now to avoid shocking my audience. About to open a file that looked important... I heard a new signal.

"Leader! We get suspicious activity on level 11690! Someone's searching the files!"

"It's the furfag. We have him. Now!"

And at the 'now', the entire room except the desk, the computer and I, popped suddenly and disintegrated completely, leaving the desk and I floating inside some kind of nothing... a strange place that looked like the inside of a wormhole, full of weird colors, energy waves... Where was I? Was I even anywhere? And to my surprise, the computer was strongly linked to that former room, which is otherwise impossible, as I read on screen 'THIS THREAD IS NOW ABOUT AN ENDLESS, INESCAPABLE VOID CONTAINING THE FOX AND THE COMPUTER HE'S USING'.

What the hell was that? How did they do it? What was so inescapable about that void? I came up with resorting to the same trick... in English, I typed 'THIS THREAD IS NOW ABOUT THE FOX'S FRIEND'S CELL', to see what happened. Nothing happened... I tried it several times. But nothing was happening. I had been trapped there, in the void, forever. Is that how they were supposed to kill me?

What's more... how was the computer still working? Was it part of the plan? Less than two minutes ago, I heard the Leader screaming for my head. Now he was going to have me prisoner until I died of old age? Some intimidating villain, I thought.

Since I was here already, I thought I'd keep searching the computer while it still worked. It almost seemed unreal, but the computer did have information on Anonymous' plans. And they were not pleasant in the least...

Here's the truth. Anonymous wasn't only attacking homes and kidnapping people for the lulz, no... they were also aiming for nothing less than _the extermination of the whole human race._Apparently, they had decided they were the only ones who deserved to live on Earth, and now they were 'reclaiming' their place. But how? And here's the most amazing part. Remember I said only I would go to the extreme of learning every detail of Internet culture and sense of humor? That was what Anonymous was counting on: that no one would. Their arsenal was completely based on Internet jokes, memes and viral phenomena, which no one knew anything about unless they were like them and me... willing to learn about that kind of thing. Because most people didn't know about that, they would be helpless against a giant pedobear, an unnaturally long cat and who knows how much else that showed up suddenly and destroyed everything... And yes, the flamethrowers were part of the plan; at some point I noticed the trigger had 'POST' written on it. 'Posting flames' was the equivalent of insulting...

Now I did know how I was going to thwart Anonymous' plans... I had to warn the world how to fight these threats. But it wouldn't be enough. If Ivory and I had been abducted, it was possible that the people they didn't kill were considered "special prisoners" as well, and that they were now waiting, powerless, for their turn to be tortured with The Game... which is also Internet culture. A way to get them out had to be found, but I wasn't going to do it alone. What I didn't know was how was I going to, you know... do that, trapped in a lame wormhole and all.

The final paragraph of 'The Mission', what they had christened their plan, said they aspired to annihilate humanity in two days. As soon as I read that line, the computer was suddenly shutdown, and popped, disintegrating, like the room before it... And then I understood. From wherever they were, they were still able to turn the remainder of the room into the 'thread' they wanted. Now the void only had me... And soon it was going to be an authentic void! How was I going to save myself? How? There was no cunning or flamethrower or unknown power to save me now...

And I began to disappear.

Oh, no... No... no, no, no, NO! Please, NO! I have to et outta here! But I can't... Only a deus ex machina can save me now!

And without warning, something like a black hole opened suddenly, and swallowed me... and I... fell. To the floor. Of where, I couldn't say. I could barely get up. I was at wits' end. I felt increasingly powerless and defenseless. How much time had passed outside? When I got out, would I find no one in the world, that Anonymous had done their mission? Nothing mattered anymore. I only wanted everything to end once and for frigging all. Perhaps they would find me and kill me, and then everything would be over for definite. And the worst... I would never see Ivory again. The Leader was right.

Suddenly, I heard...

"Ogni?"

I suddenly opened my eyes. I got up. I turned around.

There was Ivory, alive and well, perhaps locked inside what must have been her cell. I broke out in tears, and gave her a hug. I hugged her like I've never hugged anyone before, not even her. And she hugged me back...

"Ivory... Oh, Ivory! I thought I'd never see you again. I, I... I love you. I love you so much!" I held her head and kissed her lips. Never before had she reciprocated so much for one of my affection displays, hugging me as if it was the last thing she would do in life. Never before had she shown to be so in love with me... Her kiss was the warmest anyone, human, animal, perhaps in extreme cases even mineral, could give, in all the universe...

"Ogni, where have you been? I've waited an eternity to get out of here. They said they were going to kill you and then me, but they didn't release me, and I thought you hadn't been killed, and I supposed you had survived... and I still had hope to see you. Where have you been?

"You have no idea what I've seen, Ivory. I've seen things I don't wish on anyone, not even that jerk of the neighbor Frederick... if he's still alive."

"He's been kidnapped?"

"No. Rather, it'd be worse if they didn't..."

"Why?"

"I just found out what these guys want. It's terrible."

"Who are they, Ogni? What do they want?

"They want to... they want... to destroy all of humanity."

"What are you saying?"

"What you're hearing. In two days, humanity will be annihilated by memes, if it hasn't been already."

"No!" The twinkle in her eyes appeard to die. "They can't! How are they going to do that?"

"Like I said. With memes." And I proceeded to explain myself better. "You see, this whole place? Those suits, the weapons, The Game? That's all viral Internet humor, and their arsenal and their 'rules' are based on it. I know this, Ivory, because I've spent four years learning about it."

"Explain..."

"You'll see." I showed the flamethrower to her. "The trigger on this weapon says 'post', and this is a flamethrower. 'Flaming' is an Internet word for insulting someone else. 'The Game' is a little mind game that consists of not thinking about it, and it's played like a joke. 'Pedobear' is a word to accuse someone of being a pedophile. The Rickcoll is a trap to make you end up at a Rick Astley video. And Anonymous itself is an Internet group. No one else in the world knows about these things, so they won't be able to defend themselves, and the ones that know might be too shocked to know what to do. So the only ones who can do something are you and I."

"...My God," she said simply.

"Now... here's the interesting part. Do you know a 'Leader Anonymous'? He's calling their shots." At her affirmative response, I continued. "See. The Anonymous that operate from the Internet... don't have any leaders. They don't have any hierarchy or any headquarters. Their members are only characterized for that, for 'posting' anonymously... exactly, on the Internet. And they're capable of truly cruel evil stuff, but they'd never be so stupid to plan the destruction of the world they live in. Clearly, these guys aren't those guys. Who_ _these are, I don't know, but there's no time to know, and there may be time to stop them. And I think I know how."

"How?"

"We'll get out of here."

"Get out? We can't! Are you crazy? There's guards everywhere!"

"That's what I said too. Listen. We get out. As soon as we get out, we reach the authorities and we tell them how to deal with these guys, and to rescue the people who're still trapped in here. With luck, they'll do it, but it's a very far away chance."

"And that's going to work?"

"Yeah, I think."

"Are you sure?"

When she asked me that, I remembered something I had told her before, out there on that street, when I saw her for the first time...

"I don't know... I just came up with it."

Her head hung in disappointment. And she was right. My plan was the only think I could think of at the time... buw how was it going to work? Was it going to work?

"Ogni..." she said suddenly, at which I turned to see her. "What if we fail?"

"If we fail...?" I hadn't thought of that... "Well, if we fail, well, then..." And I realized we had no choice... "...May God have mercy on us all."

There was a terrible silence for a couple of seconds. Ivory sobbed.