NUMERO THREE HUNDRED ANTIFASHIONATE
“...we have numbers not names” It has taken me three hours to get to the last check-out point of society, past several suburban areas till the train line ends and you have to walk a great distance. I scan my I.D card; it scrambles with the confusion of all my recent activities but still ends as an Intellecter. A warning appears on the screen suggesting I don’t leave the society, which I disregard. The area in front of me is desolate, baron, hopeless. Antifashionates are visible in the shadows. Here old buildings and factories with smashed in windows have become homes, everything is strewn in graffiti. Much of the area looks like it has recently been hit by a hurricane, buildings are flattened and everything looks abandoned. There is a strong smell of synthetic melting through the air. I approach a park bench that has outlived any sign of a park and the Antifashionate is sitting there. Hi I’m Terry? I ask cautiously, unsure of the reaction or if it is the right person. He is hunched and his skin thick covered in hair, creeping up his neck. He doesn’t turn to me, just looks at the space in front of him and responds in a muttered voice that is barely audible. I’m Numero Three Hundred… It is a joke we have, Antifashionates, we have numbers not names. Surprised it hasn’t come to that for the Fashionites. Were you born an Antifashioniate or when did you become one? I was a ‘’Curious’’ once, as a child I guess, I grew up out of the city and wanted to explore, know about everything, experience everything. Of course as a Fashionite you can never experience everything because they wont let you, you think you are making decisions but your not, you’re choosing what they already chose for you. When I was eighteen years, seven months and nine days I came here, I met an Antifashionate and he made me realize all that. So...
“I tossed out my I.D band and I was freed”...
This is my utopia out here, the choices are mine to make and I am an individual. I cannot be diffused into a group. In what sense do you consider yourself freer than a Fashionite? Every way, maybe I can’t go to the places they go, can’t be in the inner city area but those who can, those Fashionites they don’t go there because they want to, they go there because they should or they have to maintain their Identities. That isn’t freedom. I am free to feel any way that I do, to like what ever it is that I like because I don’t have a Fashionite Identity to conform to. Many of the Fashionites I’ve spoken to believe Antifashionates to be ‘face-less’, saying that you don’t have an identity. What defines you? I am an individual that is what defines me, myself. There is no automatic hovering, accessible information around me that tells passer-by’s what I like and don’t like and what makes me, me, and I couldn’t be more thankful for that. They think you only have an identity if you can see it in writing, ticking certain boxes, what those identities do is eradicate individuality, none of those Fashionites are individuals they are all grouped. What is so repelling to you about being a part of a group? It is not that I
don’t like people, I just prefer real people. Fashionites are a part of identities because they are scared, these groups mask real people, and they put facades on to be a part of something that they may not really want to be a part of. I wont do that. They rely on their identities to make their choices easier; one day none of them will think for themselves at all, that terrifies me. By being an Antifashionate though, doesn’t that make you a part of that group? We have one thing in common out here, we are Antifashionates and we don’t posses Fashionite Identities but if you speak to each of us you see we are all different.